A heptagram.

In the silence stretched thickly between them, Sebastian had the time to recognize the symbol. He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, following the intricately branded lines carved into Astrid's forehead by an unseen hand.

It was a seven-pointed star; the symmetrical lines delicate and narrow, each point of it ending in a sharp spear that curled inwards into the thin skin between Astrid's brow. A symbol to both alchemists and Soleitian priestesses, Sebastian recalled from his studious youth with Crazy Ol' Norham.

The mark was a heptagram.

For alchemists, the seven points of the star referred to the seven alchemical substances: fire, water, air, earth, sulphur, salt, and mercury. It stood for scientific discovery, inventions, natural ways of performing magic inside the boundaries of a logical world. Similar to the creation of the Iced Guards' drumsticks that splashed rainbows into the sky and rained down hidden messages atop the fortress of Halorium.

To the Soleitian priestesses, however, the heptagram symbolized protection against spiritual possession, against acts of elemental evil. Similar to alchemists, the seven vertices pointed to the elements of the seven Elementi realms. These stars decorated the Elementi Temples in Soleita; each priestess upon their oath had the mark branded onto their flesh. Since priestesses opened their minds to the messages of spirits, the heptragram warded off the more demonic souls of the Abyss from clouding their bodies and minds.

It was meant to protect them against elemental deception.

Gaia has kissed her brow.

That was what the vyre had told Sebastian: the Goddess of Spirit had kissed her brow. Despite those more intimate words, it did not sound like a good thing. Less like the searing kiss he and Astrid had shared in that lake, and more like the rumored bites of Hued Widows in the fire realm of Demue. Their sticky, delicate webs provided beautiful mirages of colors amidst the vast, golden desert landscape, but to become trapped in one would mean instant paralysis.

Her lies curse your fate.

Sebastian shook his head.

Besides, when had the goddess of Eyelesene found time to visit Astrid to bestow that mark upon her?

Sebastian reached out his longest finger towards Astrid's face to feel the raised, reddened ridges of the star; he swiftly thought better of it. Especially since he couldn't be certain Astrid actually slept. Though her spine rested against the rotted trunk of a fallen tree with eyes closed, the muscles of her face were far too pinched to have been restful in slumber.

As if to prove this point, Astrid flourished a fist at him. "You are staring at me. Again. It is rather unnerving."

Instead of denying it, he sighed and said, "Did your elemental reserves replenish yet?"

She kept her eyes firmly shut, but her frown spoke volumes. "I kept us cloaked by threads of Darkness for the past hour. Not to mention, I am cursed. Remember? Frankly, it's a miracle I haven't died yet. Just keep seeking out Spirits' threads, Seabass, and let me know if you sense any Elementi; I still do not trust you with a knife."

He huffed at that, a sound that morphed into—"Seabass?" Sebastian frowned. "What happened to Bash?"

"That boy disappeared when he needlessly yanked a dagger from a dying creature." She glanced at him, lips twitching despite her cold, angry glare. "Besides, it is far easier to not make another whirlwind portal if I think of you as a floppy fish."

"Oh." Sebastian felt his cheeks warm. "You know, I don't much like fish, either."

A short laugh puffed out of her.

Sebastian grinned to himself when she muttered something that sounded like, "Ridiculous ducking fisherman," under her breath. His confidence raised, although that probably had more to do with the fact that, with her eyes closed, he didn't have to meet her bright, cerulean gaze.

Cerulean, he could hear her scoff at his use of the flouncy word, in romance novels, that word would only come once the man lost himself in his lover's eyes after tossing her onto his—

He cleared his throat. "That vyre-pup," he began, "when it spoke to me, it told me to sever its threads."

As he had hoped, one of her eyes peeped open. "Is this your peace offering?"

"No." He matched her cycloptic accusatory stare. "I'm sharing it because I trust you. We're a team, remember?" When he shifted closer, her spine straightened. "I don't want to be in a battle of secrets with you, Astrid."

"Shall it be a battle of secrets between you and I?" Those were some of the last words Astrid had spoken to him since the incident with the vyre. It was a battle he had no intention of winning let alone participating in it.

Besides, he had always been terrible at keeping secrets. Abel claimed it was because he lacked a presentable poker-face.

Judging by the tightening of her mouth, Astrid remembered the words, too, and didn't much appreciate him using them against her. The offense caused Astrid to open her other eye. She watched him for a short moment, causing Sebastian's intestines to twist and knot, but then she nodded. Albeit a curt one.

At least it was something less hostile than her preferred biting tone that forced distance between them.

He slid through the offered opening before she barred him from it. "The vyre also mentioned something about that mark on your head. That's what it said to me. She said you had been kissed by a goddess."

Her hands curled into fists. "Gaia." For a few seconds, she watched her fingers until they unfurled once more and stretched across her knees with stark knuckles. "I wouldn't have called it a kiss, per se."

"That's what I thought!"

