The Stars are Dying : (Nytefall: Book 1)

As Cassia tossed her bedding haphazardly onto the floor, I caught flying cushions and got hit by others, which drew out fluttering chuckles. Removing my dagger and cloak, I arranged them by the fire Calix was lighting.

“Can you stay tonight?” Cassia asked.

I wanted that more than anything, but I couldn’t be certain Hektor wouldn’t have returned by morning since sickness had taken two of my days away already. I studied my fingers as I shook my head. “I should return before nightfall.”

“Why does he demand you so tightly by his side?” Her tone of frustration left me riddled with guilt.

“It’s complicated.”

Cassia sighed. “Stay for rest and supper.”

I chuckled at the nudge to my side.

“Oomph.” Cassia dropped down on the furs and cushions beside me. “What do we pass our time with now?”

I nestled down with her. The warmth of the fire waved over us, and Calix stood, going around us to perch on the bare bed.

Content to be in her company and with the setting soothing my muscles, I lay back. “Nothing,” I whispered. “Nothing at all.”

My eyelids fluttered to the gentle notes of Cassia’s voice, sometimes Calix’s, as we talked for hours, and I clung to every second. We filled up on small sandwiches and chocolates and, after much persuasion, two cups of wine.

I was starting to regret the indulgences now. They coaxed for me to rest, though I was trying desperately to stay awake.

“You can sleep,” Cassia muttered. “I’ll deal with your overprotective husband if he comes looking.”

Awareness snapped me awake with the realization I’d been drifting. Shaking my head, I propped myself up, plastering on a smile. “Not my husband,” I grumbled.

Calix leaned up on his hands on the bed, so casual and off-duty I could pretend he was a friend.

“Do you want him to be?” Cassia shifted with giddy attention, then she huffed, sinking back down with an overdramatic sigh. “What if I miss your wedding! Losing wasn’t an option before, but now—”

“I don’t think that will happen,” I said quickly.

What sparked within me came unexpectedly. Denial. A rush of something that stirred yet more reluctance to go back to the manor tonight.

“The Selected,” I said to divert the subject and calm my racing heart. “Are they all women?”

“They could be, but that’s very doubtful.” Cassia gave a long breath of relaxation. “When falls Night, the world will drown in Starlight,” she recited.

The words tugged on something in my mind, familiar but without context.

“What is that from?”

“A fable,” Calix chimed in.

“Hope.”

Calix eased a crooked smile at Cassia’s frown of disapproval.

“A prophesy that is the only way to be free of the king’s reign of terror,” she went on.

That caught my intrigue. “What does it mean?”

“I think if we knew, someone would be working to achieve it. All we can do is hope the gods still remember us and set the path for those to right what went wrong five hundred years ago.” Cassia shuffled down, her fair skin glowing with the signal of twilight, and my gut sank with the reminder I had to leave soon before nightfall.

“Have you ever heard of the celestials?” Cassia asked.

“Fairy tales?” Calix mused.

She threw him a glare over her shoulder, and I chuckled, sinking fully back into the marvelously soft cushions with her. We lay, heads near touching, and stared at her ceiling, which was painted with constellations. I envied the room and how she’d brought our shared love of the stars into it.

“They were the most powerful beings to have lived, but something went wrong. Something that saw them overpowered by the vampires all that time ago, and they could no longer protect us when their own people were targets. The souls and blood of humans sustain them, but they say celestial blood makes them a near unstoppable force.”

“Then three hundred years ago, the Faelestial War wiped them out,” Calix concluded.

“I don’t believe that. Many don’t.”

Drowsiness lapped at me as I listened to them talk of the tale. Over the painted roof I imagined wings. Mighty black wings with feathers that gave off a midnight-blue hue, so beautiful I wanted them to be real with an ache in my chest. Then feathers of a different set—still dark, but with catches of deep purple against the moonlight they both glided through.

“Where would they be now?” I asked quietly, allowing my lids to slip closed so I could fantasize the image in my mind. How it would feel to soar through the air and race to touch the stars.

“They’re protected beyond the Celestial Veil,” Cassia said with wonder.

“No one knows if that exists,” Calix countered.

“Because you would have to be in the Central to see it, and we will be.”

My lips could hardly break a smile, wanting to give in to the weight of sleep. The more Cassia talked, the giddier I became, so anxious for the countdown to leaving for the Central that my excitement was drowned out by fear.

“During the time of the celestials, the Golden Age, we were at peace. Then, with the rise of the vampires, the age of man deteriorated and the celestial leader either left or died, and no one knew what to do.”

“So they left us at the mercy of the vampires, who established their reign over the six kingdoms.” Calix joined in with a note of boredom that told he didn’t believe in any of it.

“And Althenia remains independent beyond the veil no man, fae, or vampire can pass through without their invitation.”

“Are they trapped there?” I asked.

“Possibly. It would make it easier to forgive them for leaving us here.”

“What happens to those who pass through?”

“No one has ever returned for us to really know what lies beyond. My guess is immediate death from whatever was cast to create it.”

I thought of what it would look like. Thick, rolling darkness without any shine. Nothing like the kind I craved of the darkest nights. Though I shuddered with ominous notions, I wanted to see it.

“I want you to have this,” Cassia said, sitting up and reaching behind her neck.

I knew what she was moving to unlatch and straightened too. “No. You can’t give me that.”

“Oh, hush,” she scolded. Once the pendant dangled between her fingers, she stared at me with expectance. “It is my Seal of Alisus and I can give it to whomever I like.”

My protest remained. I felt unworthy of the gift, but I knew Cass wouldn’t take no for an answer. I turned as she beamed, scooting closer, and the metal was warm from her skin as she secured it around my neck.

“Just for safekeeping, until you win,” I said quietly.

I knew it was a promise she couldn’t make, and my brow pinched as I twisted back to her.

“Exactly,” she said, cupping a hand to my cheek.

I weighed the pendant in my palm. The familiar crest of Alisus beveled the metal: a constellation behind an ornate design like a blade or a key without teeth.

As we lay back down, Cassia’s fingers lacing through mine made me sigh with contentment.

“Let’s make a promise,” she said.

I nodded though she couldn’t see it.

“If we’re lost or apart, we’ll look up and know we’re mapping the same stars. And should death part us, we’ll know the other made it to the skies when the star that shines the brightest gives three blinks.”

Nothing had ever wrapped me so wholly in peace but inspired such despair. I gave her hand a squeeze, allowing my eyes to close for just a moment.

“Three blinks,” I promised.