The Stars are Dying : (Nytefall: Book 1)

I moved to a command that wasn’t mine. Whenever my lids opened a crack, blurs of color passed by. The ice in my bones raged as if it were fire, and I wished for any means to take the agony away.

Every now and then, distant voices tried to pull me from a place I wanted to stay. I didn’t deserve the warmth that seeped not nearly as close to me as I’d like, but I nestled further into it and allowed oblivion to claim me again.

The time that had passed eluded me when I found consciousness. My fingers flexed, finding soft fur, and I was enveloped by a heat that blazed at my back. I didn’t want to be awake, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t drift off again, and I feared the silence of my own mind.

My eyes snapped open as I remembered why I savored the heat, the memory of the freezing lake biting my skin. My bones ached, and I hissed as I rolled onto my back. Lolling my head, I tried to grasp my surroundings. Fear shot through me when I couldn’t recognize the room, but the finery it was decorated with forced me upright. I knew of only two places where I’d slept in such luxury. For a second, I thought I was back in the manor, but as I started to take in the details, nothing seemed similar to my elaborate former home.

“We all have fears.” Nyte’s silvery voice slipped into my mind, and I whirled with a gasp. “But I don’t enjoy being forced into mine.”

I was alone in this room. My hand touched my flushed cheek, remembering how it had felt to be pressed to his chest, and that caused me to look down at myself. I was in a new sleep gown of lilac silk, and around me were the soft furnishings of the bed, which had been stripped to be placed on the floor by the fire where I’d awoken.

“Where are you?” I asked, glancing out through the tall glass window to see nightfall.

A timid knock made my head jerk toward the door, and I clutched the blanket to myself as it opened tentatively.

“Oh, good. You’re awake!” a feminine voice chirped.

I could only watch her with bewilderment as she eased herself in carrying a tray. Nothing about her was recognizable, yet she seemed so bright and at ease with me.

“You need to eat. Get your insides warming too.”

“Where am I?”

“My home. We’re on the edge of Alisus.” She crouched to my level, and it was only then I noticed the two small, rounded horns on her head. Her hair wasn’t dark brown like I’d thought from afar; it was a deep green, and when she met my eye, the honey-brown of hers and the scattered freckles on her cheeks made her the semblance of a beautiful forest.

I must have been staring, because her movements slowed, and she tucked a nervous strand of hair behind her ear. Her delicately pointed ear. I lurched back with terror, yet the nature-infused beauty of her and the complete drop of her expression at my reaction quelled my fear just as fast.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “I’ve never met a fae before. Or are you—?”

“Yes, I’m fae,” she confirmed with a soft giggle.

I relaxed knowing my ignorant assumption wasn’t wrong. “You’re not…part of the king’s army, are you?”

She fixed the items on the tray as if to distract me from her wince. Mentally I was transported back to the wagon of fae being forced against their will, and the memory surfaced a true fear on this stranger’s behalf.

“No. I’ve been able to remain hidden. I was born just after the last Libertatem that Arania triumphed in.”

Over a hundred years ago.

I studied her a little more, not sure how I felt to know she appeared a little younger than me but was truly far older. “I’m sorry,” I said, even though it was a pitiful offering with the threat she lived under.

“As am I,” she said, tying our circumstances, which were somewhat similar with how the humans had also become the property of the king.

“My name is Lilith,” she said, lifting the bowl to me.

I took the steaming broth though I had no appetite. “Astraea,” I offered. “Thank you.” I forced a few mouthfuls while she watched me expectantly, the delicious vegetable soup like a warm hug. “Do you have magick?” I asked.

“Of course. I feel nature. What it needs, how it fares. I can grow things faster than the Mother—a gift from her to keep our land thriving.”

I smiled, fascinated by her.

“Some humans are born with magick, you know.”

My brow lifted while my lips paused around my spoon.

“It’s more like spell magick. They call them mages. They have gifts from their god, the Fate. Their magick is solarbound, like the celestials, however, so they were affected when the quake happened. The king sought them out at first too, but I don’t think there are many of them left. They’re the only ones who can spell the prized Starlight Matter into various enhancing potions.”

I’d never realized before. Humans…they created the coveted Matter. I was becoming both thrilled and daunted by what each species was capable of. But without having told her of my embarrassingly sheltered existence, I wasn’t sure if it was a bad thing Lilith assumed I needed all of this explained to me.

“Can’t you have them spell Starlight Matter to hide your heritage so you might wander like us?” I asked.

