“Is Eris here, by the way?” I asked, looking between them. The silence that met my question had me turning to Priscilla. “Pris?”
“She…” Priscilla trailed off for a moment, sighing deeply. “She needed some time alone to think about everything that happened. Once she learned what Emmie had done, she kind of lost it. Harpina helped find her a place in the resistance where she could work out some of her aggression.”
I couldn’t say I blamed her, but I mourned her presence. Maybe she would have understood the fundamental shift I faced; one little moment changing everything you thought you knew.
Ilta and Priscilla ushered me into the room and took up sentinel positions on either side of me on the sofa. I looked around my star-themed room with a new appreciation. I’d always loved the stars, and this room had immediately spoken to me.
Now, I finally knew why.
“Asteria, what in the Otherworld happened?” Priscilla whispered, a fierceness in her eyes she often banked. I knew she had it within her to have survived Dusk as she had, but to see it in her eyes on my behalf left me a bit choked up.
After all we’d experienced together, a tight bond had grown between Priscilla and me. To see her worried about me now, even with the new points of my ears, soothed a fear I didn’t even realize I’d had. That she might reject me now that I was Fae.
Silly, maybe, as she’d grown close with the Fae here in Night just as I had. She’d been taken into the little family we’d joined here and accepted them in turn, but fear didn’t understand logic.
I tried to open my mouth and tell her everything, but the words caught in my throat. I tried once more, before pressing my lips together, frustrated tears rising in my eyes. Arms came around me from both sides, the two blondes holding me through the storm as I let all the pain out.
The fear I’d felt being back in Cyrus’s clutches. The worry over the unknown fates of those I loved. Fear of the unknown, now that I was something else entirely. Resentment for all I’d suffered needlessly. And the suffocating feeling of loss for a humanity that was never mine to begin with was a grief I couldn’t shake. So many feelings that had nowhere to go except spilling out of my eyes in tears and ripping from my throat in horrid gasps.
That grief was the most overwhelming. The loss of who I thought I was. The person I’d built myself to be was so largely based on my being human that I had no idea who I was now. Even my parents weren’t real, had never been truly mine at all. How did I move on from such a crushing blow to my veryself?
Grief was a wretched beast. It had me within its jaws, gnawing on my bones and spilling my blood as it tore into my marrow.
When I finally cried myself out, I lifted my head and met Priscilla’s warm brown eyes, then shifted to meet the sweet blue of Ilta’s. Both worried, but here for me, no matter what. Human, Fae, it didn’t matter. And I soaked in that acceptance greedily. It was a ballast in a storm after the pain of Emmie’s betrayal.
“I’m sure Calix told you what happened in Sunset?” I asked quietly, and both nodded in confirmation.
“He only came back here because Titan forced him to. They had to come up with a good plan to get into Dusk and ensure they could get you out. Kian came through, thankfully, and I demanded Calix bring you back to us.” Priscilla sniffed, and I gave her an amused smile, wishing I had seen that. Ilta managed a quiet giggle beside me.
“When he got there, Cyrus wasn’t willing to let me go without a fight. He—” I gulped, and soft hands landed on my back, rubbing as I tried to summon the words. “He didn’t want anyone else to have me if he couldn’t, so he took measures to ensure it. He slit my throat.”
The gasps that reached my ears were expected, but I’d closed my eyes against the words, remembering the feeling of my blood leaking out, my body going cold, of death welcoming me into its embrace—until the magic broke through.
“While I was bleeding out, the cage holding my magic in finally broke. I’ve apparently always been Fae, but had somehow been hidden as a human all my life.” I admitted softly. “I have no idea how, though Calix claims to have some idea.”
“Who would do that?” Ilta shook her head, confusion in every word. “Howwould someone do that?”
“I have no idea.” I sank back into the sofa, the soft cushions greeting me and letting me sink into them pleasantly.
We tossed ideas back and forth for the better part of an hour before tiredness overcame me, the exhaustive experience and travel home finally catching up to me now that I was safe and comfortable.
It was only through their urging that I found myself guided to my bed and not falling asleep on the sofa. They helped me change, promising to update Delia and Lilith for me, but admitted it was likely the two would just be ambushing me first thing in the morning. I let out a light laugh, nodding in agreement. No one would be able to hold them at bay long.
I fell to sleep, my worries forgotten for the moment, as Ilta sang softly and Priscilla brushed my hair back, the warm glow of friendship surrounding me in a way I’d never have expected for myself. Despite Emmie’s betrayal, I couldn’t help but be thankful that she’d broken down my walls a bit, nonetheless. I wouldn’t have experienced this without it.
My dreams found Luna waiting for me, and I let myself breathe in the deep, dark night as I spun around her. I let my skin light up—all the worries of my waking world so far away when I was here, I could merely enjoy the starlight beneath my skin as it came forth—lighting the skies around me.
Luna, usually so quiet, let out a roar of joy. I laughed, letting her joy at my power feed my own as I danced. Until the darkness grew deeper, and I gasped as I turned toward it.
It wasn’t mere darkness that greeted me tonight. Now, within my very dreams, the darkness hovered for a moment, reaching toward me, and slipped right past where the barrier usually kept us apart. As the fingers of darkness passed through, they slowly revealed actual flesh and blood fingers, then a hand, an arm, until finally… Calix stood before me, sheathed in shadows that writhed and danced around him like a halo.
“Asteria,” he breathed, just as shocked as I was in that moment.
Of course.The darkness, it had been him all along. Somehow, the mate bond, buried and suppressed by the magic as it was, had still found a way to connect us across the ether. Our bond stronger than even the strongest of magic.
But I was by no means ready, and as he took a single step toward me, I gasped, my eyes shooting open.
I was disoriented, unsure of where I was when the stars on my ceiling looked so like those in my dreams. But a glance around my room confirmed I had somehow woken myself up.
