The Stars are Dying : (Nytefall: Book 1)

I stared through the glass of my balcony doors, directly at the circular stone structure that was no more than a dark silhouette in the night. The great library. I was rooted to the spot, in turmoil about answering the beckoning pull toward it. It was where Nyte wanted me to go, though he’d never said it in words. I could feel it.

Rose and Zath had made it back, but she was still without her first key piece. I’d heard nothing of the other three Selected and only hoped they were far behind in figuring out their first clue.

My decision for the night was made when I slung on my cloak and left my rooms with the daunting task of making it across the courtyard unseen. I had a guide, though he never spoke. My instinct seemed to tangle with the direction I could only place from some unknown influence in my mind.

Ducking into an alcove, I waited for two guards to pass before I moved again. Stealth was a skill I was adept with from my time at the manor, yet as I roamed the halls I couldn’t shake the feeling of familiarity. As though I knew their path from some alternate timeline.

Outside I figured out why Nyte had given me the precise hour of midnight to arrive. There were no guards as the ones around every post on my mental map had taken leave, allowing a few minutes’ window for me to make it across the courtyard. Large trees were planted with equal spacing down the long stretch, in parallel pairs, with an expanse of fresh grass between them. On either side were paved pathways.

I darted between each tree for shadow cover, only pausing for a quick second to be sure the new guards weren’t near. When I got to the end, my chest constricted at the tall structure. I stood before two massive doors, but without Drystan, they would not be my way in.

Around the side, I stumbled at a small hatch that looked like a cellar door. “You can’t possibly expect me to trust that,” I whispered, but Nyte wouldn’t answer.

I whined as I tested the door, and when it opened, part of me recoiled with the lost hope it should have been locked to save me from the danger of this brazen adventure. Staring down at the dark depth the uneven stairs disappeared into, I took a second to question my sanity. What was I thinking? There could be anything down there, and Nyte might be nothing more than a monster fashioned into a beautiful dream to lure me here.

“What are you hiding?” I thought aloud again, pacing as I deliberated.

Still there was no answer. That, I would have to find out for myself, and I gritted my teeth at his silence. Curiosity pricked my skin, but my fear taunted that my steps down there could be a one-way trip.

Voices raised the hairs on my arms, making me whirl my head in their direction. They were distant, but the new guards were sure to spot me here as they slowly grew.

Shit.

My decision was forced. The wood creaked as I tested it, and I cringed, pulse thrumming in my ears, as I grasped the string on the inside of the latch and pulled it shut to engulf myself in darkness. My eyes welled as I clung to the steps. I breathed hard, asking myself what the hell I thought I was doing, but it was as if cotton had filled my ears, making me unable to detect if there was anything moving below.

Gentle, calm waves smoothed the sharp edges of my panic. My heart slowed, and I gave over to the sensation that grounded me enough to think straight. Then find the courage to begin the descent.

One step at a time I dragged forth my bravery, until my next step down confirmed I was on solid ground.

“I can’t see,” I choked. My throat tightened, feeling confined, as if the darkness had fashioned physical walls that were shrinking and I had no escape.

“There are more ways to see than with your eyes.”

Finally! I was so gods-damned relieved to hear him in my mind. Taking a steady breath, I nodded, though it was pointless. I held out my arms, testing the air as my feet pressed on. I touched stone, jerking at the first sensation to greet me in the dark. Cold and jagged, but I didn’t care if it cut my skin as I used it as my guide.

I walked for what could have been seconds or minutes. The only sounds were my scuffling feet and the oddly soothing echo of intermittent water droplets. I squinted when I thought I could see a flicker of light bouncing off the wall ahead. My pace picked up with hope, and slowly my vision expanded to reveal the exhilarating find.

When I saw an opening flooding white light into the passage, I smiled and surged for it. What opened before me almost stole the air I gulped greedily. The cave was massive, and above me, illuminating the space, was a hole that welcomed the moonlight.

