I was once again all alone in this void of night and starlight. Alone with my sobs rattling in my hollow chest and shredding at my split soul.
I lost.
I lost him.
“Nyte!” I yelled. I called his name again and again until my throat was hoarse and my cheeks were stained with endless tears.
He couldn’t leave me. I couldn’t leave him.
“We were supposed to be infinite together,” I whispered, an unheard breath of shattered hope lost in this void.
I stood alone and lost. So terribly lost. The silence grew thick with my building grief and complete denial. My knees threatened to buckle because I didn’t want to go back. I would rather stay here in torment for my failure to Nyte than face a world where he didn’t exist.
“I told you I’d always reach you when you call.”
My next breath left me in disbelief, and I was afraid to turn around and have him be a figment of my desperate imagination.
“Starlight.”
I couldn’t fight the pull of that name, which lassoed around me, and faced the only person to ever call me that.
Nyte stood just a short distance away, watching me with an expression that pulled me forward, my steps shaky at first as I stumbled toward him. His image was perfect. All dark hair, ethereal gold eyes, and that scar… the most perfectly imperfect piece of him he’d kept to remember us. That our story was love and war. It was many battles, many heartbreaks, and in every trial and tribulation, it was triumphant.
Before I knew it, my pace quickened—I was running. The space between us closed with every step, and then he was moving too, his strides mirroring my own, closing the distance with an intensity that made the void blur around us.
We were stars colliding and night defying.
My arms wrapped around his neck, and Nyte’s powerful arms lifted me. I clamped around him, too afraid that he would disappear, that this embrace was as fragile as a dream.
“Astraea,” he sighed into my hair; his warm breath fanned my neck.
“Nyte,” I whispered, clutching him tighter. “Oh, Nyte.”
“Yes.”
His arms slackened, and my toes set back on the ground.
“Yes?” I questioned.
Nyte’s golden eyes were the most beautiful things in the world. My North Star. My guide home.
“Yes… we won.”
My face crumpled with the pure joy that pierced me.
“We won,” I echoed. “Is this real? Are you real? Cassia and Calix took Dawn’s blood, and I couldn’t… I thought I’d lost you and I—”
Nyte’s lips slanted over mine, dissolving my frantic web of words. I kissed him back desperately, as if our last breath was shared within it.
He was the one to pull back, resting his forehead against mine.
“We win, Astraea. Not to sacrifice ourselves this time; we’re going home together. To your lands that you will restore as the people’s queen, as their star-maiden. And I’m going to be right there beside you, as the darkness that will always make sure you shine your brightest.”
I sobbed in pure joy and elation.
A bright light began to grow over his face, making him shine with the night in his hair and the sun in his eyes.
“Let’s go home to our friends,” I said, not quite believing my precious words would come true yet. Then the term didn’t feel strong enough, and I amended, “Our family.”
