I let Lilith tend to Astraea while I had to stand, to pace, to begin to figure out how in the hell to save her this time.
“I’m so glad you made it back to us. Even if you are a moody pain in my ass,” Davina said tenderly.
There was hardly a breath of warmth in my attempt to smile.
Then someone descended the narrow stairs, and just for a second my grief switched focus.
Elliot was here. The sole survivor of the Golden Guard.
He tried to smile but didn’t approach. “Welcome back.”
I was slashed with pain so sudden and immediate. The sorrow on his face matched what I felt within. We reflected on the same grim event of being ambushed in the mountains by an attack sent by my father. The vampires had managed to kill Sorleen, Zeik, and Kerrah: the rest of the Golden Guard.
Before I lost Nightsdeath, it would have been easy to use that power to smother any care or feeling. I would have been able to live with the loss of the only people I’d just begun to considerfriends.Now, I didn’t have such darkness to hide in. I couldn’t thrust the agony of loss and fear of losing again into the shadowy depths to numb my mind to keep. Fucking. Going.
This vulnerability that had opened in me was so raw and…frightening.I didn’t think I was afraid of anything unless it concerned Astraea’s life, but here I was, starting to fear myself and what my emotions could do to me.
The front door burst open before I could begin to process anything. It was only Drystan.
“That was close!” he announced obnoxiously.
Feeling my tangible ire from the fright he inspired, Drystan gave a grimace as an apology.
“What happened with Laviana and Tarran?” Astraea asked, pushing through her fatigue as Nadir propped more pillows behind her.
“There wasn’t much of either force left, celestials or vampires, to keep going. It was all a pointless waste of life.” Drystan shrugged out of his cloak, seeming at home here, which enlightened me more to the fact all of them had spent a lot of time here while I lay useless.
Astraea explained what had happened and how Auster Nova was dead. Itkilled me to feel her sorrow when the bastard deserved a far fucking worse death than what he got.
“He’s finally dead,” Drystan muttered, mostly to himself.
“The city needs a ruler before word spreads,” Davina said.
“We have to retrieve the key; I won’t sit pretty on a throne keeping it warm and waiting as idle bait for the gods to come for me,” Astraea said. Her silver-blue eyes cast to me and my spine locked. “You need to rule when I’m gone, so maybe—”
I didn’t feel the ornament in my possession, but the room turned sharp when it shattered against a wall, thrown with a flash of rage I couldn’t contain. I had to take a few calming breaths.
“Do you really think I could stand to rule this continent if you were no longer on it?” I said; a familiar, villainous darkness spread through me. “No, Astraea. I’d sooner rip it apart.”
She scolded me with a look I found adorable.
“When you’re gone?” Drystan echoed.
I could hardly stand to keep hearing the reiteration of Auster Nova’s parting curse.
I tuned out everyone’s conversation, sitting by Astraea’s side and soothing some of the sharp panic in me with her touch.
“You need to rest,” Astraea said gently as if she could feel my racing emotions.
Lilith was almost finished with her bandages.
“These will stay in place well enough for you to bathe,” she informed. Astraea would want to wash the blood and dirt from her skin after the ordeal.
“We’ll meet here in the morning hours to discuss how to get to all these temples to get the key back,” Drystan said, accepting a pipe from Nadir and taking a long inhale. “We all need as good a rest as we can get. Something tells me we’re going to miss the month you were asleep and we all hung around in our boredom, considering what we face next.”
Just as I helped Astraea stand, as she refused to be carried, I sensed the intrusion before the front door swung open.
Zath and Rose stumbled to a halt as the door locked out the winter chill behind them. They both gawked from Astraea to me.
