“Go to your brother,” I told Antila gently, peeling her arms from around me.
“This exchange will be quick, though I can’t promise that it will be painless,” Dawn said, coming around the table toward me. “We will bleed our palms and join them. Then Zephyr will strike the key through you, and the transfer will happen. I will have your power, your body, and your life. I wonder how long it will take for Rainyte to notice. The truth? I hope he never does. As much as he has been a meddling force, I can’t deny his love and devotion to you is enviable.”
Dawn’s delusion, to have Nyte worship her in my body, sickened me.
Nadir approached me, wearing a gloating smile as they held a knife out to me. Not the one they were chopping vegetables with, at least. Their arrogant demeanor was a mockery of the dire situation.
Zephyr stood, coming close to where Dawn and I faced off. He barely yielded any emotion. I wanted to tell him I didn’t blame him; he had to protect his children, even if it was too late for Katerina.
“Father, you can’t,” Antila cried. She was held by her brother.
Zephyr’s grip tightened on the key, which changed to its staff form in a pulse of light and energy.
“Let them leave,” I pleaded.
Dawn regarded the two children with boredom.
“I’ll take care of them,” Nadir said with an underlying hint that they could harm Antila or Raider if I tried anything.
They led the children upstairs, though I wished they had been taken out of the home.
“Your compliance is refreshing after all your years of insolence,” Dawn remarked.
“Your opinion means nothing to me. It never has.”
Dawn’s eyes flared.
“When I’m the star-maiden I will shape the world exactly the way you should have shaped it.”
“What I don’t understand… is why you chose guardians of all species to raise me when your perfect societal order always favored the celestials.”
“Favored? No. The hierarchy was decided by strength and purpose, nothing more.”
“You speak with no soul,” I said. “You cannot understand righteousness.Fairness. Equality. You are a god that feeds on greed and power, and that will never change.”
Dawn gripped my hand, yanking me toward her. Our stares pierced each other with loathing. My jaw clenched at the sharp sting as she sliced my palm.
“You are nothing but a rebellious tyrant,” Dawn said.
“I am everything but a compliant slave to your ideals.”
I took Dawn’s hand, and she let me slice her palm, unknowing the blade Nadir gave me was made of obsidian; a material incapacitating to the celestials.
Dawn screeched, yanking her hand back and stumbling a step. She recovered fast, and her eyes turned absolutely feral on me.
I shifted my gaze to Zephyr as he threw the key. We were so fast, but Dawn was faster. She avoided my thrust forward with the key, launching back. My adrenaline pounded through my body as I threw out a sharp blast of light from my palm instead. To my relief, it hit her with full force. Dawn was thrown through the air, her body crashing through the back wall of Nadir’s home and out into the snowy darkness.
I launched out after her just as a familiar roar shook the sky. I didn’t break my focus on Dawn as Eltanin pierced through the void, nor did I let her leave my sight when footfalls stomped over the snow.
After telling Nyte and the others what I suspected about the god’s motives with me, we devised a plan to lure out Dawn. Nadir’s summons had been too easy for her to accept, believing his allegiance was to the High Celestials when it was true that he’d been the one to craft and supply Auster with the lethal fae material.
Dawn had risen from the snow she’d tumbled through; her ferocious glare targeted me.
Tonight, I would kill a god.
“Did you really believe I have been powerless all this time?” Dawn called.
The cruelty of her smile braced me to fight, but her attention shifted skyward, intending to strike Eltanin with a light that built from her palm as though she held the sun. Starry darkness formed a shield, but, to my horror, the sun shattered clean through it, slamming into Eltanin, who roared in pain.