The look she twisted his way was one of annoyance well-mixed with satire. "Jealous of celestial affairs, Seabass?"

She made it so difficult to stay focused against her obvious deterrents. "Well, I can hardly battle a goddess for your love."

Only after her jaw gaped did Sebastian feel the heat of embarrassment spread from his toes to his traitorous cheeks. "I only meant I've read about that symbol. It's a heptagram: religiously used to ward off evil, not to proclaim adoration." He shook his head again, hair flopping against his troublesome, thick skull.

The smirk on her lips stretched.

"Quit distracting me; tell me what happened." He nudged her ankle with his foot. "Please. Otherwise, I'll be inclined to agree with the fae wolf about your supposed tryst with the goddess of spirits."

"Speaking of spirits," she said, "are you still watching for those threads?"

"Of course." Sebastian dared to keep his attention on her since the closest Spirit threads he could sense came from a few small woodland creatures scampering about in the trees. "You can trust me."

Like Astrid understood the double-meaning behind those words, her amusement sobered. It seeped from her face only to be replaced by creeping anxieties of the night. "It was simply a dream—" She gestured to her forehead with a short jab of her hand—"until it wasn't."

"So, like a vision?"

"You're the one related to a priestess."

Sebastian sat, waited, and allowed the silence to stretch between them. It acted like its own tether, dragging her shoulders down from around her ears, angling them slightly to the right, closer to him. He kept his breaths even, fingers fidgeting in his lap. Spending the past days and nights with Astrid had allowed Sebastian to begin learning the inner intricacies of her patterns. They worked like a boat out on the seas. Or, rather, like the ocean itself with Bash being the boat upon her. He could guide himself around her, but the waters held ultimate control. She could sink him or bring him to shore.

Astrid desired control, and she must believe she had it.

Sure enough, she moved first, breaking their battle of silent wills. She curled her hands around her elbows like a warrior's shield. "In the dream, Gaia told me she had been cast as the realms' villain." Her next breath came out in a hiss. "She wanted me to—join her."

He recognized the vulnerability now. "You're not a villain, As."

"Ass?" It was cute when her pert nose crinkled. "Did you just refer to me as a crude buttocks?"

Oh, gods. Gaia should curse his ability for speech. He managed to mutter, "By the Scribes," but a small grin escaped his awkward mortification. "My point being—" Sebastian looked at her pointedly in reprimand for deterring him again—"you are anything but evil."

And like the ocean, her wave pivoted with the wind of his words, washing over her expression in dread of being dragged beneath its current. "You do not know that."

"I do." His hand found hers, stretched halfway between them, as if her fingers had sought him out as well. "Your actions are selfless. They protect instead of destroy—" her nails dug into his skin as she gripped his palm—"You speak with honesty even if brutally so."

She retreated then, but he pulled her back. His eyes met her own. The threads of her Spirit blared from her lidded, frozen gaze and collided with his own, forcing his heart into his throat.

"Those qualities describe everything a villain in every story I've ever read is not."

Her knees held her up though her lips quivered. "I thought you didn't read fiction novels."

"You speak of them often enough." He offered her a small, sheepish grin. "I'm nothing if not curious."

"Why, Bash!" She shoved him in the chest. "Are you saying you stole some of my raunchy romance books?"

"Anyways—" he cleared his throat and pinched her thumb to hinder her glee—"if the Tale of Earth's Deceit holds any truth, then Gaia was the innocent one; the only sibling Goddess Elayn gifted instead of cursed."

"However, let's not forget it was Gaia who cursed my family."

"True, but—" Sebastian kept his next words gentle—"not without some justifiable reason."

Astrid exhaled heavily. "Perhaps it was only a dream, then."

Sebastian gestured to her face. "Except, there's that, which provides undeniable physical proof of—" he frowned, brows pinching—"well, something."

"Oh. Yes." She gripped his hand again before releasing her hold and pulling her knees to her chest. "I am doubly cursed, it seems." The crease between her eyebrows furrowed, slicing a wrinkled line through Gaia's mark. "Twice by the same goddess. Such remarkable friends I seem to attract."

The snorting laugh that scoffed beneath her breath was anything but her true one. It sounded so self-deprecating that a rising sense of hopeless protection swamped him so thoroughly that he gasped for breath when his ankle hooked around her own, smaller one. When she turned to appraise him, the color of her eyes drowned his senses, washing over his brain, muting all rational thoughts of portals, cursed lakes, quills and threads—

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Her tone was nearly as breathless as his lungs.

"You attracted me."

One of her thin brows shifted like a hinge swinging open, and then their legs tangled together like a reforged lock, their noses nearly touching like fingers on a knob forbidden to be twisted. It should not be opened. Somewhere, lost in his muddled thoughts, Sebastian knew that, but her quick, unsteady breaths across his lips made his intestines restless for a bit of recklessness.

With her, he found he could be brave enough to wish for it.

