Page 59

Chapter Fifty-nine

Asteria

Oh, he thought he was so slick, didn’t he?

I watched Cyrus slip away, even while I battled the sirens before me. I refused to take an eye off him, not when I knew he would go after Calix at the first opportunity.

I snarled at the siren taking a swipe at me. Their claws were wickedly sharp, and while they didn’t fully pierce my scales, I thought with some time given to let them sink in, they might be able to do a bit of damage. I used my wing to throw them off, watching the creepy bird lady hit the wall with a crash.

Another flew at my face with a caw of anger, and I opened my mouth, preparing myself for the disgusting task. I grabbed her by the torso with my teeth, biting down hard. Weird, and absolutely disgusting, blue blood spurted as my teeth cut her in half, her wailing and flailing falling silent after a moment. I spit her out, wishing I could wash her taste from my tongue.

The rest of the sirens flew off with a horrifying screech, apparently smart enough to realize that taking on a dragon wasn’t their best bet. I didn’t like the idea of them attacking any Fae who lacked the protection of scales, but I had to believe our people could defend themselves. I had bigger problems to deal with.

Namely, one bastard Pegasus going after my mate.

Thankfully, Calix is twice the warrior Cyrus is, even on his bad days. I watched as Cyrus tried to sneak up on Calix with his sword drawn, but Calix spun on the spot, still agile and fast despite his injuries, and blocked the blade.

The sneers shared between the two would be enough to scare off most people, but I knew these two men too well to be frightened.

Calix was still recovering from the iron, despite his best efforts to pretend otherwise. His responses were a bit slower than normal, and he was favoring his right side.

On the other hand, Cyrus was faster and stronger than I remembered him being, but his lack of practice kept him from being as great a warrior as Calix. Where my mate moved instinctively, Cyrus struggled to keep up. Blood magic couldn’t make up for centuries spent honing the skill.

I was impressed that Calix was doing so well despite his injuries. My shoulder still throbbed in pain from the one stab wound I received, but Calix had used his entire body to block mine, taking iron everywhere. I tried to check in and see how he was feeling, but I tilted by head to the side as I realized I had no idea.

I could only feel the barest trace of him. I must have been too distracted to realize at first that the bond was being slowly muffled. But I recognized it all too well now. He was using the same tactic I had used to bury my feelings away.

He’d only weaken further if he didn’t tap into the extra strength offered by the bond. And there was only one reason he’d do such a thing.

To keep me from feeling his pain.

He had to be in agony still, and it broke my heart he wouldn’t use the boost from the bond just to protect me.

The two of them traded blows for several minutes before Cyrus’s wings unfurled, and he flew upward. Calix’s head cocked to the side, trying to figure out his opponent’s next move. But I recognized the gleam in Cyrus’s eyes. Like an animal backed into a corner, he was about to lash out.

Panic overcame me as I rushed forward—but not fast enough. Cyrus grabbed a vial from his pocket and downed it. I thought that would be it, but he pulled another out and drank it down, then another, and another… finishing off six of them in rapid succession.

Lightning crackled at his fingertips before running up to his arms, which were spread wide. A smile of complete bliss overtook his face, his eyes fluttering in pleasure as the blood magic seemed to take him over.

“Cyrus!” I screamed up to him, rushing in front of Calix and standing in between the two.

In my periphery, I could see our allies facing off with Cyrus’s men. Titan was fighting a soldier from Day to my left, while Harpina and Arien took on several Dusk soldiers at once on my right. Eryx and Baach had joined Altan and Zakat in facing Gravadain and his men, while Ndrita was in her dragon form, circling above and chasing off the sirens. I even spotted Rhidian, who was seemingly playing with a much smaller man who stood no chance at all against him.

Cyrus lowered to the ground, walking toward me with his sword lowered. “Asteria.”

“You don’t understand what you’re doing,” I pleaded desperately. “The blood magic is pushing the entirety of Adamah out of balance. If we fall to chaos, the god of blood will be released. He was imprisoned millennia ago to save the realms, and if you keep on this path, you’re going to release him!”

Cyrus laughed, throwing his head back as I ground my teeth, my fingers tightening around my sword in frustration.

“What an imagination you have, darling,” Cyrus mocked, shaking his head at me. “Once you’re back home, I’ll help you shake any silly notions Calix has put in your head right back out.”

The absolute gall of this man.

“ Calix —” I stressed, “didn’t tell me that. The gods did.” Cyrus’s face creased, anger flashing in his blue orbs, lightning crackling through them like a barely contained storm struggling to break free and lash out.

“The gods, ” he spat, snarling as he walked closer. “The gods are the ones who caused this. Their ridiculous rules limited and controlled our magic! But we are finally breaking free of them. Under my rule, magic will never be restricted again.”

