The Stars are Dying : (Nytefall: Book 1)

I couldn’t remember the sound I drifted off to, nor for how long I’d slept. A creak by the door awoke me. Thinking Cassia had decided to leave for Calix, I rolled onto my side, cursing at the realization I’d fallen asleep fully clothed. I should have at least taken off my boots.

Groaning, I pushed myself up. Rubbing my eyes, I could barely make out the figure by the far end of the bed. Until a choked sound raised every hair on my body and I discovered not one person, but two.

“Cassia.” I could barely whisper her name. I tried to lunge up toward her, but I swayed, and something caught me.

Someone.

“Impressive how fast you figured out that riddle.”

The hairs on my nape stood. I knew the voice, the locks of brown hair and hazel eyes I would see if I turned, but I only focused on one thing. Cassia.

Crying out, I strained, but his grip was iron. A heat crept over every inch of me, taking me away from that room—from myself. I didn’t know what I became next to escape him, only that desperation took over as I’d never seen Cassia so still, not fighting back.

“It will be over in a moment. Then I’ll collect my reward,” the man cooed in my ear.

When a cold lick of metal came to rest along my neck…

I would never know where my delirious instinct came from.

Reaching in front of me, my hand felt the familiar hilt, not even remembering where I’d last left it in my desperation, only that I’d done this before. My stormstone dagger emerged in my grip from a void of dark starlight, flipping as I drove it through his ribs behind me.

I met my mark.

The man’s loud cry rattled my senses, and my adrenaline coursed fast. He fell to his knees, and as I spun, the slick glide of my blade stunned me too late. Blood pooled over his hand where he clutched his neck, and I stumbled back in horror, dropping my dagger. The clamor of it didn’t register, only the man’s chokes. I couldn’t believe the precision of such an attack.

“Cass,” I breathed. That all-consuming fear seized me again, making me forget the gruesome way my victim coughed on his own blood in the final seconds of his life. When I turned, I didn’t advance, but the dagger I’d swiped soared.

This man gave off a shrill sound as I lodged the blade in his back. He let Cassia go, and only then did I see his pointed ears as he released my dearest friend from what I would forever remember as death’s kiss. Yet how had he known her name to take part of her soul?

Feral brown eyes spun to me, and in my utter shock and panic at watching Cassia’s body fall, my unexplainable fight instinct was lost. He managed to reach and pull the dagger free. When he held it, outrage hardened his expression.

“I can’t say I’m disappointed I get to kill you instead,” he said, tossing my dagger away.

Then he lunged for me.

I cried out at his vise grip on my arms. His sights snapped to my neck, and I became immobile in my panic. Sinful fingers traced over the unruly scar, and the soulless…he licked his lips.

He smiled, revealing two pointed teeth, and I believed I would die today. “Just a taste,” he breathed as if something had overcome him. Vacant eyes wouldn’t let go of the claim he’d made on my throat. His lips pulled back, head leaning in…

“I said aim for the heart.”

I stumbled back as the soulless gave a piecing wail. Releasing me, I watched him fall to his knees, body jerking, and as his face hit the ground I found my dagger protruding from his back—on the opposite side to my first strike. My rib cage came close to exploding. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears, and I searched frantically for Nyte, whose voice held such rage and malice I trembled with its echo.

He wasn’t here.

Real time crawled back to me, settling the worst dread of my existence. I stayed rooted to the spot, unable to turn around. Until I heard her voice croak.

“Astraea…”

My eyes filled when I saw her. My steps were weightless until I gave in to gravity to fall by Cassia’s side, the elation of hearing her snuffed out cruelly when I beheld the weak sight. I had never seen her so scared. “You’ll be all right,” I said, trying to be the brave one, but that had never been me. It was always Cassia who made the monsters seem small as long as she was bigger. Her skin was too pale, her breathing labored in short, wheezing gasps.

“I don’t— I— I don’t feel good.”

Cradling her upper body, I tucked her hair away with trembling fingers. “You’re just in shock, but he let you go. You’re going to survive it.”

There would be no telling how much time the soulless had stolen from her, but my mind reeled that it was too much. Far too much.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she said, her voice barely a croak as if it had aged a century. “I’m just tired.”

“You can’t sleep,” I begged.

“I-I’m so glad you came…” Cassia’s gaze became glassy, staring skyward. Her hand went over mine, and I clutched it tight, though it created another crack in my heart. “I didn’t want you to feel alone again.”

