The Stars are Dying : (Nytefall: Book 1)

The next breath to leave me was both liberating and soul-tarnishing.

Hektor was dead.

His blood dripping from Nyte’s fingers started to wisp away to shadow before it could touch the dark marble. Darkness engulfed his hand, spilling down into a wave of mist that grew over the floor to cover Hektor’s body.

I didn’t think I was breathing, hardly present as I watched it turn his body to smoke…until nothing was left of him at all.

No blood. Not on the ground or in Nyte’s hand.

I blinked as though I could have imagined him being wiped out so easily.

Perhaps this was a nightmare.

But then a shuffling behind me rattled my senses and I drew a long inhale. When I turned to see who had entered, nothing else mattered. My eyes widened as my feet raced for their salvation. Toward Zathrian, who marched into the room, face lined hard, and Rose, who looked just as braced for battle.

I collided with him, and Zath tried to pull back to scan every inch of me, but I couldn’t stop pushing him. “We have to go,” I said desperately. Maybe it would be futile to try to outrun Nyte, but I couldn’t risk him finding some reason to kill Zath too. “We need to run!” I demanded when he held me but didn’t move.

“Who is that?” Rose asked.

I stopped trying to steer them back, and something about Zath’s stillness coiled a knot in my stomach. I dreaded to look up. Zath wore a face of anger, but in his pinched brow I didn’t want to see the pity, the sorrow.

“This isn’t like what you think,” he said, sparing a glance at Rose.

Her brow wrinkled with accusation. “What are you talking about?” she asked, freeing a blade from her side. “You said we were coming to get her before…” Rose paused, and fresh dawning relaxed her firm face. Her hazel gaze shifted sideward.

“He’s Nightsdeath?”

She didn’t hesitate, but her step to Nyte was intercepted by Zath. The look she locked on him spoke of deadly promise.

“Please wait until I can explain. You’re safe—both of you. I promise you that.”

The way Zath spoke as if he were defending Nyte… I shook my head with dizzy confusion. Something isn’t right.

“What are you doing to him?” I snapped my head back to Nyte, who stood watching us carefully.

“Nothing,” he said coldly.

“You’re tricking him!”

Dark ire flexed around his eyes at the accusation. Shadows began to swirl around him like he would use them to strike or leap the distance to get to me. I left my thoughts wide and free, and something he heard eased back those primed arms of smoke.

“Do you truly believe I would be capable of hurting you?”

I said nothing, still seething at the fact he’d manipulated Zathrian to stop our escape.

Nyte growled low, and I thought to brace against him as he lashed out, but it wasn’t at me or Zath. He spun instead to the next commotion to enter the room.

My alarm rose this time. My protest and fight returned for this.

“Let him go,” I said.

Zath hooked my arm against my near step.

I turned to him with pleading eyes. “You have to snap out of his control. We can’t let him kill Calix.”

“I’m not under his control.”

Zath sounded so convincing, so normal, that my mind wanted to collapse me again. But it couldn’t be true. The Zathrian I knew wouldn’t be content to remain here with such an unhinged adversary loose. He wouldn’t betray me.

“Even after all your cowardly treatment of her, she still pleads with me to spare you,” Nyte said.

I whirled then, yanking my arm free from Zath to watch as he circled Calix, who was on his knees. Calix didn’t look at me. I didn’t expect him to, nor did I need his warmth.

“He came to help me,” I said. “You have to have known that.”

Nyte spared me a look. “Do you forget so easily he would have let that pitiful man’s dogs take you before you even made it out of the main city in Alisus?” He stalked to me, and I held up my chin in defiance. “If it hadn’t been for Zathrian, who followed you to make sure you made it out safe, he would have let them take you.”

My breath caught. Why hadn’t Zath mentioned it was his arrows that had killed those men?

“I won’t deny, even the words he spoke to you before and after have made me itch for his throat for some time. Then he gave me far more just cause when he led a threat on your life.”

“He was protecting Cassia,” I protested.

Nyte stopped before me. “That I could understand. Truly. But will you still want to protect him when you know the truth of the attack that claimed your friend’s life?”

