Before I could fly back to the platform again, the sound of fearful murmurs gripped my attention. The people weren’t looking at me anymore; they staredpast me with wide eyes. Some started pushing each other to get away, then shouting to run.
I twisted my head sideways and gasped at the blazing star hurtling at a deadly speed right toward us. There was no debating if it would miss the city this time. It didn’t matter how far away those people below got; I didn’t doubt this blast could collapse the city.
I scanned for Auster, but he was gone, now back down on the ground with his brothers in urgent conversation. Their wings were unglamoured, and many celestials were fleeing rapidly with the help of their wings. They and the nightcrawlers were the only ones who stood a chance of clearing the blast radius.
The High Celestials wouldn’t leave everyone to die here, would they? Together their magick might be able to slow or stop the meteor.
There was no end to my anger that boiled as they juststood there.
Fucking cowards.
Landing on the platform, I had no choice. I opened myself to the otherworldly magick that lived within me and hoped it didn’t claim or destroy me. Hoped I didn’t lose myself to Lightsdeath like Nyte could to his deadly entity of Nightsdeath.
With a long breath, I dove deep into my well of magick, surpassing my limit and letting starlight flood through me. It was all I was. Pure, bright starlight. Enough to drown the world if I wanted to.
I glamoured my wings, shifted my stance, then, as the heat grew, I couldn’t tell what source was strongest: the blaze of magick coursing through me or the devastating rock about to obliterate me as I cast out a hand. My magick wrapped around the star, which rebelled against my attempt to stop it from crashing to the land. The world was glowing with silver, and I knew nothing but Lightsdeath.
The rock slowed, but not enough. I pushed more magick out, ignoring the wild pounding that began in my head, my skin that ran too hot, and my stance that trembled. My brow pulled together with the agony tearing through me, but I couldn’t give up.
Both my hands pushed out now, and a scream tore from my throat. With the greatest surge of magick ever to unleash in this world, the star finally started breaking. Piece by piece it turned to dust with the starlight ripping through it. Until it was no more than a large boulder that had lost its flame.
I couldn’t hold on any more, with no choice but to accept the impact of that piece slamming into me. Then death was a friend that greeted me coldly.
7Astraea
The ground beneath my body was as firm as I’d expected, gritty and warm as my fingers flexed. The thick air confused my stirring consciousness when I drew a long breath, inhaling thick dust and coughing violently.
I opened my eyes but I wasn’t greeted by the red night of my world. My cheek lay against dry, cracked land. Flattening my palms to push myself up, I knew I should be in pain even if only from my position lying on solid ground.
I felt nothing. In fact, my body didn’t quite feel… wholly here.
I stood and surveyed my surroundings. A sweep of panic choked in my throat when I didn’t recognize the neutral toned wasteland with a hazy overcast. The trees in the distance were stripped of all that could bring color and joy, scattered in the field like dark skeletal bodies with crooked fingers reaching to reap the creatures that passed, though only ravens flew, silently, landing on the branches confidently. The wind whistled by me, wailing as though lost souls cried, captured in the drafts.
Hugging myself to fight the prickling sensation that crept over my skin, I turned around and found another person a few paces away with their back to me. Before I could decide whether to let fear or relief dominate after discovering I wasn’t alone, both were quelled by a wash of shock. Disbelief.
This couldn’t be real.
“Nyte,” I whispered.
I would know him from any angle. His tall stature and broad shoulders. The few locks of dark hair long enough to catch in the wind.
I’d been trying to stop the meteor from destroying the central city of Vesitire, but I remembered the final piece that hadn’t dissolved in my magick in time and instead pummeled into me.
I hadn’t fallen unconscious. What pulled me under after that immediateimpact had felt so icily cold and blindingly bright before submersing me in complete darkness. I was sure that impact had killed me.
Nyte turned to my call, but it wasn’t him who greeted me. It was Nightsdeath. The black vines crawled his skin and his complexion was paler here. His irises glowed like they trapped the sun. Darkness rolled off him as though he were part flesh, part shadow. Despite his frightening appearance and deathly stare, I inched closer when he didn’t move again or speak.
“Astraea.”
When I got close enough to reach a hand up to his hauntingly beautiful face, he immediately lashed out. I clawed at his fingers, tight and unforgiving, around my throat.
“You’re going to wish you’d never been created, Lightsdeath,” he hissed, throwing me to the ground, and I spluttered, my vision peppering.
Could he kill me here? That true fear of possibility, when I didn’t think I would awaken in my realm again if he succeeded in ending me in this void between life and death, had me crawling on my elbows while I tried to scramble my thoughts back together. I couldn’t leave him here. There had to be a way to reach Nyte through his dark, dominating power, just like I could in my own realm.
Nightsdeath grabbed my ankle, and I grappled for purchase against being dragged back. My fingers only bled, tearing over the dry, serrated slashes of the ground, and I yelped when I was flipped onto my back.
He crouched down, looking over my face and hooking a strand of my silver hair. Even when mirroring Nyte’s habits, Nightsdeath held nothing but disgust in his stare. “You made the greatest mistake in thinking you could become something to contend with me, Maiden,” he said, his voice a haunting lullaby.