His words had all the preachy ‘ I know best ’ attitude of the elders in Sonmathion, who’d talk down to you but wrap it up in a way that it was all for your benefit.

“Wouldn’t you like that, Asteria?” Cyrus cooed, that charm of his spilling forth as he slithered toward me. Trying to tempt me, as if his manipulations had ever worked on me. “Complete magical freedom.”

“More like complete oppression,” I argued back. “Your rule would see this world in chaos!”

“ This world needs chaos !” he shouted, panting from the force of his fury. “Don’t you see? What has the balance gotten us? Truly? Nothing but fading magic and lost power.”

Cyrus shook his head, his lip curling, but I could see the plea in his eyes as he looked at me.

“Cyrus, this isn’t you,” I begged, hoping against hope he wasn’t as lost as he seemed. “You’re a bastard, sure, and I will never ever forgive you for what you did. But this ?”

My arms raised as I spun in place, indicating the chaos surrounding us. Running battles were taking place all over the city. Flames met the tides, while a tornado ripped through a crowd of battling soldiers, and a flare of sunlight was lost amidst the light of the sun already bearing down on us from above. Fae and humans alike lay dead all over the city streets, lost because of one rouge god’s lust for power.

For blood .

And we were doing nothing but feeding him, I realized suddenly.

“This is not you. Cruach is using you.” I entreated, and something sparked in his eyes at my words, enough to push me on. “He is pushing you because the more blood you spill, the more blood magic you use, the more the balance tips toward chaos. It will free him if it goes too far. But we can stop it now. We can save this realm instead of damn it.”

Cyrus watched me carefully during my plea, but once I was done speaking, his eyes went right past me to Calix. My shoulders slumped in defeat. Whatever spark of something worth saving that had once existed within him had been snuffed out. There would be no reasoning with him.

I’d worked hard to see this battle objectively and not let my rage and fear for Cyrus’s past actions influence me too much. To work for the betterment of the realm and my people instead of letting my emotions lead me. It was the only reason I bothered to try talking to him. And now, that familiar rage as Cyrus so easily dismissed me, lit a fire within my heart.

“Is this what he’s told you? That I’ll damn this realm?” He laughed, and it echoed weirdly, making me straighten in alarm.

Lightning cracked overhead, and I watched in horror as he summoned more blood magic, more and more lightning surrounding him until his form was lost in the sea of blue bolts. It crackled and popped, the sound loud enough to drown out the battle around us.

I summoned my starlight and threw it right at him, but it did nothing but dissolve against the bolts. These were no regular bolts of lightning, but fueled by more blood magic than one man should ever hold.

The sky above us crackled, and I looked up in horror as a storm began to form. Ominous black clouds streaked with pink began to gather in a swirling cyclone, nearly blocking the sun entirely. It looked like night had fallen, and in the shadow of the sky, I could just make out Luna’s form up as it appeared above. She and Zhu now both occupying the sky in this weird in-between we’d found ourselves in, where the sun and moon were both visible at once.

“Cyrus!” I yelled, running forward with my sword drawn. Determined to end this while rage swirled at my fingertips in flecks of starlight.

“Asteria, no!” Calix yelled frantically, grabbing me by the waist and pulling me back against him. “If you try to go through that, you’ll be fried to a crisp. I will not let you die, you hear me?” he demanded with a growl, turning me to face him.

I nodded slowly, but looked up with a gulp, watching the sky. Calix began to gather his darkness around us, trying to block Cyrus off.

It was good timing, too, as the power around Cyrus suddenly exploded, his scream from the epicenter of the explosion echoing out around him.

“Down!” Titan screamed behind us, and Calix took me to the ground hard. A puff of air left my lips from the impact, and I struggled to look up to see what was happening.

Lightning hit at random all around us. Buildings were struck and caught fire immediately; bodies fell where they were standing when hit. The bolts were indiscriminate. Friend or foe didn’t matter.

I watched as Lord Darcel, one of Dusk’s lords that I used to spy on when he visited the court, was struck mid-battle, his sword falling from his hand where he had it raised to strike. He clutched his chest for a moment before his eyes glazed over, and he crumpled to the cobblestone. One of Cyrus’s own allies, the Lord of Asphodel and head of House Ceirin, now lay dead on a dirty city street.

Oh. Fuck.

Looking back toward Cyrus, I noticed a bolt headed right for us. I summoned all my magic, joining it to Calix’s to form a protective shield around us. Knowing we were strongest together. I jumped as the bolt struck the barrier, the tip sizzling as it tried to work through the magic.

Calix helped me up from the ground and to my feet, moving me out of the way of the lightning bolt. But I wouldn’t let go of the magic, determined to see if I could stop it.

The bolt continued to crack and pop, the blue streak fueled by an outrageous amount of blood magic, making me sweat as I tried to keep it at bay.