“The Matter can be addictive. For humans it’s no more than a taste for alcohol or a pipe. To the fae and celestials, it can consume them more powerfully and become hard to break. It can turn us into beings no better than the vicious nightcrawlers with their insatiable thirst for blood, or it can have the opposite effect and weaken us greatly.”

I shuddered as my memory drew forth the grim flash of taloned wings. Okay, so that isn’t a viable option. I didn’t know why my mind scrambled to help this stranger, thinking she was too kind and delicate to remain condemned to a fate of hiding.

“I can’t blame the celestial houses for protecting themselves beyond the veil, but many of my kind do, and I think it is why they join the king willingly. He hasn’t stopped building his army since solar magick started to strengthen again. Until…”

I set my spoon in the bowl at her troubled look. “It’s happening again,” I concluded, casting my gaze out the window at the growing darkness of night.

“I think so,” she confirmed. “Five hundred years ago something changed. Everyone felt it, like the world was cracking, like something had stepped into the realm that was never supposed to be here. I think everyone knew the Golden Age the star-maiden had ushered in was about to be shaken like the stars that began to die out.”

“Would she have made herself known?”

Lilith didn’t answer right away. Her gaze slipped to my chest, and I resisted the instinct to cover my markings in company. “Perhaps she’s biding her time. Or fate has been biding it for her.”

My head pulsed with everything I was learning. Lessons on the vast world I’d ventured into that I wished I’d known far sooner so I could be more prepared. Or perhaps I did, and they were part of the lost strings of memory I’d come to terms with never getting back.

“Your hair is like starlight.”

I looked down at the strand I’d been fidgeting with in my rise of anxiety. My gaze flicked out to the sky. Nyte’s voice didn’t intrude, but my neck heated to know he’d appreciate Lilith’s observation.

“How did I get here?”

“I found you at our gates. My parents are not home. I had to get you into something dry. I hope you don’t mind.”

Relief relaxed my shoulders to know it wasn’t Nyte who’d undressed me fully, though my chemise, especially soaked through, didn’t spare much dignity.

“I was alone?”

“Yes.”

Because Cassia wasn’t coming for me this time. My heart beat in shattered fragments. I lay back down.

“You must eat more.”

“Thank you for helping me. If I could rest this night, I will leave by morning.”

“Stay for as long as you need. Please.”

I tried to force a smile, but I wasn’t sure it broke on my face. Her eyes creased with pity, and I could only imagine my sorry state. Little did I care. I stared into the fire wondering what I would do next. Where I would go and who I would be. Lilith didn’t speak again before she left, and I would have felt bad if I could feel anything at all with yesterday’s cold recollections creeping back.

“Starlight—”

“Get out of my head if you can’t face me in person.”

Silence answered, but just as my eyes slipped closed, his presence slowly grew more tangible. Nyte was somewhere in the room, but I didn’t seek him out.

“I don’t know what you want. But I wish you would get it over with.”

“Is my company so intolerable?”

“Your company is always half-there.”

A beat of silence.

“Go away, Nyte. Or kill me.”

The floorboards creaked, and I stiffened.

“You need to eat.”

“No.”

“Look at me.”

“No.”

I jerked back with a gasp when my view of the fire was snatched away by darkness and the devil crouched before me. Propping myself up on one hand, he reached for the strap of my nightgown when it slipped. My reaction to pull away faded as I beheld his thoughtful look. His fingers tingled over my skin, always barely-there, running gently past my collar until he met the marking on my chest.

I watched him in fascination, wanting to know what brought on the hint of sadness as he traced each point of the constellation I wore. The flame in his eyes licked down his arm to touch me, and when I shivered he seemed to snap back into himself, retracting. Nyte met my gaze with a hard edge, and I blinked at the contrast.

“What do you want with me?” I whispered.

“Many things. But if it brings you comfort, if I wanted you dead, you would have been long ago.”

His proximity heated my skin, or perhaps it was something else as fatigue strained my muscles. Familiar enough that I remembered…

“How long was I asleep?”

“A day.”

My palm cupped my forehead and I nearly groaned.

“What’s wrong?”

“Where’s my satchel?” I asked, feeling the words like lead on my tongue. “I had a bottle of pills.”

Nyte’s eyes flexed as though he were debating before they flicked sideward. I groaned to even think of crawling to my dress, which was drying over the arm of a chair. Not caring about the scandalous piece of silk I wore, I bit my lip, my muscles crying with every movement.

My heart galloped as I sifted through the sodden things until relief flooded out of me as I felt the solid item.

“What are they?” Nyte studied the bottle I pulled out with a deep frown.

“I’m not well. I need them for my blood.”

“Your blood?”

The intrigue in his tone I didn’t care to answer, only offering a nod.

