“You must go with the Star Queen and Night King. They will be leading this war, and we must follow,” Tieran insisted, eyebrows rising. “Sometimes, being a ruler means knowing when to take charge, and when to step back. There is just as delicate a balance to ruling as there is to all of Celesterra.”
“What do you want me to do?” Zakat asked quietly, eyes riveted on his father.
“You represent Sunset, and you support the queen,” Tieran told him, a smile beginning to peek out. “Everything else will follow.”
Zakat turned to me with a smirk, “Well then, Star Queen.” He bowed with a flourish. “It seems I’m at your command.”
I gulped, looking quickly at Calix before I was able to wrangle my wild emotions into a small box inside me. I straightened my shoulders.
I could do this. Iwould.
Just because everything seemed to be spinning wildly around me didn’t mean I couldn’t take control of it.
After all, we’d gone from having no allies outside of Night to having half of Day already secured behind me, and now part of Sunrise and the majority of Sunset were with us.
We had much better odds now.
There was only one thing left to do.
It was time to go meet the gods.
Chapter Thirty-two
Arien
Flying around the palace,I let out a burst of fire that had the forces surrounding it scrambling back.
On our return to Day, we’d sent word to all of our allies, and they were now on their way to Avalon. Unfortunately, it was impossible to hide what was going on. Word got out quickly, and forces loyal to my father had now surrounded the palace with the intent of taking it back in his name.
Mother was inside, working hard at putting together speeches and plans for what was to come. It was my responsibility to put this movement down quickly, and with force.
The people of Day needed to have confidence in Asteria as their queen to turn against Aelius. Winning battles in her name could only help in that regard.
I’d summoned those loyal to me within the palace, and they now made their way to me so we could go out to meet those loyal to my father. I didn’t think our palace had ever seen battle at its gates before, nor had Day ever split in half the way it was now doing.
I knew this only fed more into the chaos that was encroaching on our lands, but unfortunately, the only way out was through. We had to embrace a bit of chaos to ultimately get back to balance.
It was always darkest before the dawn.
But thankfully, we had a star to light the way.
I smiled, which I knew looked more like a snarl in my dragon form, but the thought of Asteria sitting on the throne of Day, crowned and ruling, was one I had waited my entire life for.
It may look different now than we’d expected, with Asteria mated to Calix, but I believed her when she said she’d find a way. Mother might think her naive, but Mother, despite all her actions to help Asteria, was more rooted in tradition than she’d admit. This was never about changing the order of things; it was always about protecting her child.
And those were two very different things.
I knew after meeting Asteria that she’d never accept the status quo. I couldn’t blame her one bit for it either. Had I grown up as a slave instead of a prince, I can only imagine how pissed I would be.
I had to admit that since actually meeting her, seeing the pain lining her face and echoing in her words, I had been thinking quite a lot about the humans. I wanted to destroy Cyrus for what he did to my twin sister.
But weren’t there brothers out there just as angry overtheirsisters being enslaved?
Was there one out there who wanted to killme?
I had never mistreated our slaves. I’d grown up knowing my sister was hidden as a human, so I’d felt a certain amount of guilt about it. Which had only been compounded now. Every slave I passed in the hall, I wondered about their life, wondered if my family had ever mistreated them, and wondered if they had dreams as big as Asteria’s.
And we had a chance to free them all now.
