My pain, my confusion, nothing fucking mattered when I heard the one name that forced every weakness away so I could finally take a deep inhale.
Astraea.
Memory of how I lay so disorientated and immobilized came back to me in horrifying flashes of clarity. Dusk and Dawn had won, inflicting their curse of eternal rest on me, but… I was awake. How long had I been gone?
Everything in me barked in protest against moving, but my Starlight was out there, and I didn’t care if I had to trek to her with shattered bones and my body in flames.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever get to make it back here.” That was Drystan who spoke next.
With the two of them together, not sounding like they were trying to kill each other, was I truly awake?
“If this is you saying you’ll miss me, I know you will,” Nadia said, but it lacked a little of her usual arrogance.
“Just—” Drystan didn’t finish his sentence, but footsteps compacted the soft snow.
I forced my eyes to open and immediately squinted from the light; the pair seemed close. So close that I tried to focus my vision to be sure the rogue didn’t have a blade lodged in my brother’s chest. I didn’t get to confirm that when the ground beneath me moved as I tried to roll onto my side; then I barely registered that I was falling before I slammed with a groan onto snow thick enough to soften the landing, but not completely.
“Shit!” Nadia exclaimed.
I couldn’t see them as I blinked up, realizing now I was previously lying on the saddle of a black dragon, but he was too big to be…
The fact Eltanin wasn’t as small as I remembered bolted me upright against every agonizing pulse in my head and shooting pain in my bones.
“Where is she?” I demanded. Adrenaline was a drug I consumed greedily to numb the warnings of my body.
“How the fuck are you awake?” Drystan said, marching over and staring at me as if I were a ghost.
“No need to sound so thrilled about it, brother,” I said hoarsely, losing shreds of dignity with each passing second I lay here.
I tried to look around, hoping but already knowing Astraea wasn’t here right now. The cold started to seep into me, and when Drystan leaned down, I accepted his help up, immediately needing to lean against Eltanin. His feathers against my skin tingled, and with that sensation a thread pulled within me.
“How long?” I asked, barely a daunted whisper because I feared the answer. Eltanin was as big as Athebyne now.
“A month,” Nadia said. “Give or take. You’ve been in dreamland for around a month.”
I closed my eyes to accept the lost time. It could have been far more… it should have been forever. My mind was storming with questions, but only one thing mattered right now.
“Where is Astraea?” I asked again.
Seeing Drystan’s wince, I braced for an answer I wasn’t going to like.
“She’s… with Auster.”
My fist tightened and I took a pause to collect my sanity.
“Against her will?”
“It’s kind of complicated.”
“Then uncomplicate it,” I snarled.
“Not even months of sleep can make you less grumpy,” Nadia muttered, folding her arms.
I knew exactly where I was when I cast a glance sideward and saw a wooden home so tall that my neck ached when I tried to scan to the top of the structure. We were at Nadir’s home.
“Where were you taking me?”
Drystan tried to hide another wince, scratching the back of his neck.