My shuffle back to the furs was just as torturous, but I nearly moaned at the returning embrace of warmth from the fire. Popping the cork, I tipped one pill onto my palm and stared at it. Nyte extended a glass of water from the tray, and I looked between both for longer than necessary, until he read my contemplation.

“What would she say if she could hear your thoughts right now?”

He didn’t inspire me. There was nothing kind on my face when I snapped my glare to him. “You don’t get to throw that at me,” I warned. “Not when it was your kind who did this.” Or was he even a soulless at all? My head spun with the new revelation I wasn’t certain what he was.

“You’re right,” he said calmly, maybe with genuine apology. “But also wrong.”

I shook my head, incredulous at this male who should be everything I despised and feared, yet I couldn’t escape. “Then tell me.”

Nyte extended the water to me again. I took it this time, trying to subdue the guilt that I wanted health in the wake of Cassia’s death. “Just because she lost her life doesn’t mean you have to abandon care for yours,” he clarified.

I took a long drink of water as soon as the pill hit my tongue. In my thirst I kept gulping greedily until it was empty, and I caught my breath before I responded. “I might be slow at figuring you out, but at least I can take a hint. I don’t give a shit about what you have to say. You didn’t know her, and you don’t know me. You’re wasting your time, or if you’re finding entertainment in this, you’ll be bored soon. Then maybe you’ll actually be of use to me and do what your kind does best.” I set the glass aside, and he caught my arm. About to rip it from his grip, I paused when both our forearms upturned and his sleeve rolled up.

I blinked at the markings. While my phases of the moon were waxing, his were waning. As if lightning had shocked me straight from where we touched to ignite my chest, I tore my arm away from him.

We locked eyes, and I had questions about what it meant. How he’d gotten that tattoo that could lead to answers about my own. But his hard expression riddled me with the fear I should always have around him.

“You’re right about some things. I don’t give a damn about your friend’s life, but let’s call my stalking of you an infatuation. So hate me, fight me—the truth? I want you to fucking despise me. Your anger is my pleasure, your darkness is my light, and I hope you use it without apology to right every wrong you’ve endured, starting with this.”

I didn’t know when he’d inched closer, but his knee met the ground as he leaned into me, and his proximity was a snare I became trapped in.

“He’s dead,” I hushed out.

I realized I was hoping for him to voice what I felt—that the death of the soulless who’d killed Cassia was not enough retribution. Yet I didn’t know what would be.

“So what do you do now?”

That was the question I’d barely had the time to surface but knew would linger in the aftermath of Cassia’s death. What would I do…and where would I go?

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked, having to start with the puzzle of him. Perhaps my fear of him was already trumped by the terror of being alone.

“Because it seems my challenge has become not to kill you, but to keep you alive.”

“So you’re my eternal punishment.”

His finger tilted my chin, emitting an unwelcome flutter. “Wrong again.” He pierced me with those golden irises, and I had nothing left to lose as I allowed myself to become lost in them. “You’re mine, Starlight.”

My eyes fell to his neck, fighting the impulse I’d had before to discover which constellation was tattooed there when only two points were visible. Then there was his scar. A jagged line running from his temple, just missing his eye, to finish on his cheekbone.

“If you want my clothes off, just speak your mind. Or I wouldn’t be opposed to you acting on it.”

I leaned away from him with an awareness like a whip. “I want to be alone.”

“No, you don’t, or I wouldn’t be here.” Nyte rose again, and I stared at him incredulously while he paced toward the long glass window, giving me his sculpted back in the black shirt that was tucked into his pants.

“You seem to have a way of being able to find me if I try to run.”

His chuckle was smoky and sweet like a lover’s touch. “As much as I thoroughly enjoy chasing you, that’s not what I meant.” He took up a side lean against the wall that cloaked him in shadow. Retrieving something that glinted gold, he studied it for a few seconds and then, without a word, slipped it back into his pocket where his hand stayed. He said, “You didn’t step onto that ice because you were running from me.” His tone grew colder, circling like the shadows that became darker around him. “I watched you as you ran, then slowed, then stopped. You saw the ice crack and knew it would break. Never again will you stare down at death and desire to take its hand.”

“I lost everything,” I said. “I have nothing left.”

“Your loss is deep, but you will heal. It will linger, but you will keep living.”

I had no need to counter his words. The wound within me had been split open stitch by stitch and there was nothing he could do to mend it. So I lay back down and watched the fire rage.

“Rest now. When you wake, the world will still be cruel and your heart will still be bleeding, but you are breathing, Astraea. And every breath is a reminder that you live for something.”