Astraea knew that wasn’t truly why her thoughts stormed and her heart raced.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” Nyte coaxed, voice soft as a plea, which she rarely heard from him.
“I love you,” she blurted, with her back still to him.
The confession tumbled out of her. He’d given her those same beautiful words after their bonding, but she’d not been able to say them back. They were there… in her chest, sometimes they clawed up her throat and had been suffocating her for months, but she was too afraid to let them out. Now… she realized how much stronger she felt with him by her side, even when he couldn’t be physically there. Now, more than anything, she wanted to prove to the world Nyte wasn’t terror, he was hope to bring an end to this war with his father.
Nyte’s advance from behind tightened her skin. When he pressed his front to her back, her body became pliable to him, and he wrapped around her like a shield from burden.
“Say that again,” he murmured over her neck. His lips trailed from the hollow spot behind her ear, and her eyes fluttered closed.
“I love you,” she repeated. Each word swelled more in her heart, convincing her mind it would all be okay. They could survive anything together.
Nyte groaned against her; the vibrations scattered across her chest like gentle sand and pebbled her breasts.
“As much as I’ve been longing to hear that, why does it trouble you?”
“Because I shouldn’t. Because I’m afraid it’s a choice I can’t make. That loving you means I can’t love my duty. The people will rebel before we can start convincing them to understand. It’s going to break Auster and perhaps start a different war.”
His hand on her waist turned her around, and he guided her until the back of her knees met the edge of the bed. He coaxed her down, and lust started to heat her skin with his slow, alluring movements hovering over her body, pressing her into the mattress.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked, so calm and ready to bend the world or break it for her. “Because you’re mine now no matter what I have to do to keep it so. I’m determined to see to it that you have anything you desire.”
Nyte was known as a nightmare in the minds of every species. He was wicked and cold and cruel… but Astraea discovered that his darkness could be warm if one ventured far enough to feel it. Nyte offered himself to her when he could have killed her. His wants had never been his own until this—their bond. He was willing to do or be whatever he had to for it, and that cleaved something inside her.
He deserved to be loved. To receive the devotion he offered.
“Be patient with me,” she said quietly. Her legs tightened around his hips when they lowered against her.
Nyte pulled back from trailing kisses along her collar. He claimed her mouth, and her fingers threaded through his dark hair. Only for one long, promising kiss.
“For you, I’m as patient as the night that awaits the full moon. As calm as the stars that await the night. For you, Astraea Lightborne, I would wait in every lifetime of infinity.” He smiled, and it was a treasure worth more than any diamond.
“Now,” he said in husky murmur. “I believe there’s begging to be done and making up to be had.”
2Astraea—Present
The moon was bleeding; casting our world in a red hue like the anger of the gods weighed down on us. It turned the blood-splattered snow around me even more sinister.
I’d lost my sense of morality as my purple blade drowned in crimson from the neck of another celestial.
If you’re not with me, you’re against me.
The chant followed everybody that fell by my hand, but words weren’t enough to stop the darkness creeping over my soul with their deaths.
They weren’t all celestials. Vampires, fae, and even humans were eager for the bounty Auster had placed on my head and those of my friends. Some were far more vicious and unrelenting, and if they attacked my friends, mercy was left behind in my retaliation.
My return from the stars began as they hunted, but now I had become more than the hunter: I was a harbinger of death. His maiden.
The dawn never rose again and the dusk would never fall. Worst of all… my soul remained severed from its other half. Nyte had left me in this world thrown into disorder and anarchy, but I was determined to bring him back.
Two weeks, and we were no closer to finding a cure for his curse of death-like sleep.
“You wouldn’t be close to passing out if you left some for the rest of us,” Nadia remarked. She approached tentatively, as did Davina. They were always cautious around me, as if one wrong word would trigger my explosion.
“You can’t keep up,” I said, leaning down to wipe the blood off my blade on the cloak of a fallen celestial. Catching a glimpse of Auster’s constellation sigil on his navy cloak, I felt my guilt for the life I’d taken twist to resentment.
If you’re not with me… you’re against me.