I looked up to find Cyrus watching me, his eyes glowing a bright blue to match his magic. It was eerie, and completely unnatural. His hair was tossed around by the storm, and I watched as he twirled a finger, making the dark clouds circle above him. Loud rumbles of thunder and blue streaks of lightning flashed within the clouds, and as the bolt I was facing sizzled out, he sent the force of his storm straight at Calix.

I grabbed Calix’s hand and lifted our joint palms up, our own storm of shadow and starlight meeting his in a crash of power that reverberated in the air around us. Then I let go of Calix’s hand.

“Hold it!” I told him, panting as I ran forward and held my magic up with his at the same time.

Cyrus looked surprised as I twirled my sword mid-run, heading straight at him. He didn’t want to hurt me, and I would use that advantage. No one else could get close to him like I could. He’d use his depraved magic to kill them, but me… he wanted me at his feet, and that would never happen if I was dead.

I raised my blade and struck down at him. He raised his sword to block the blow with a raised brow.

“I don’t want to fight you, Asteria,” he said seriously, that strange echo distorting his voice.

“Too bad,” I growled, rage running through my veins like blood at this point, sparking the fire inside me and making my skin shimmer with starlight. “You want to let Cruach use you, go ahead. I would personally never lower myself to being someone’s tool. It’s the same reason I refused to bed you, after all.”

His snarl was fierce as he flew at me furiously. Our blades crashed together, and I spun around him quickly, coming up behind him and aiming for his heart. But the damn blood magic had made him faster, and he turned too quickly, leaving me to stab his shoulder instead.

Cyrus paused in complete stun as I pulled my blade out. He reached down to touch the blood before bringing his fingers up before his eyes. He looked back at me with a hurt betrayal that he didn’t deserve to feel.

It only made me angrier, and I tried once more to stab him through the heart, but his blade hit mine harder than I expected, and my sword flew from my hand. He reached down like he was about to grab me by the scruff of the neck, and I rolled quickly out of the way, springing up and grabbing my sword on the way.

Calix came up behind me while Cyrus stalked forward, all of us poised on the edge as we braced to attack. My anticipation had my heart racing in my chest, until I was nearly shaking with it. But then… everything stopped.

A strange boom sounded through the sky, louder than anything I’d ever heard. Too loud to be the thunder that had been clapping above us. It sounded more like the sky had cracked in two. I couldn’t help but worry, and looked up to see what was going on. The unnaturally dark sky brightened to a deep blue, the pink clouds a beautiful contrast that only felt more surreal.

A giant burst of air exploded out in all directions from the sky itself, strong enough to throw everyone on the ground with its force. Some people flew into walls, and some into the other warriors around them. I flew backward, Calix beside me as we went about twenty feet before hitting the cobblestones. The pressure held us down for a moment before it rushed over us and away, and we were forced to pick ourselves up off the ground once it had lessened.

A strange, heavy feeling pressed on my soul, and I narrowed my eyes at the sky. It looked as if… something was getting closer. Something was falling. It looked almost like fire, but—I gasped, my heart in my throat as I realized what in the Otherworld was happening.

“Zhu!” I screamed in agony, watching my friend and guardian as he plummeted quickly through the sky, lighting up the world around him as he fell in a ball of fire. An agonized scream came from higher in the sky, and I knew Luna was awake and feeling the pain of what was happening.

My necklace hummed around my neck, and I knew with a sudden certainty exactly what was going on, even as the entire battlefield came to an abrupt pause, watching the sun fall from the sky in dramatic fashion that I was sure none of us could have ever imagined.

Cyrus had pushed it too far.

The balance had shifted.

Chaos was here.

And now, Celesterra would pay the price.

Starting with the loss of the sun.

As Zhu fell, the sky above him darkened further and further. His light falling with him and leaving the sky desolate from his bright, fiery light.

I watched in stunned horror, my hand going to my throat as helpless loss overtook me. The implications of everything that just happened were too much to contemplate.

We had lost.

Looking down briefly, I realized that Cyrus had fled. His men were retreating, using the distraction above to disappear. But it didn’t matter. Nothing did.

Not when we failed to stop chaos from overtaking everything.

My necklace tingled once more, and a bit of hope filled my soul.

It wasn’t all lost, not quite. Cruach was yet to be freed, meaning we still had time, but…

As I watched Zhu crash to the ground in a flaming ball of death for anyone who might have been below, I didn’t know how we could fix this .

The ground shook from the impact, but an agonized moan from behind me had me whipping around quickly, falling to my knees beside my mate as he crashed to the ground, too.

“Calix?” I asked frantically, my hands flapping uselessly around him, trying to see what was wrong with him.

“Asteria…” he whispered weakly, trying to reach a hand up to touch my cheek, but seemingly lost his strength halfway there, his hand crashing back down. “Love… you... réalta.”