Calix spoke, a quiet declaration of defeat. “It was supposed to be you.”

I blinked at him as everything began to cancel itself out around me. Everything but my focus on him. It didn’t hurt to hear what I had wished for too—that it should’ve been me instead. But that wasn’t what Calix meant, and my mind began to scream with a desire to hide from the truth that was about to bring the world down around me.

“What do you mean?” I dared to ask.

“Foolish human,” Nyte said to him. “So much magick in the world you believe anything is possible and never stop to realize it comes at a price. Fate is such a fickle thing.” Nyte paced around Calix, and it was the longest I’d seen him stave off his clear desire to kill. “You see, there can be many courses to one’s fate. A soldier wounded in battle may die there, or they may switch paths to live and come to the crossroads of many more if a healer gets to them on time. Choice and timing have great influence. Cassia Vernhalla had no other path. No more choices. No crossing of time with someone else who could save her. Her fate was to leave by her illness, and the extra years she got were only stretching the limits of mercy on that.”

Nyte knew about Cassia. Far more in depth than he should. Everything I thought I knew was drifting away from me piece by piece, deserting me to a void of nothing.

His golden gaze came around, still pinning Calix with dark resentment. “There would have been a way to save her. I’m sure whatever they offered you to set up Astraea was not false. But it would have been at the cost of another life, and no, you would not have gotten to act her hero and take her place. It would have been someone innocent. Someone who would have otherwise lived a long and healthy life, because dark magick does not play fair. You might have still been willing if you knew…but I doubt she would have ever forgiven you.”

“That’s not true.” The denial that left my lips burned on my tongue. Because I believed it. In the way Calix merely bowed; didn’t try to deny or even apologize.

My heart was obliterated.

“Why?” I broke. So much rushed to the surface, and I was drowning. “What did I do to make you hate me so much!”

Still Calix did not move. He showed no flicker of emotion or reaction. All he did was await the verdict.

“I believe she asked you a question,” Nyte said.

With gritted teeth, Calix’s head was yanked up by an invisible hand. My lip wobbled as I met his cold eyes. They didn’t hold hatred or resentment or bear anything but a hollow existence that stole my anger.

“I had to try,” he confessed. “They said all I had to do was make sure you were alone, and they would take care of it. They said they would save her.”

“Who did?” Nyte coaxed.

“I don’t know.”

Calix choked, and I couldn’t stop my hand from reaching for Nyte, pressing his chest. Somehow it worked to stop his attack. Instead Nyte became distant, his eyes fixed on Calix. Searching, calculating.

I realized then he was looking for the truth himself.

“All I see is the man and the vampire you killed,” he said. Frustration flexed in his jaw. Nyte blinked and the present returned to him. He glanced down at my hand, and with a flush I dropped it. “It’s not the first attempt on your life. One night, you gave your handmaiden your cloak. She was mistaken for you by scent. Then your competitor took your carriage—another opportunity where you would have been completely alone—and he was murdered within it instead.”

The blame for their deaths was a blow to my gut. “Who would want to kill me?”

“A lot of people,” Nyte said. “But most imminently, and the one who is trying so hard, I can’t be sure. It has been my greatest torment, but I will find them.”

“I hate to break up a moment,” Zathrian said, “but the king is almost here.”

I was torn between staying with the inexplicable safety Nyte radiated despite everything…and running so far from him.

“Take him to the tower,” Nyte instructed. “For now.”

Calix was pulled to his feet. He didn’t meet my heartbroken stare or see the step I took toward him before Nyte stopped me with a hand around my waist. I wanted to speak with him alone, unable to see evil when he’d acted out of desperation for the one he loved. For Cassia I had to try to find forgiveness.

“You’ve spared him for a while. It’s more than he deserves.”

I tore myself away from Nyte, spinning to him with a heated glare. “You will not kill him,” I said, letting the threat linger in my tone.

I waited for him to mock me for it, but his face only drew a line as if he wanted to go to war with me, not against me. Trickles of last night threatened to become entangled with the other ways I knew his passion could be unleashed.

Torching my thoughts, I kept my composure to level with him. “At least let Zath go.”

Nyte relaxed as though the request tired him.

