Page 151 of The Stars are Dying

I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

Drystan’s thinning patience was audible as he stood abruptly. I scanned each key over and over with growing rage and frustration at what they represented.

It had all been fornothing.

The keys were whole, but each one kept their serrated breaking points, ready to split again and be cast out for the next Libertatem. A never-ending cycle of puzzles and trials.

The king was right. There would always only be one winner.

Him.

I picked up one key, shaking with the desire to throw it while I frantically tried to reassess how to end him. And Drystan. It had to end with Nightsdeath.

As I calculated how to fight or escape Drystan, my fingers flexed over the key. My eyes traced it carefully, over and over, until it became soothing…hypnotic. But every now and then the trance would stumble…because something about the intricate design wasn’t right.

It didn’t perfectly match.

Grazing the piece with extra detail on its design, I blinked at the shimmer. My first instinct was to conclude it was my own desperate conjuring forsomething, but against my skin it gave off the faintest tingle that crawled up my arm and awakened my mind.

“Puzzles,” I breathed. Glancing down at the other keys, I let go of an incredulous laugh.

“I’ve never been fond of them myself,” Drystan drawled.

I laughed again, a sound to mock him. Them. Everyone. I didn’t hesitate with the theory that erupted in my mind. Drawing my arm up, I smashed the key to the ground, wincing at the loud crack that vibrated like power colliding through the space.

“What are you—?”

The next key plummeted from my hand to the ground, then the next, over and over, until all five keys were fragments around me. I stood smiling with adrenaline as I scanned them all like a scattered jigsaw.

“You had it from the start,” I said wickedly. I wanted to laugh with irony in the king’s face. “Every time you had it.”

There was never a sixth key. There had always only been one.

One hidden between five.

I found the single piece from each key I was looking for, and this time when they snapped together, they fused with a metallic glowing silver.

Piece by piece.

Five of them.

Until the final one slipped into place, and I had to shield my eyes from the blast of power. When it didn’t stop, I opened my eyes to watch the brilliant flare expelling from the new key as it became whole. My hair whipped around me, and only then did I notice the glittering silver strands. The Starlight Matter that changed my appearance must have counteracted with whatever energy was coursing through me now. My blood roared to life, skin torching, and I marveled thatIwas glowing. Light peeked out from the cuts in my leathers and the cuffs of my sleeves. It was as if my markings were flaring in answer to the key I held.

It grew, becoming like a small, decorative metal staff. Each end was weaved with metal filigree, and a purple stone was protected in a beautiful cage. Holding it horizontally, I marveled at the length as if it balanced two halves of a beating heart. Yet somehow I knew that while this was the true form of the star-maiden’s key, it was not the only weapon—or tool—it could become.

The power in the air sucked back into itself all at once, and I remembered I was still breathing. I knew the key would open the grand doors if I could will its transformation, but I didn’t head for it. I met eyes with the prince, who stared at me for the first time in awe, like he’d forgotten everything before this moment and was gawking not just at the key, but me.

Time began to tick in my ears. I had a choice. I could discover so much by visiting the God of Dusk and the Goddess of Dawn, everything I had been searching—longing—for my whole life. But my destination was set. My mind was already made up.

“Astraea, you can’t go to him.”

“Did you order the harm on him?” I asked, surprised by my own lethal calm.

He didn’t respond.

My palm heated around the key.

“You don’t know how to use that. It could kill you as easily as it could me right now. Let me help you.”

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