His eyes fluttered closed, and I immediately grabbed his shoulders, shaking him. “Calix! Calix, please!”

The bond went silent. I could feel his presence at the other end, but it was muffled somehow, like he was very far away, and fading more by the moment. Agony ripped me apart as I felt his distance, leaving me cold and empty in the wake of it.

“Calix!” I sobbed, trying to hold my tears in, but it was no use. Panic and pain blended together into one. “Please, I—” I couldn’t help but get choked up. Everything I hadn’t said for fear of losing him crowded in my throat. What was the point of it all if I lost him to my own damn failure?

“I—I love you, my dorchadas ,” I whispered, caressing his beautiful face, wishing those lilac eyes would open once more and show me a beautiful Aurora. I needed him to wake, to be with me . I had no interest in living an immortal lifetime without him by my side.

But no amount of shaking him changed what was. He was slipping away. Chaos, I realized, sucked away magic. Magic he needed to fight the iron in his blood. My heart felt like it crumbled to pieces in that moment.

My failure could cost Calix his life.

It wasn’t someone else I had to worry about taking Calix from me; it was my own damn fault. And now, I could lose him before he ever heard the words, the ones he deserved to hear more than any other after the over four-hundred-year wait for me.

He had to know how much I loved him, more than I had ever loved another, more than there were stars in the sky. The force of it sometimes took my breath away. So new and precious, terrifying and exhilarating, peaceful and sensational. He was… everything .

I looked up from my ailing mate to the dark black sky. The light had gone out from the world, and my own light—my darkness who let me shine—was equally absent.

A scream of rage left my lips, agony filling my soul and smoke billowing from my mouth as starlight blasted from me in a storm of sparkling light that lit the world behind my closed eyes. I’d tried to keep myself contained so my chaotic emotions wouldn’t lead to chaos. Well, chaos was fucking here anyway.

I couldn’t help the sob that left my lips then, one of rage and pain and fear. My mixed-up emotions were so powerful that I couldn’t even begin to sort them out, nor did I care to. Other Fae began to crash to their knees, their own magic weakened. But my attention was firmly on the man in front of me.

I grabbed my necklace in one hand and cupped Calix’s cheek with the other, running my fingers across that gorgeous face. I doubled over, crying into his chest as I tried to come to terms with what had happened.

Night now reigned , while the king who ruled it was fading before my eyes.

Chaos now reigned , the balance teetering too far over the line.

And I was left to reign alone, in a realm of ash and darkness.

I lifted my head and screamed at the skies once more, my soul undergoing a whole new torture as my awareness of Calix’s presence faded into mist. I swore at the Otherworld, the gods themselves—whoever might hear me, so they would know they could not take him.

I couldn’t go back to a life lived alone and empty, struggling through the days as rage ate me from the inside. Calix was life . Light and darkness, balance and chaos. The other half of my soul. And I could feel the aching emptiness of his half like a missing limb. My screams didn’t stop, my heart tearing apart as my soul cried out for mercy.

Someone tried to pull me back, but I lashed out with sharp claws, fangs lengthening as I growled deeply. I refused to be parted from him. I curled over him completely, screaming and sobbing into his chest. All the pent-up emotions I’d tried to control overwhelming me as the grief and pain choked me from within.

How did one go on with their soul ripped in half? With their heart crushed to dust? It was unthinkable. I’d rather they leave me here to die than face a life without him. I had no interest in being anywhere without him, and I tugged hard on the bond, desperately hoping, praying… for anything .

The echoing emptiness I found was haunting, and I almost stopped for fear of what I’d discover. But I pulled and tugged and searched, and finally found a spark of light at the end of the tunnel.

A faint feeling, like a ghost caressing my cheek, stirred within the bond.

Calix .

It wasn’t much, but it was him. He was still there. Still holding on.

And he’d never forgive me if I sat here and gave up. On him. On the world.

He’d fought and fought for this realm, for me, and I’d be damned if I let it all fade into chaos without doing anything to stop it on my watch. He deserved better than that.

I sat up, straightening and wiping my still-falling tears away. My eyes flared a sparkling silver with my resolve. I would not accept this.

I would not lose Calix.

I would not lose Zhu.

I would not lose the magic of this world.

I would not fail again.

Titan came running, fear stark on his face at the scene before him, but he stopped short with one look at my expression.

“Gather the troops and get healers for the king immediately,” I ordered, my voice hoarse from screaming and tears still tracking my cheeks. I forced myself to stand, despite how much my knees wanted to buckle.

“We have a lot of work to do,” I told him. I gathered myself for a moment, looking at Calix, the dark sky, the battlefield of a city we stood in. My expression was surely as dead as my voice as I continued.

“Welcome to a world in chaos.”