The Stars are Dying : (Nytefall: Book 1)

My chest ached from the pounding of my heart, the waves of grief and confusion waging a storm in my rib cage. I was so, so tired. I didn’t lift my eyes from the ground even when I felt Nyte’s approach, too exhausted to argue. Or move away.

I gave myself over to his plans for me.

“Starlight.”

He spoke so softly I thought I could close my eyes and pretend to be in the bell tower. Everything I’d witnessed from the moment Drystan imposed would be a horrible nightmare Nyte could soothe me from.

This wasn’t a dream. Gravity was pulling me to the ground, and before it won, an arm went around me.

“I’m sorry for everything. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

I cast pleading eyes up to him, a vibration skittering over me, and my panic spiked.

“And I hope you’ll believe me when I say I am so sorry for what I have to do.”

“What are you doing?” Zathrian called.

My protest began to rise as I tried to shrug out of Nyte’s hold.

“You knew this would have to happen,” Nyte said to him.

Casting Zath a pleading look over my shoulder, I saw his lips purse as if he understood but it twisted disturbance in him. Rose flared, taking a step toward me that was intercepted by Zath.

“Get the fuck out of my way,” she snarled.

“Can you just relax for one damn moment to hear an explanation?”

“You’re a traitor if you let him take her.”

“Please let me go,” I said.

I hated it.

I hated him for reducing me to a role I’d tried to break free from. The helpless girl from Hektor’s manor.

“I don’t have a choice.”

Damningly familiar shadows began to snake over me, and I whimpered, struggling against Nyte’s hold.

When we stilled it was dark. I dared to look up, and the grim walls of our surroundings made my blood run cold. What would have toppled me if he let go…were the iron bars behind him.

“Let me out,” I breathed.

No. Anything but this. Confinement.

“Let me OUT!” I screamed, not caring about dignity as my fists pounded his chest.

He said nothing. Not at my pleas. Not at my tears.

I couldn’t see through them.

I couldn’t breathe through the lump that swelled in my throat, taunting that the air was limited, and I would die here.

Nyte held me until I exhausted myself, reduced to nothing but a frightened girl who clutched him instead, choosing to accept the warmth as something to ground myself with, as much as I despised it. His hand stroked down the hair over my nape.

“Don’t leave me alone here,” I whispered.

“I won’t.”

It didn’t make sense, but right now it was a relief.

“I want to go back.”

“I can’t take you anywhere yet.”

My struggle began to rise, and I pushed away from him. This time he let me go. I seethed at him as though he could turn to ash from my stare alone.

“You’re a fucking hypocrite.”

Nyte’s frown turned dark. Daring.

“You killed Hektor, but you are no better than him.”

That made something lethally frightening cloud his face. But I was beyond caring about his damn feelings.

“It is because of him I have to do this,” he said as cold as death. “If I could kill him again I would. Even now, I’m tormented that he’s dead but also glad for it. Soon you won’t be able to speak his name because it will no longer exist to anyone.”

“You can’t erase a name from the minds of everyone in the realm,” I spat.

Nyte smiled. A slow, villainous curl I couldn’t believe I’d missed before.

“You underestimate me. Though I have never underestimated you, and it is why this measure is so necessary.” Nyte dipped a hand into his pocket, and what he drew forth made my mouth water. I took a step toward him, but in a blink of starry shadow he appeared on the opposite side of the bars.

“I need them,” I said in a panic, reaching for the bars to curl my trembling hands around them. A desperate pain grew in me now my pills were within reach. My head throbbed wildly.

“He’s been suppressing everything you are since the moment he found you,” Nyte said, controlled wrath filling his tone that stopped my frantic thoughts to listen. Taking a capsule from the bottle, he looked at it as if it were an enemy he could kill. “Drugging you with these, so it will now be a very difficult two weeks while they leave your system.” He crushed the pills between his fingers, spilling a silver liquid. I knew what it was, except this was darker than any I’d seen before. “Starlight Matter. Enhanced with such a powerful, forbidden suppression spell that your body has become dependent on it. It won’t kill you to stop it, though you may very well feel close to death at times.”

I shook my head, dizzy with the thought, because I couldn’t hear much while my mind drummed with want for what he was denying me.

“Give them to me,” I said. I didn’t care about power or anything. I didn’t care about what I was or could be. “Give me the damn pills, Nyte!”

Pain turned to agony in his eyes, but I gave a breathy laugh. A sound that didn’t wholly belong to me. Something volatile overtook my outward reactions, and at the same time I cowered into a helpless heap in my own mind.