“He’s not holding me, Astraea.”

I looked at Zath. This man I had grown close to over a year. Someone I trusted as much as I did Cassia… I saw no struggle. Nothing that gave away his words and actions weren’t his own. His face fell with apology.

My throat was too dry. Tightening. I couldn’t breathe.

“Have you come to your senses, my son?”

The chill of the king’s voice locked me still. Who he referred to… My emotions switched so fast I couldn’t stop them. A cool wrath turned me to him, and I wasn’t much, hardly a threat, but it didn’t stop the step I took to side with Nyte this time.

The king eyed us both, lingering a look on my hand as it tightened around the key.

“Hand it over and we can forget our past grievances.”

Guards flooded into the room behind the king. So many, and these ones didn’t seem to yield to Nyte as easily.

“My brother always did take after you with his bold stupidity,” Nyte said. He looked over all the opposition and some shifted, exposing their wariness. “I see you’ve created your own personal ensemble against me with Starlight Matter. It’s of no consequence.”

The odds were far too great. I couldn’t fathom where his confidence had come from.

“You can’t kill me. You’ll never find a way back,” the king spat.

“You’re wrong. I’ll admit I was a fool for believing I needed you. I let you dangle that over me for centuries. But I have a way now, and you…are no longer needed.”

Nyte stripped the king down from a dark and feared leader to a frightened soldier in mere seconds.

“You’ll erupt chaos with this. You have no idea what has been building in your absence. Let me help you, Rainyte.”

Nyte flinched at the name.

It repeated itself back to me with a foreign taste. I realized the face I’d spent so long with also had three names.

One of birth.

One of reputation.

One he chose.

Rainyte. Nightsdeath. Nyte.

All of them correlated to the one thing that couldn’t be denied. He was made of the night. He moved with shadows and stars, his aura always dark, but with a wandering soul.

“Don’t call me that,” he said, distant, cold. “You took me from the one who named me that.”

“I saved you.”

“A slave passed from one monster to another still wears shackles.”

“I never wanted you to be that. I wanted you to be everything.”

“You wanted a killer while you took the glory.”

“I did what I had to do,” the king seethed, turning vicious once more. “For us. Your brother saw that.”

Nyte laughed bitterly. “You have no idea what you created out of both of us.”

“I couldn’t be the father you wanted, but you became so much stronger because of it.”

“You’re right.” Nyte turned to me unexpectedly. Our eyes met, and I didn’t know what I felt. Watching the exchange with his father had been crushing my chest slowly. Maybe no one else could hear the faint split in his voice that gave away he was hurting despite the cold loathing. Or maybe there was no one else who truly cared to hear it, and that almost collapsed my knees.

“Another truth for you, Astraea. I am the son of two of the most villainous, power-hungry beings to have ever existed across two fucking universes. I am not good. I was not born to be, nor do I think this world deserves it.” His confession cut through me. “But you deserve it. And I wanted to be good for you though I can never be. Do you believe that?”

My heartbeats filled the silence. “Yes,” I breathed.

His pain…I felt it. Wanted to take it despite everything.

His gaze dropped like defeat—only for a second before he twisted back to his father.

“If we keep her alive they will remain weakened,” the king said, trying to reason with him, but it had the opposite effect. “I planned to protect her.”

“She is not the problem. We are. I should have done this long ago.”

As Nyte stepped forward, bow strings groaned all around the room. My pulse spiked, triggering the key, which warmed in my palm. Nyte dared another step despite the lethal iron tips that tracked him. Zathrian’s singing blade was the only thing to cut the tense silence as he closed in behind me.

I didn’t have a second to react when just as the king’s gaze slipped from Nyte to me, so did the point of over a dozen arrowheads.

And they released.

All I could do was brace, clamping my eyes shut on instinct, but instead of crying out at anything piercing my flesh, I was engulfed by waves of pure, undiluted power. The spectacle when my lids flew open to find the luminance was breathtaking. Wind tangled my hair with the wall of rippling dark starlight.

Then there was Nyte. Standing before it so still and calm, but careful…controlled.

Splintered arrowheads littered the floor, and I gawked at the display of magick, wondering if I would ever truly know the many layers to the power he harbored.

