There was only one face, one name, that I pictured endlessly in my thoughts.
Nyte had come for me. Had he been real?
Believing he was gave me the strength to rise.
He’d come back to me.
My wings splayed, ready to take me to the skies, but my consciousness was slipping.
I had to make it back to him.
My wings carried me, but more strenuous than the ache of moving my body was fighting against my mind shutting down. I was so tired. My hand clamped tightly over the wound Auster inflicted, and all that kept my wings beating hard was my panic that I could be dying. As soon as Nyte’s blood reached my heart… my death would be permanent this time.
I’d slain my monster and still he won. Determined to drag me to hell right behind him.
The clouds were thick and wet, still shedding their sorrow to the land with hard rainfall.
My body was so heavy.So terribly heavy.
Nyte. Nyte. Nyte.
My eternal night.
He was all around me. I was all around him. I drifted through the endless night and brilliant stars. Then I was falling through it.
24Nyte
I mounted Eltanin, and we took to the skies as quickly as we could, following Astraea from the temple, yet she’d gained an impossible distance away from us so fast and I knew then she had to have used the void for some reason.
Desperation to reach her pounded through my blood. Eltanin flew fast and mighty, a stroke of shadow through the night storm that broke. We cut through the rain that fell mercilessly. Astraea was still fighting; the echoes of her anguish and rage pulsed through me.
Then the world stood still. My next breath held as I straightened at the phantom eruption of pain in my side.
Astraea’s pain.
A roar of wrath and vengeance tore through me and Eltanin. I leaned forward as the dragon flewfaster.
“No,” I breathed. Because it wasn’t just any mortal wound.
That bastard wasn’t getting to take her from me again.
I didn’t know how far we’d flown as I followed our bond to her. She was close now.
So close.
I found her with a strike of terror in my soul.
Astraea plummeted through the air. I scanned around as if something had struck her, but Auster wasn’t in the skies. I reared up on Eltanin.
“Fly!” I yelled. I didn’t think he could go any faster, but Eltanin did, and we dived to catch our falling star
She was too far away. Falling too fast.She is out of my reach.
The taunts circled my mind as the rain slashed my skin and blurred my vision.
“Come on,” I snarled.
She was so. Fucking. Close.
