“I don’t care about the key,” I said, stroking her hair. “Auster, is he…?”
“Dead.”
Though I rejoiced to that, I couldn’t fully bask in it when, despite all he’d done, the bastard’s death caused her pain. It was a certain kind of torment to want to kill what was already dead. To loathe someone who was gone so much I wanted to rip into the Nether just to kill him again.
“You did what you had to do. He was never going to stop. He never would have let you go,” I consoled.
“I know. I just wish things hadn’t turned out this way.”
My wish was that the threats against us died with Auster, but the truth was, we were far from done fighting for our peace. For the happiness we deserved. My father was in pursuit of freeing the gods to walk our lands. Two spiteful entities, who would come for Astraea with more ruthlessness than Auster.
“Nyte,” she whispered, touching my face so tenderly.
“Starlight.”
Her brow crumpled. In the silence that ticked by, with her tender touches and the thoughtful flickers over her features, she was processing that I was truly here.
After I’d left her for amonth.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here with you,” I said, tucking away the wild strands of her hair that whipped across her tired face.
Astraea gripped my jacket. “Don’t ever do that again.”
She swallowed hard, a soft whimper left her, then she pulled me down to kiss her.
Every misery became insignificant within the wrap of her affection. She didn’t know that she was my shield for survival, when I never felt stronger, more filled with purpose, than in every moment of her yearning for me.
Breaking the kiss, she tucked into me tightly and I held her.
“You bonded with Eltanin,” she mumbled into me.
“I’m still in shock about it.”
“I’m not. Ever since I first held him it was like I could feel you. I think even then I knew he wasn’t mine, not in the way he was destined to be yours.”
“He’s ours,” I promised.
Her silver eyes peered up at me with sorrow furrowed between her brows.
“Your wings…”
I tipped her chin back, kissing her softly.
“I don’t care.”
That only seemed to drop her expression more and I ached with it.
“That’s not right,” she said quietly, as if I wasn’t meant to hear it. “Your pain and suffering are not right. You speak of it as if it should be, and I want to make your father and this world pay for it.”
“Astraea… it’s not that I believe it’s right, it’s that I don’t care about any of it anymore because everything I’ve suffered brought me to you in the end. I’d walk every dark path again and again so long as it always led to you.”
She kissed me again. Every time she reached for me with a call, a touch, a kiss, I was reminded of the treasure that could be found in the darkest suffering. Her face burrowed into my neck, and her scent healed the broken threads of my soul that had frayed from being parted from her.
“Fuck, I missed you,” I muttered again. Every inch of her wrapped around me was what completeness felt like. Two undeniably perfect pieces fit back together.
“I feared you’d never come back,” she whispered.
“There’s not a realm or time I won’t fight with everything I am to make it back to you.”