“Don’t provoke me again.” Nyte’s tone was chilling as the wall came down like a cascade of black smoke.

“Are you afraid of what she will think when she sees the true version of what you are?” the king taunted.

“What you made me,” Nyte snarled.

The king’s mouth curled. He stared at his son as if he’d created the perfect monster. “Yes. And you have always been an ungrateful coward.”

Never before had I truly been afraid of Nyte. Not until now, as I witnessed his unparalleled magick and listened to the king goad him for more.

“Zath,” I whispered. His touch was the only comfort in the room.

“You’re going to be safe,” he said.

“Get her out of here.” Nyte’s low command came from strained tethers of control. He didn’t even turn to us.

Zath tried to pull me, but I stood firm.

“I’m not afraid of you.”

His back was to us, his shoulders rising and falling so steadily. A calculating, lethal calm. A glow broke from the cuffs of his jacket like gold spilled over his tightly clamped fists. Nyte’s hand dipped into his pocket, and I thought I’d seen the round brass item in his possession before. He flipped it and let the king’s eyes dwell on it. Whatever he found etched on the item widened the king’s eyes.

“Where did you get that?”

As the king stepped forward for a closer observation, Nyte’s fist clamped, and it disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

“I’m going to find out the truth,” Nyte said calmly. “And there is no reason for you to be alive anymore. You have been a parasite of realms for too long.”

“You think your mother is any better?” The king chuckled.

“Stop provoking me,” Nyte warned with trembling restraint.

“Why? Because you’re afraid to face the truth? The danger you will always be to her.”

Nyte didn’t respond.

The king laughed again, and every hair on my body stood, anticipating something sinister was about to erupt.

“Your own mother didn’t want you. And neither will she once you show her what you are, Nightsdeath.”

“Do you really think I’m vulnerable to your words after all this time, Father?”

The king’s head tilted, then his eyes shifting to me locked my spine. “No, but you might be to save her.”

A cool breath of metal met my throat, pinching before breaking skin…

The ground rumbled like a quake beneath us.

It happened so impossibly fast, and my stomach reacted first, twisting with a sickening crack. A few splatters of warmth fell over my collar from behind.

“You really want to die by the hands of the villain you made me?” Nyte said in a cruel voice I didn’t recognize, so close behind me now I stood deathly still. “Fine.”

My compulsion to turn won against the urgency that screamed at me to run.

The tattoos on Nyte’s neck glowed, and his eyes…I’d seen them alive before, but this…it was as if the sun were leaking out from them, unable to be contained any longer. It diffused like gold mist from his irises. Black vines crawled up his neck, over his jaw, and to the delicate tips of his ears.

Not human. Not vampire. Not fae. Not celestial.

I couldn’t be certain what Nyte was.

He was still there, somewhere beneath it. And despite the frightening change to his appearance I still thought him to be the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Though I was unchanged…it was like he was slowly slipping in his recognition of me.

A hand grazed mine, and without breaking Nyte’s tunneling stare, I was guided carefully away from him. Only when I’d taken a few steps did I look down. My hand rose at the gruesome sight of the beheaded guard who’d held the blade to my throat.

“He once told me something about him,” Zath said close to my ear. “That he has this place his mind goes to. It only recognizes darkness. It wants to side with it, and anyone with light it wants to eradicate.”

I couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell me.

“It’s true,” Nyte said, his tone near taunting, but it was as if he still fought himself. “And your light is insufferable.”

Nyte almost took a step toward me until the king’s merriment caught his undiluted rage.

That was the moment he let go.

I faintly heard Zath’s curse before he pushed me behind him, and a heartbeat later I was stumbling out the way of his blade clanging with a guard’s. My heart thundered, and I stepped after the flash of pink hair, but Rose was too fast and already fighting just as lethally by Zath’s side.

Then there was me. Weak, unskilled, and all I could do was watch on in horror as my two friends fought against so many who outmatched them. And Nyte…

Stars above.

He was mesmerizing in the way he moved. I should have been horrified by the ease with which he killed, blinking through darkness, snapping necks, shredding flesh. It was the most dark and twisted thing I’d ever admired.

