Nyra's POV
I was born for one reason.
Not to choose my own path.
Not to fall in love.
Not to live a quiet life on some blue planet at the edge of the galaxy.
I was born for him.
"Again," my instructor barked.
I was six. My arms shook from the weight of the practice spear. Sand stung my knees. The training ring shimmered faintly under the twin suns of our world, and the air tasted like metal and heat.
In front of me, a holo-image flickered to life. A boy dark hair, bright eyes, still a baby smiled and reached tiny hands toward the projection device.
"The prince," my instructor said, like a prayer and a warning. "Kian of the Astra line. Vessel of the star-force. You will protect him. That is why you were born."
"I know," I panted.
"Then prove it!"
He lunged at me. I barely dodged, rolling beneath the swing of his staff. Pain exploded across my back when it clipped me anyway. I hit the ground and grit my teeth, swallowing the cry that wanted to escape.
"Get up, Nyra," he said. His voice softened, just a little. "Every second you waste, there are a thousand enemies in a thousand worlds planning how to rip him open and drink the power from his bones."
I pushed myself to my feet.
I imagined the baby from the holo, but older. Alone. Afraid.
I swung.
Thirteen years later, the twin suns were gone.
In their place: one pale, weak Earth sun, hidden behind the gray sky above Westbrook High.
The training ring was gone too.
In its place: a dirty hallway that smelled of sweat, cheap perfume, and human fear.
But the boy was still the same.
My prince.
Kian.
He stood behind me now, breath rough, heart unsteady, the echo of dormant Astra humming faintly under his skin. I could almost see its pattern, like ghost-light veins intertwining with his own. Only a flicker, but growing.
Around us, the hallway was chaos. Human students shouted, pushed, scrambled for their tiny devices. The lights hummed as they tried to stabilize after his uncontrolled pulse.
The bully Jared stared at Kian as if he'd just watched the sky split open.
"What the hell are you?" he whispered.
He had no idea how close he was to the truth.
I stepped between them, my body moving before my mind did. Instinct. Training. Purpose.
Protect the Vessel. Protect the prince.
Always.
Kian's hand brushed my arm, just for a moment. His skin was warm and slightly damp, his pulse wild. For a second, the faint echo of Astra under his veins reached up and touched the protective sigils hidden beneath my own skin.
The contact made something inside me flinch.
It's starting, I thought.
"It's starting," I said aloud, eyes locked on his glowing hand. The light was fading now, but I had seen it. I'd been watching for it for years.
"Wh–what's starting?" he asked.
His voice was small. Human. Scared.
My heart squeezed in a way my instructors would have called dangerous.
I had been taught to see Kian as a mission. An objective. A star-born weapon in fragile flesh. But the boy standing behind me wasn't a weapon. He was just… a boy. Tired. Lonely. Trying so hard to be normal when he was anything but.
"Your awakening," I said.
His eyes widened. The way he looked at me like he was drowning and had only just noticed I was there made my chest hurt.
Before he could ask more, a shrill alarm cut through the air, making half the students jump.
The school's emergency system, finally catching up with the fact that reality had just hiccupped.
"Everyone to the courtyard!" a teacher yelled somewhere behind us. "Move, now!"
Humans scattered, obeying in messy clumps. Jared and his friends stumbled away too, staring back at Kian with wide, frightened eyes, suddenly too afraid to touch him.
Good.
Let them be afraid.
Because if they ever saw what he really was, they would do more than bully him.
They would try to cage him. Or kill him.
"Kian." I turned to face him properly. "Are you all right?"
He laughed once, short and humorless. "Do I look all right?"
His hands were still trembling. His pupils were slightly blown, the way they got whenever Astra brushed too close to the surface. I remembered the medical reports our scouts had stolen from Earth hospitals: "unexplained episodes," "possible neurological abnormalities," "subject displays unusual cardiac response."
They had no idea.
"Come on," I said quietly. "We should go outside. Blend in. Act like everyone else."
He searched my face for something judgment, fear, disgust. I gave him none. I had been trained for years to control every twitch of muscle, every flicker of expression.
But I couldn't quite control the worry that slipped into my voice when I added, "Can you walk?"
He hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah. I'm just… dizzy."
Without thinking, I slipped his arm over my shoulder to steady him.
His weight leaned into me for a brief second. Warm. Heavy. Real.
Not a mission. Not a title. Not a 'Vessel'.
Just Kian.
My instructors would have said I was too close. That I was forgetting my place.
I didn't care.
✦ ✦ ✦
We moved with the tide of students into the courtyard. Teachers shouted orders. Someone said it was a "power surge." Someone else blamed the storm clouds.
Humans always needed explanations, even when they were wrong.
Kian sank onto a bench near the edge of the courtyard. I sat beside him, the very picture of an ordinary classmate making sure her friend didn't faint.
His gaze tracked the crowd nervously.
"Nyra," he said.
