That was a distraction… for me.
Next thing I knew, a searing pain exploded against my chest and I was flying back. The key flew out of my grip, and before I fell, a dome of light encased me.
Dawn trapped us in a globe of piercing sunlight. My eyes stung and watered, hardly able to open fully because of the lashing surge of brightness after being in the night for so long. The dome roared and swirled as though we stood in a hollow half sun, alive and vivid.
“It’s over,” I said, pushing myself up.
Her strike had melted my leathers and burnt my flesh.
“You thought yourself cunning, but you forget you are a fragment ofme,” Dawn said.
A loudboomslammed against the dome encasing us. The darkness that rippled over the sun could not pierce it despite all of Nyte’s efforts.
“You can’t kill me without Zephyr and the key,” I said.
Dawn gave her attention back to me.
“You’re right. You have me surrounded.” She approached with the predatory intent of a snake. I backed away until I cried out, stumbling forward when I touched the edge of the dome that singed my arm through the leather.
Dawn caught me by my arms, and I stared fearfully into her cruel eyes.
“You are nothing but stardust,” she said. “If I can’t have you, no one can.”
“No.” That denial left me in a breath of horror as a familiar tingling began at my fingertips. My eyes snapped down, unable to fight or save my skin, which began to break off in glittering particles.
I scrunched my eyes shut.It’s not real. It’s not real.
When I opened them again, I sobbed, seeing that my hands were gone. Dawn released me, pacing a few strides backward as she watched me disintegrate and the dust float skyward.
“Make it stop,” I cried.
“I’ll see you in the sky.”
A shattering sound crashed at my left and I winced. When I saw the purple flaring tip of the key piecing through the dome, I gasped. Someone retracted it then swiftly thrust into the same impact point which shattered an opening.
To my shock and horror… Zephyr lunged through it.
He charged with a mighty roar, holding the key high like a battle spear.
I screamed. I begged him to stop, but he couldn’t hear me, lost in his own wrath and need for vengeance.
Dawn conjured a sphere of molten light, but it was smothered by darkness. My head snapped to where Nyte stood in the dome’s opening, aiding Zephyr’s advance.
But Nyte knew Zephyr couldn’t kill her even with the key. It had to be me.
Then time… slowed.
Zephyr’s raging advance now seemed like he was floating. Advancing only fractions. Dawn’s shock and anger started trying to form a defense against his charging wrath but he would win. He would reach her before she could.
I shifted my sight to the opening in the dome. Nyte was captured in slowed time too. Because Kairos was next to him, his hands poised elegantly with his face contorted in concentration.
“I can’t hold this for longer than thirty seconds tops,” he rasped.
Kairos was granting me this chance to save my friend, but horror flooded over me. Scrambling to my feet, I examined my missing hands. With Dawn’sfocus stolen, my flesh stopped turning to stardust, beginning to return. But not fast enough.
“You have to hold it longer!” I begged.
Sweat beaded Kairos’s forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice strained as though he were lifting a boulder, about to cave under its weight.