My palm heated, growing almost too hot, as if something were gathering in the key, and it was either unleash it or let it consume me.

Forms rushed past me, and I cried out to warn Zath and Rose as I realized they were the Golden Guard—but the sound died in my throat when the guards started fighting with them.

What the fuck is happening?

A touch on my shoulder made me whirl with an attack I didn’t get to unleash as I found familiar dark eyes smiling at me. I didn’t think I could be more dumbfounded.

“Davina?” I examined her from head to toe. She wasn’t dressed in her usual cotton gown; her hair was styled in neat braids, a beautiful coronet. What she clutched I had never seen before: a fan crafted of metal. Even folded the points were lethal.

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions,” she said, too soft and out of place for the commotion erupting behind us.

“That’s putting it lightly.”

Davina winced, but her eye caught on something behind me that switched her delicate expression to one of steady focus. I could only stare in bewilderment as she shifted her stance, snapped the metal fan open, and cast out her hand.

At the noise of choking close behind me, I turned just in time to watch the vampire fall and see the hiltless dagger protruding from his neck. Davina’s fan was now one metal piece less, and I became fascinated by the weapon.

“We need to get you out of here,” she urged me.

“I’m not running.”

Not again. Not ever again.

The heat crawled up my arm, tuning to a hum over my skin, and as I glanced over at him I found a similar affliction to Nyte. From the cuff of my sleeve glowed silver.

I’d spent so long wondering who I was, and I couldn’t cower from it now I was so close to getting my answer.

I surveyed the room of blood and flesh, enemies tearing at each other, and though they were outnumbered, those who fought on Nyte’s side were not outmatched.

It had erupted into a scene of savagery and destruction, and though I harbored no warmth for the king or any vampire, this couldn’t go on.

I answered the key.

Like giving over to a slow lap of sleep only to be pulled under all at once, the key grew to a staff, twisting between my hands, and I headed for the raging battle. Not to join them, but to end it.

Clutching the staff between both hands, I cried out, slamming it to the ground, unsure of how it knew of my wishes but pouring all I had into making sure it kept our side safe from the blast. What exploded was time and space itself. Otherworldly beauty that could kill, birth, and transcend. My body rippled with the gales of light coursing through me. My teeth clenched and my stance firmed, and I wondered if this was how I would die.

The energy was sucked back to the key all at once, and as I held it with little knowledge of how to wield it, I was slammed into by a force so powerful I thought I could travel through realms this way. I panted on the ground, trying to disperse the light that stole my vision so I could be sure I hadn’t harmed Zath or Rose or Davina. Even…

The first thing to break through my void was an alluring mist of gold from the irises that targeted me.

“Nyte,” I breathed, shuffling back on my hands as he stalked to me.

The expression he wore was nothing of kindness or recognition.

The throne room was gone. All that surrounded us was my light fighting the darkness that hissed and primed against it.

“It’s me, Nyte,” I tried again, my panic rising.

What have I done?

In my next blink he was in front of me, and I gasped, holding the key staff in both hands as a block when I fell to my back. Nyte gripped it too, straddling me, bearing down with a weight I began to tremble against.

“Nightsdeath,” I whispered.

He canted his head.

Not just a name; it was a part of him.

And this being had only one goal to achieve with me: to end the light.

“Such a fool,” he said, so low and cold. “I told you to leave. I warned you—” His teeth clenched, eyes scrunching shut, and I grappled with the hope that he was fighting himself. “Gahhh. Everything would be so easy if you just died. Died and didn’t come back.”

“This isn’t you,” I choked out when he pushed down further, sure to crush my chest if I let go. Tears pooled in my eyes. “I think…I think I came back for you. And you…you waited.”

Confusion drew his brows together. The gold of his irises diffused every time he looked to be trying to find himself. “Lies.” He shook his head. “So many lies. And so much fucking light.”

Too much light.

I closed my eyes with a whimper when he pushed again, and my arms trembled with the pain to hold him off. My elbows gave in, but instead of allowing the key to crush me, I listened to it clamor away right before hands clamped around my neck.

I grappled with his hands.