My name in his mouth still felt strange. Soft. Precious. No one on my home world had ever said it like that.
"Yes?" I asked.
"What did you mean back there?" His fingers curled into the fabric of his pants. "Awakening what? What's happening to me? And"
He glanced around, then lowered his voice.
"Did you see it too? My… veins?"
I looked down at his wrist, at the place where that cold starlight had shone through his skin. I could still sense the aftertaste of the power there, like a song that had started and then cut off mid-note.
"I saw," I said quietly.
"And you're… not freaking out?" he asked bitterly. "Most people would be screaming or running away by now."
Most people are not raised to stand in front of a living star and call it theirs to protect.
Instead of saying that, I offered him the smallest, softest truth I could.
"I'm not most people."
His lips twitched, almost a smile, despite everything. It did something unpleasant and too-fast to my heartbeat.
Focus, Nyra.
This is how Astra wins. Not with battles, but with distractions.
My instructors' voices whispered in my memory:
"You will guard him. Not love him."
"You will stand between him and death. Not between him and loneliness."
"Remember what he is, Nyra. He is the Vessel. Not your own."
I remembered.
I chose not to listen.
"For now," I said, keeping my tone even, "you should rest. I'll explain later."
His eyes narrowed. "Later? You sound like my mom."
"She is wise," I said.
He snorted. "You don't even know her."
I knew every human who had ever gotten close to him. His mother. His doctors. His teachers. The neighbors who gossiped about him. The bullies who pushed him. The strange men who watched their house once from a black car with tinted windows—agents from one of the many groups searching for a hint of star-force on this planet.
I had seen them all.
I had eliminated some of them.
No, Kian, I thought. You don't know me. But I know you.
I know the way your heart jumps when you think someone is staring too long.
I know how you count your breaths when you're trying to stop the glow.
I know you hate yourself a little every time something breaks around you.
Out loud, I said only, "I know enough to say she cares about you."
He went quiet.
The alarm finally stopped. The principal began speaking over the crackling speakers, reassuring everyone that there had been a "minor outage" and that classes would resume soon.
Human lies, wrapped in official tone.
While everyone listened, I let my gaze drift over the crowd. Searching.
Scanning.
Protecting.
A habit so deeply carved into me that not doing it would have felt like ripping off my own skin.
And then I saw him.
A man standing just beyond the school fence, partly hidden by the branches of a tree. Dark coat. Hands in his pockets. Sunglasses, even though the sun wasn't bright.
Everything about him was wrong.
He wasn't reacting to the alarm like the others. He wasn't talking or checking a device. He was watching.
Not the school.
Kian.
Our eyes met for a fraction of a second.
He smiled.
My muscles tightened. Old training snapped into place like armor.
Enemy.
I lowered my gaze, pretending not to notice, and leaned closer to Kian as if I was just sharing a joke.
"Stay near me when we go back in," I murmured.
He blinked. "Why?"
"Because," I said, keeping my eyes fixed on my shoelaces so he wouldn't see the sharpness in them, "some people only need one excuse to hurt someone who's different."
Or to capture a Vessel.
Or to drag a star prince back to a lab table.
"You mean Jared?" Kian rolled his eyes. "Please. He's annoying, not dangerous."
I didn't look at Jared.
I looked at the man beyond the fence, who had already vanished.
"No," I whispered. "Not him."
Not yet.
That night, I stood on the roof of the small apartment building across from Kian's home, the city's weak glow stretching out under a cloudy sky.
The night air was cold. Earth's atmosphere always felt slightly too thin to me, like a blanket that didn't quite reach my toes.
Below, through a half-closed curtain, I could see Kian in his room. Sitting on his bed. Staring at his glowing wrist.
He thought no one could see.
He pressed his thumb to one of the faint blue lines, watching it brighten, then dim. His lips moved, forming silent questions I knew he had no answers for.
I wished, for the hundredth time, that I could go to him and tell him everything.
Tell him about our world.
Tell him about his parents.
Tell him that he wasn't broken, just misplaced.
Tell him that his veins glowed because a star chose him before he could even walk.
But my orders were clear:
Do not reveal his origin until Astra is stable.
Do not trigger emotional overload.
Do not let attachment cloud your judgment.
"Too late," I murmured to the empty sky.
I was already attached.
I had been, from the moment my tiny six-year-old hand touched the holo-image of the laughing baby prince and my instructor said, "This is who you will die for."
The wind shifted, carrying the faintest echo of a different kind of hum. Not city noise. Not the buzz of human power lines.
Something else.
I stiffened.
Across the rooftops, a shadow moved where no shadow should be. Too smooth. Too deliberate.
They had found him faster than I thought they would.
My hand slipped to the hilt of the blade hidden under my jacket.
"All right then," I whispered, eyes fixed on that moving darkness.
"You found my prince. Come and try."
Because before his power awakened
Before Astra truly opened its eyes inside him
I would protect Kian at all costs.
That was what I was born for.