When Eltanin dipped again, challenging his ability to fly low, Astraea was right above us and I’d never felt relief like I did when my arms wrapped around her. Capturing her tightly to me with my legs clamping tighter around the saddle. Eltanin strained to glide up again but couldn’t make it without pummeling into the tops of some trees. Astraea’s wings hung limp over the saddle sides, but I shielded her body with mine, curling into her as sharp branches tore at my arms and face and legs. It didn’t matter. So long as she was safe now.
Eltanin managed to clear the trees and climb high again, and once we broke through the clouds and I could let go of my strenuous purchase on the saddle, I straightened, scanning Astraea for injuries.
Noticing the rise and fall of her chest released my first sane breath.
“Nyte,” she said, barely a whisper, so quiet that I thought I’d conjured it from the whistling wind in my desperation.
“I’ve got you.Fuck,I’ve got you.” I kissed her head, and when her eyes fluttered open, everything in me slumped with utter relief.
“You’re alive,” she croaked.
“I’m alive. We’re both alive.”
Astraea’s hand reached weakly over my chest.
“You’re real,” she whispered, her eyes glittered with tears, and the first one to fall was like a knife dragged over my heart. “You came back.”
“As long as you’re here,” I said, resting my hand over hers. “I’ll always come back to you.”
It was the kind of vow that felt almost too fragile for this world, a quiet assurance that transcended distance, even time. And though I knew there would be moments of silence, stretches when she might feel further away, the simple truth of my words was anchoring for both of us.
Gods, I missed her so agonizingly.
Unbuttoning my jacket, I untucked my shirt as the only measure I could think of to help her right now. Her soft sigh when her palm flattened on my bare abdomen was a sound I’d bleed to hear. Her other joined it and I tensed at her frozen touch, but I would endure every measure of pain she was going through now if I could take it all from her.
“Can you glamour your wings? It’ll be more comfortable until we get to land,” I said gently.
Her face pinched to attempt the glamour and she cried softly, trying not to by biting her lip as her body locked.
“So brave,” I murmured, kissing her head and shifting to hold her closer now that her wings were gone.
“I missed you,” she said sleepily. “I missed you so much I was dying from it.”
“I know.Gods,I know. I have you in my arms and I still fucking miss you.”
“It worked…? Nightsdeath…”
“Is gone. You brought me back.”
Astraea watched the stars, her eyes glistening, and I watched her, entranced by the most perfect creature to exist. Right now, she appeared so precious it hurt. I traced a cut along her cheek, and she leaned into my touch. Every mark I found on her built on a need to inflict them a hundred times more on whoever caused them.
“I’m scared…” she whispered, haunted.
My sight raked down her body to where her hand pressed against her stomach. Her pale hand drowned in crimson almost made me lose my damned mind. Not just from the wound but from the all-consuming terror that came back to me.
“What happened, Starlight?”
I dreaded hearing the answer I already knew from the cry within my soul.
“The blade, it… it had your blood on it.”
My world shifted. Cracked. And it took everything in me not to fall into the depths of the despair that clawed from it.
“You’re going to be okay,” I said. The dark delusion was both cruel and defiant. “You’re still here; that must mean something. You’re staying with me.”
Astraea nodded weakly, and all I could do was hold her despite the terror coiling between us.
“The key piece Auster had was a fake. There are still fifteen temples left we need to search to find all the real pieces,” she informed.