Her hands landed on his shoulders, fingers tight, twisting into his dirty, sleeveless shirt. "Bash."

He felt each whispered letter of his name in tiny tremors against his mouth.

"You do not love me."

Half-dazed, Sebastian found the dip in her waist and pulled her closer. "What?"

Their lips brushed once, a sigh caught between them. "Please," she hushed, "tell me you do not. You cannot."

His heart beat to her soul's rhythm, the cadence of Astrid's plea rising and falling along a similar line Davina had once given to him. A warning to not care for her daughter, one he had failed miserably at heeding. Because he was a slave to kindness; her kindness. Astrid's thigh trembled between his own, bright eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks with her raspy breaths. The tip of his thumb shook as he swept it across the seam of her lips as if his response lay trapped behind them.

Together, they pressed closer.

"I do not—" his short breaths came out in ragged words—"love you—" but the uncertainty of his answer would remain unfinished, suspended between them, his not-yet lost in the small, surrendering sound she made before she crushed her lips against his own.

This time, the elements remained docile, tamed, but the frantic way their bodies sought out each other caused an eruption warm enough for the two of them. Her pulse thrummed wildly against his fingers where they pressed against her neck beneath her earlobe, a flame flickering into an inferno capable of bringing him to light. She melted into him, half-sprawled across his lap in such a way that some hidden beast within his thudding chest awakened and growled as if to ward off any other predatory prospects.

Sebastian thought the growl must have escaped him because Astrid dug her fingers into the curl of his neck, a wondrous, soft mewl tickling his tongue and causing his veins to squeeze and cinch.

She pulled back with a gasp. "Seabass!" It sounded like a forgotten swear. "Stop. We can't—I cannot—!" But both of her arms looped around his neck in contradiction; her face sunk into the warm spot between his neck and shoulder with a strangled whimper. Her lips smoothed over the sensitive skin there. "I am sorry."

Pleasant shivers crawled down his spine. His palm found the back of her head. He held her to him, sucking down a deep breath to cool the consuming, disorientating fire she had stoked inside his blood. It was lucky the sun had begun to set, diminishing the heat of the day. A crisp breeze needled its way between them.

He spoke into the mussed braids of her hair. They were unraveling, tickling the column of his neck. "You don't need to apologize." His arms tugged her tighter against his chest. "You're safe with me. I—"

A series of lights amongst the twilight sky caught his attention.

Astrid turned her face to peer up at him with a hesitant smirk. "Sphinx got your tongue?"

Pinpricks of stars dotted the darkening indigo canvas above, an astronomical image that Sebastian knew well from his childhood in Eilibir. A constellation: Dragon Fire. He shifted, bringing Astrid with him, readjusting her body so her head fell gently against his chest, tilted towards the heavens.

"Draco Ignis," he said. "Look."

She settled into him. "Thinking of my gown from the Saviour's Toast, are we?"

"Well, it was quite beautiful. I found it to be so even then."

Astrid gasped in wonder when she followed where his finger pointed; the sight was truly magnificent. A fantastical creature prowled above, wings splayed wide and proud, watching them from the skies. In Eilibir, whenever the constellation appeared over their village, it was seen as protection: its golden lights blinking, flaring, reappearing closer with each planetary flicker—

"Wait." Sebastian sat up; the swiftness jostled Astrid. "Closer?"

She sensed his apprehension and reached for the blade attached to her upper thigh. "Spirits' threads." Her tone was even. "What do you sense, Bash?"

On her cue, they came to him immediately like a scream waiting to be heard; two pulsing, translucent threads glinted against the knuckles of his tensing fist. "The forest—" he jumped to his feet, releasing Astrid so she could wield her knife—"and a stronger, more potent one from...up there."

They both looked into the skies overhead.

A strong draft that was not from the cool breeze off Lake Holalethe ruffled Sebastian's mess of curls. A distinct flap, like a large sheet of leather being shaken out, swooshed over the trees.

"That's not Draco Ignis," Sebastian said, surprised when his voice held steady despite the tumbling routine taking place in his gut, creating a sheen of sweat beneath his hairline. "Not the constellation, at least."

Astrid's lips grew pale and thin.

"Oh, my Gaia..." Her breaths came rapidly again, but this time it wasn't due to his kisses. She held her blade in one hand and grabbed his wrist with the other. Her pupils shrank in terror just as a mighty bellow lit up the dimming sky into eerie hues of burnt orange and raging red.

"Run!"

_ _ _

YES! I am so ready to introduce some dragon shifters! Even if Bash and Astrid aren't ready to meet one...oops. Sorry, not sorry. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season! 2023 is nearly here. Anyone have any good resolutions for the new year? Let us know! 

Also, a quick shout out to @williamsj292 who not only coined the term 'Bastrid,' but also made the saying, "Oh, my Gaia," canon. Go give him a follow and check out his amazing series, The Journeymen. See you all in 2023!