I shivered, pulling my cloak around me tighter. Something about this place was ominous. It radiated with an unexplainable energy that raked at my skin, and I rubbed my arms, then my chest, at the tingling warmth.

It was then I realized it wasn’t the cold making me tremble.

“Where are you?”

As I said it, I wished I could take it back, suddenly overcome with the thought I didn’t want the discovery. This had been a mistake, and something inside was screaming at me to turn back.

A sharp rattle shot all my senses to high alert. I snapped myself around, painfully rigid in anticipation as I watched the dark space I was certain the sound had come from. It continued. Growing louder, getting closer. I took a step back as though it might lunge—whatever it was.

A pair of black boots were the first thing I saw, emerging into the pool of light, and still the chimes followed. My gaze trailed up from them as the form revealed itself slowly, and when the figure became whole…

I can’t have been breathing.

Time stopped. I was in complete confusion, unable to attach my sight to reality. This had to be a dream. No—a nightmare. Because what else would need to be chained and abandoned down here other than a dangerous monster?

Yet my lips cracked open; a few beats of silence passed…

“Nyte,” I whispered.

He didn’t smile—or really react at all—but when he responded I could have fallen to my knees, which became weak at the clarity of his voice. “Hello, Starlight.”

I learned in that moment the face I stared at had three voices.

The one that caressed my thoughts.

The one that spoke aloud, but always with a note of distance I’d never questioned deeper.

Then there was this—the unmistakable surety of a real voice, and I wanted to slap myself for ever believing the others.

“How is this possible?” I took in the thick iron clamped around his wrists, attached to heavy chains I couldn’t fathom the need for. He was only one male. Then there was my incredulity—because they were not bonds he could slip in and out of, and this dwelling was not a place of any comfort. His clothes were far simpler than anything I’d seen him in before: only a plain worn shirt, dirty black pants, and old boots. His hair was a little longer and far more disheveled, but still he was breathtaking. Because those molten eyes never changed, nor did the perfect angles of his face. And though it was near covered by his hair, the scar from his temple to his cheekbone was real.

“I’ve been here a long time,” he said.

It would take some time for me to adjust to the true vibrations of his voice, but I wanted to hear it again. And again.

“Who did this to you?” My gut was wrenching, my heart aching, and I didn’t want to feel these things for someone I couldn’t yet know was deserving of them.

“That doesn’t matter,” he said, stalking a little closer, but he halted, eyes flinching. Because I’d taken a step back in response. “You said you trusted me.”

I shook my head. “You can’t expect to hold me to that when I’m staring at someone bound in chains in an underground prison.”

His jaw worked. “Then what will it take, Starlight?”

“Don’t call me that.” I couldn’t take it. How personally he addressed me, and now I couldn’t be sure who it was I’d accepted so desperately as a guide in my vulnerability not to be alone.

I wasn’t alone anymore. I had Zathrian, and what would it matter if I died in the Libertatem anyway?

“That’s not going to happen,” he said darkly.

“Stop that,” I snapped, finding the courage to step closer.

“What?”

“Reading my mind—answering my thoughts!” My eyes scrunched shut as I walked to try to calculate what the hell was going on. “How have you been here the whole time? Even back in Alisus?” It didn’t make sense, and I was close to succumbing to the waves of dizziness as I tried to sort through the explosion of a puzzle I’d thought I was slowly piecing together.

“That’s not important right now.”

I laughed without humor. “You’re not exactly in a position to decide what’s important.”

The gold of his eyes turned the darkest I’d ever seen them. Impatient anger clouded them, and that was enough to confirm my wariness was justified and those bonds somehow necessary.

“Astraea.” He said my name with a firmness I’d never heard. “I thought you were ready.”

“For what?”

“To handle this.”

I blinked, taken aback. “I’d say I’m handling this madness pretty well.”

“You’re in denial.”

“About the one who’s been stalking me by some impossible means? Yes, I think I’m granted that.”