“You once told me something,” I wheezed, not opening my eyes to focus. “You said the brightest star needs the darkest night. And I…I understand now.”

The pressure eased, but not his threat that could strangle me in a second.

“People fear the dark because they think it’s where monsters thrive. They’re wrong. The dark belongs to the stars who can’t shine without it. It’s where passion burns brightest. It’s peace and it’s company. The darkness is you.”

I dared to open my eyes, braced to find the loathing stare that would slice me again.

“The brightest star needs the darkest night,” I repeated, finding him through words that bound us like a promise. “I need you. And I’m not afraid of you.”

Nyte blinked and the gold mist expelling from his irises dissipated. The glow died out. The black vines against his skin reversed, fading until the paleness returned.

My sob of relief escaped when his warm palm released my throat to cup my cheek, and Nyte leaned his forehead down to mine.

“I’m sorry,” he said. The pain in his voice cleaved me. “I’m so sorry, Starlight.”

I opened my eyes but couldn’t see him. Because the light was gone—but we were content.

“It’s okay,” I said, reaching out to touch his face. “I’m okay, and you’re going to be too.”

“It’s not okay. Not even close.” He panted, exerted after everything it had taken out of him. “It’s been so long since I gave over like that. I didn’t mean to because I knew the target you could become to that…thing I am. But the moment that blade touched your neck I couldn’t stop it…”

I pushed up, tangling a hand into his hair to kiss him, and while I wanted to erupt in the void we created, Nyte pulled away far too soon. Light penetrated our cloak of darkness, and my anxiety spiked to banish it again, but Nyte pulled me to standing.

“I’m in control,” he assured me, but there was something distant, broken, about his tone. He let me go, and I couldn’t stop watching the luminance flood his features when he wouldn’t look at me. Nothing about him glowed anymore as the throne room expanded around us again, and I couldn’t shake myself out of my stupor.

“Thank fuck,” Zathrian said, but I was barely aware of his touch as he took my arms to scan me over.

“What did you do to her?” Rose snarled, blade angled, and she braced against him.

My chest tugged for her fierce protection. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve it. Even against her greatest enemy.

Nyte didn’t respond. He watched her with steel features, but he didn’t move.

I surveyed the destruction. So much death. The dark marble floors were glistening around the torn bodies of the fallen. A winter breeze wrapped around me, and I shuddered, casting a glance at the shattered rows of windows from the blast.

It all came back to me, and after confirming the safety of Zath, Rose, and Davina I looked for the key.

The purple glow had winked out peacefully, and it lay as a still, solid staff. I thought to retrieve it, but a hand reached out to it, and I gasped.

“She will be your ruination,” the king hissed.

“No—!”

Light flared to life from the key, so bright I had to shield my eyes from the waves of power too. It lessened when a form twisted in front of me, and the hand touching my waist I knew to be Nyte’s.

When the air no longer hummed I pushed his chest gently.

The king was gone.

He’d taken the key.

“Well, shit,” Zath said, his labored voice drawing my attention to him. He clutched his abdomen, bracing a hand on his knee, and only then did I see the crimson staining his tanned skin.

“You’re hurt,” I said, casting out the horror of what had just happened to head for him.

“Just a scratch.” He waved it off.

“Hardly,” Rose muttered. Her hand around his arm was an unnecessary aid, and though her face remained firm with ire for him, it was laced with concern.

“It’ll heal,” Zath countered.

“You need stitches.”

“Your thorns might do the trick.”

Rose glowered as she let him go, and they continued their bickering as my attention slipped from them. I was compelled to find the source of something cracking slowly within me. A silent kind of suffering.

I found Nyte.

He didn’t take his gaze away from the exact place his father had lain. I expected him to be angry at the loss, perhaps even fearful of what it meant now the king had the one thing he needed for the most terrifying of deeds.

Yet all he was locked still with was pain.

For a moment he was a child. One who had not only never known the love of a parent, but who had been hurt so truly by the two people who were supposed to shield him, protect and care for him, most in the world.

For a second, Nyte might not have known how closely I watched him, wanting to see him, to witness something he’d been holding onto within…finally break.