“You don’t have to pretend you care. I’ll leave; you’ll never see me again. Just give them to me.”

It was all my blood roared for, slicking my skin.

“You’re already at your limit without them. I’m hoping the worst of it will pass sooner than I think. I am sorry this happened to you. Sorry I didn’t see it sooner. I knew he had to be doing something to keep your power locked. There are other ways, but this was his method of keeping you weak enough to think you needed him and that he was helping you.”

I turned around, unable to keep looking at him with my murderous thoughts. I leaned my back to the bars.

“There is only one master deceiver in all this,” I said. With my world collapsing anyway, the realization couldn’t harm me any more than it already was. “You—Nightsdeath.”

“It was humorous to watch you conclude it to be my spineless brother.”

I gave a bitter laugh. “You’re the realm’s worst nightmare. They speak your name as if you exist in every shadow. Yet it seems even the darkness can be captured.”

He advanced to me slowly, stopping so close behind me I closed my eyes with the faint warmth, knowing he could draw me to him if it weren’t for the cage he’d put me in. “There is no being on this earth that exists without a weakness,” he said, the words traveling like a lover’s caress over my collar.

I turned, curling my hands around the bars just below his. “You are every part the monster they speak of.”

His jaw worked with the flinch of his eyes. There it was: a split-second glimpse of his vulnerability. My depraved side had found a weapon.

“There is a monster in all of us,” he said, hiding any emotion from me as though he knew my wickedness at the forefront would use it. “Those who pretend they don’t harbor one are the ones who end up slipping. At some point or another it comes out. And the longer it is denied, the harder it will be unleashed all at once.”

“You lied to me.”

“No, Starlight. I have always been right here.”

I had no answer for that.

“If I had told you who I was, corrected you when you assumed it was my brother, you would have forgotten the Libertatem completely. You would never have trusted me.”

The mention of Drystan once again slammed into me as if I’d forgotten. Another unfathomable truth, the discovery that they were brothers.

“How can I trust you now?”

“It won’t happen today—maybe not ever. But it is your choice once this is over.”

My forehead pressed to the cool metal.

“You need to rest now,” he said. “I’ll be right here with you.”

I shook my head. “I want to speak to Zathrian.”

“I think it’s best he stays away for now.”

My fists tightened. It was another deception I couldn’t comprehend, torn between wanting to rage and demand why or break down in utter heartbreak that I had no one.

Absolutely no one.

“Rosalind?” I asked with a beat of dread.

“She’ll be fine. Though if she keeps rampaging things, we may have to detain her until you’re well too.”

“You won’t touch her,” I snapped.

“I have no desire to. Zath is…handling that one.” The nickname he used further sliced through me.

“How long have you been using him?”

“I have never used him. I gave him a purpose he accepted willingly.”

“All this time.”

He didn’t answer.

“I want to be alone.”

“No, you don’t.”

My glare heated, rivaling the fire in his irises. I took a deep breath to calm myself, turning to pace away from him.

“I’m going to get out of this cage, Nyte. And when I do, the first thing you will feel is my dagger in your chest.”

He hadn’t taken it from me when he could have. I didn’t accept it as a kindness because it wouldn’t have mattered if he had; I would have found some other way to kill him.

“I’m looking forward to it.”

What an arrogant, deviant asshole. The shuffle of his boots walking away from the cell I hoped was the sound of him leaving me the fuck alone.

I couldn’t think straight with him near me.

I couldn’t begin to process a single thing as my small world expanded to be more than I could comprehend all at once, shattering my reality to fragments. Pieces I had longed for, but which were now buried, confusing me so much I couldn’t sort through them all. My hands tightened through my hair as I paced the cell back and forth. Within me, calming waves lapped over the sharp panic stabbing at my head as if I were bleeding internally. Then my chest. Fuck, it hurt so badly each breath became a spear attacking my heart.

I curled into myself on the cot. More tranquil notes aided the pounding of my head, and I was both so tired and reeling with maddening thoughts I couldn’t sleep.

“Make it stop,” I begged. It was all I had. I needed it all to stop chanting and humming. “It hurts.”

“I’m going to take it away, just for you to rest,” he said softly.

I nodded, laying down the fight against him to accept this because I feared I wouldn’t have the chance to achieve my retribution if I didn’t.

“You’re safe, Astraea.”

In my mind, a shadow engulfed the troubles bartering for my attention. One by one it silenced them.

“Do you believe that?”

I shuffled down until I lay as my body became weightless. My eyes fluttered with the drowsy waves. Through the grim gray, all I saw were flickers of gold. Flickers that had once made me believe…

“Yes,” I whispered.