“I need you.”

That stole the rest of my words. “What could I possibly do for you?”

“Free me.”

I huffed a laugh, then a chuckle, before the eeriness of my own sounds chilled me, because he had to be fucking joking. The sternest expression remained on his face, so unlike the handsome confidence he’d come to me with many times, and I decided I liked my own version of him a whole lot more.

“When you came to me…” I took a deep breath, struggling to comprehend what I was asking. “How could I see you? I could touch you…and you touched me.”

“Because you wanted it.”

I most certainly did not. That was what I thought to say to wipe away his confidence. But I schooled my frustration. “That’s not an explanation.”

“Free me, and you won’t have to fear or change for him once this game is over.”

At what cost? What horror could be unleashed if I did as he asked?

“I wouldn’t free a lion because it whined like a house cat,” I said.

Nyte’s mouth curled, the first easing of his cut features. The real him. “A few minutes and you’ve already deemed me so dangerous?”

“I might not know much of the world yet, but I’m insulted you thought me to be so naïve that I could look at your chains, where you’re kept, and not think ‘dangerous’ is a tame term for what you are.” My fear of him turned to anger. “Is that why you chose me? You saw someone weak, vulnerable, and your grand trick was to get me here.” Then my world turned cold, and in my spike of rage I remembered I had my dagger at my waist. “Did you kill her to get me here?”

“No,” he said without hesitation. “I am sorry about your friend.”

I couldn’t be sure. Not when everything I thought I knew about him had turned out to be a lie. His very existence had only been an illusion until now, and I needed to figure out that part before I lost my damn mind.

Perhaps that was already long gone.

“I can’t trust you,” I said. “Not until you start giving me answers.”

“How many lives are you willing to watch end before you receive them all?” he said harshly.

I flinched, hating the bait. He knew exactly where to get to me. But I held my ground. “As many as it takes to be sure you aren’t a greater threat.”

His fist flexing rattled the chains, drawing my attention to them. I wished to turn them to ash for causing the thick abrasions that looked healed over many times. Then I shook my head to wipe my unexpected flash of sympathy.

“How long have you been down here?” The whisper slipped out.

Nyte withdrew, giving me his back as he leaned against the uneven stone wall, half cloaked in shadow. “You’re not safe out there,” he said, evading my question. His quiet voice of defeat pinched my chest as he refused to meet my eye.

“I don’t think there is such a place.”

“I told you where you should go.”

Beyond the veil.

“Why?”

“You’re in the Central now, Astraea. Make use of the knowledge you have access to here, but be wary. The king has not one shred of mercy for anyone. He cannot find out who you really are.”

“Why have you been helping me?”

Nyte pushed off the wall, making the clang of his chains resonate through the cavernous dwelling, and my gut sank with every note. He stopped, the distance between us the shortest it had been since I arrived. I didn’t balk this time.

“Will you come closer?”

The low tone of his voice was so inviting I answered to it. I took a couple of steps, each one making me feel like I was tethered to an electric pull. A hum that grew over my arms and chest and made my breathing come quicker.

“What is that?” I whispered, stopping when there was only a small measure of distance between us.

Nyte raised a hand—slowly with the weight of his shackles. A finger pointed until his restraints met their end, and his teeth clenched. My brow flinched at his suppressed pain, but I saw it then: a faint iridescent sheen that rippled with the advance of his touch.

“The only thing that’s keeping me here.” His hand dropped, and mine fought the urge to reach out and touch what he couldn’t.

“I would have thought it was the shackles.”

Nyte chuckled resentfully, and the unexpectedness of it locked our eyes.

“I could take care of those just fine if it weren’t for that damned ward.”

“Magick?”

“Yes.”

“How did you ever expect I’d have the answer to break it?”

Nyte studied me. I couldn’t understand the flicker of sadness in his subdued amber irises, now a cool honey color. “You are the answer, Starlight.”