The splinter deepened, and I bled sorrow and anguish and terrible dread, drowning in my own despair. This can’t be happening. Her eyes fluttered closed, but I rocked her awake.

“You’ve never left me alone. Please—you can’t leave me now.” I broke. I couldn’t stop the helpless flood from filling my lungs as I begged. “You’re all I have.”

“I didn’t get to tell him…” she said.

I blinked furiously to keep every image of her clear.

“He told me he loved me tonight, and I…I should have said it back, but I didn’t. Can you tell him for me?”

“You’re going to tell him yourself, Cass.”

“Promise me you’ll tell him I love him.” Her hand shook as she tried to raise it to my cheek, and I held it there, not feeling the stream of my tears until she brushed them slowly.

“I promise,” I whimpered. No, no, no. Cassia has to live.

“We need to win, Astraea.”

“I need you.”

“Do it for me. For all of us.”

I shook my head, unable to comprehend what she was saying when my world was close to obliterating.

“It’s so cold,” she said, eyes drifting shut, and her hand dropped limp in my grasp. She appeared so beautifully peaceful, her skin so perfect and pale, but her chest…it was so still.

No. She can’t leave me!

“Cassia.” I shook her, but this time she didn’t flinch. “Cassia, wake up.” I sniffed and panic seized me tight. I shifted up to my knees, trying to rally focus, and laid my hand on her chest. It was warm, and I grasped at threads of fleeting hope in my despair, feeling a hum beneath my palm. “You’re all I have,” I kept repeating as if it could breathe life back into her still body.

Light began to glow where I touched, and I wondered if her soul could be returning to her form. The vampire was dead, and perhaps that meant he would give back what had been stolen.

I gasped when the light glowed brighter, breaking through her skin until my palm came away. Under my touch, the sphere of white and blue shone with a pulse of energy I became entranced by. “Please come back,” I whispered to it, somehow—impossibly—feeling her spirit within it.

“What have you done?”

My fist closed tight with the surge up my arm that burst in my chest as the light winked out. As if the ordeal had paused time and life had only just now returned, my eyes fell to find Cassia deathly still in my arms.

Death. The darkest force that rippled with devastation in the wake of every claim.

It slammed into me so wholly, shattering everything I was, so much so that I thought I felt it reach out a second hand in offering to me.

“Cass,” Calix muttered, his low tone of dread bringing me back to my cruel reality. One that would go on without her, the echoes of death’s laughter fading since it wouldn’t take me too.

“It was…” I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t look at him in the doorway.

“No.” Calix’s steps rushing toward us made me hug her tighter in complete denial, knowing he would tear us apart. “Get away from her!” he snarled.

I gave a sharp sob when he gripped my shoulders, trying to pry me away, but I couldn’t let go. Then cold metal touched my neck, and if I weren’t crying so hard I might have asked him to use the blade. It should be Cassia cradling my body instead.

It should be neither of us.

“Let her go, or so help me, Astraea.”

I had never heard such a promising threat from him. I looked over Cassia’s face, blinking back my tears in frustration that they might make me miss a flicker of movement since this had all been some sick, twisted nightmare.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

Yet she remained so quiet while her voice replayed in my head, and suddenly my years skipped on without her while she froze at twenty-five. What if I forgot the notes of her laugh? What if the deep blue of her eyes started to fade and I forgot the smile that never failed to light up a room?

“You were all I had,” I whispered. My arms loosened, and Calix didn’t miss a second as his sword left me and he dropped down to take my place.

I stumbled to my feet, so beyond freezing I was numb.

“Get out of here,” Calix muttered low.

I bent for my dagger lodged in the vampire’s back, but I couldn’t peel my eyes from Calix. The way he rocked the body of the first person to have ever seen me.

I was nothing without Cassia.

A ghost.

A forgotten existence.

“I don’t care what happens to you. And I can’t promise I won’t kill you myself if you don’t leave,” he seethed. A beat of desolate silence passed before his head snapped around, rattling me with his loathing stare through red eyes that glittered with misery. “Leave!”

I tripped a few steps back. I didn’t remember swiping up my satchel, but it was slung around my body, and occasionally my hand would reach for the walls that closed in as I tried to make it out.

Outside, the nip of the night wind didn’t register. Nothing did. I walked and walked. Gravity didn’t weigh me down, so maybe I had died with Cassia and become a breathing ghost.

No destination.

No belongings.

Nobody.