1
KIERAN
Death was supposedto be quieter than this.
Still. Soft. Maybe even merciful if I was lucky. Instead, pain screamed through my being. All my nerves were flayed raw, pain grinding down to the bone and clawing through my marrow until I was locked inside a shell I couldn’t escape.
My throat burned, every breath hot and ragged. Each heartbeat stuttered, my mind replaying the singular cut my father opened across my throat as if time itself wanted to haunt me with it.
Time slowed, every second stretched with agonizing pain. In that void, temptation whispered for me to let go: to end it, to surrender, to stop fighting. Yet something unseen tugged at me, sharp and insistent, demanding I remember my promise–my reason to stay. The prophecy, my men, and the world we were just beginning to change.
My body might have been broken, but I wasn’t finished. Not in the slightest.
Power lingered in the lethal wound my own dagger left in the hollow of my neck, humming as the magic surged inward and coursed through me. Unfortunately for my father, who wanted to end me, this dagger was the symbol of a legacy and strengthetched into my being by the Star Keepers before me. It wouldn’t let me give up on our collective hopes and dreams. It might have been the knife that cut me, but it was also the knife that held a power only I could wield.
My limbs were numb, yet I still felt it deep within: a hot pulse radiating from the wound, pushing through my veins one heartbeat at a time. The power surged through me and split me open from within, dragging strength out of places I hadn’t known existed to mend my wounds.
It was like being broken and rebuilt in the same breath—reinforced with a mettle I only felt sparingly at times before this. Now it was like nothing else existed outside of it.
My heartbeat filled my ears until it was all I could hear, echoing and whooshing until other pulses beat in tandem alongside it as the voices of the Star Keepers rose through my core. Their strength steadied my scattered mind that struggled to hold onto the life slipping through my fingers. It rushed through my body to pool at the torn edges of my throat, warmth saturating the area until the jagged skin began to knit together slowly.
Rise, Keeper. Your work is not yet complete.
The voices swept through my mind like wind through a canyon, one after another.
I felt every stitch of magic weaving itself through the mess of my throat. Cartilage snapping into place as it reformed. The wet sound of muscle knitting. And beyond the pain, I sawthem. The Star Keepers of the past flared behind my eyes, their joint constellations alive for a singular heartbeat. Each poured strength into me before fading from my mind’s view.
For one final moment, the pain became blinding just before the air tore back into my lungs. Sensation returned to my limbs as my body convulsed. My chest heaved with my gasps for the precious air I’d been deprived of.Dizziness hit hard as my eyesflew open, the world around me suddenly filled with smoke and the clash of a battle still raging.
Angels flew through the sky around us still, like I hadn’t missed a single moment of the battle. Gabe’s arms were still clamped tightly around me, crushing my back to his chest, just as they had when I went limp in his hold and the light slipped away from me.
How long had I been out?
I tilted my head back, my vision swimming, and found him staring down at me, his skin as pale as the ghost it seemed he thought I was.
“Little Star,” he rasped out in a gasp. “You died. You fuckingdied.” His chest heaved against my back with every word, like he suddenly forgot how to breathe and speak simultaneously. “I felt you go limp, lifeless. Don’t you ever do that to me again.”
“I…” I trailed off, blinking up at him as my hand came up to feel the thin line of a scar at my neck. “I don’t…” My words failed me as I grasped at the details of the world around us, trying to make sense of what just happened.
Did I truly die? Did the Star Keeper magic from my own dagger heal me?
My vision blurred as I dragged my gaze from Gabe, smoke stinging my eyes as I squinted. The others were around us, holding the line for defenses, it seemed.
A shadow serpent writhed at Ronan’s side, his body braced to strike. Steele stood just beyond him, his bloodied sword steady in his grip and his silver eyes locked on the fight around us in the sky and on the ground. Bastian prowled at the edge of my vision, crimson blood magic sparking faintly across his hands. Overhead, Niz’s wings beat a steady thunder that matched my heartbeat.
Together, they held the line against the chaos, like a true unit.
My chest heaved as it all came crashing back in. Despite Gabe’s grounding arms, my body trembled out of control. My father truly tried to kill me. Tears pricked at my eyes as I remembered his awful last words.
Now you can join your mother. It’s a fitting end, as you were both such disappointments to me.
It’s one thing to know my father hated me, but it’s a whole other issue to compartmentalize and process him actually slicing a dagger through my throat.
Every jagged breath lifted my chest and filled my lungs. I had drifted in that place between life and death. Away from my guys and the chance to keep the stars from falling and killing the world.
It could have all been gone in that one flash.
“Hey, Little Star, look at me,” Gabe crooned, tightening his arms around my shaking frame. “You’re here. I’ve got you.”
