The Stars are Dying : (Nytefall: Book 1)

I cursed the sad, cold firepit that mocked me. Stripped of my extra layers, I tried to no avail to spark flames. It was hopeless when I hadn’t a clue how to do it, and I was too damn cold to keep trying.

My eyes lit up as I remembered the castle had running water. Hot water. It had to be magick, or perhaps a marker of wealth Hektor hadn’t reached yet. A pain clenched in my stomach to wonder if that was what he sought: more. The life of power and luxury he had would never have been enough for him while there was always more to gain.

I cast away the thoughts of him as I watched the tub start to fill. I dipped my hand in the warmth. My teeth clenched against the pain, but as my skin adjusted to the drastic change in temperature I moaned contentedly.

“This isn’t how I imagined I’d be hearing those sounds from you.” Nyte’s voice interrupted my peace.

On my knees, I barely had the energy to cast him a scowl. All I cared about was the tub filling with water so I could throw myself in. Though I had to have been thinking of him. More specifically, recalling one crucial fact.

“You saved me,” I said, staring into the water’s rippling reflection just as I did on the icy lake. I turned my head then, needing his reaction in case he evaded an answer. “You pulled me from the water. I wouldn’t have been able to do that myself. I didn’t want to—”

“I know,” he said sharply.

To detract from the tension he made ripple through me, I stood, searching through the cabinets for some soaps. I poured various delicious scents into the bath, attracted to the honey and lavender hitting my nostrils. The water turned a milky white while the flow created bubbles. I smothered the noises in my throat so as not to give him the satisfaction.

“I was alone on that ice,” I went on, “and even if your chase wasn’t real…you pulled me out of the water.”

“Are you sure?” His voice echoed in a taunt, rattling the confidence I’d mustered.

“Yes.”

Everything I reflected on I could now see in a new light. The things that gave him away. How his touch was always featherlight even when I was sure his body would feel firmer the times he pressed himself to me. The variations in tone missing from his voice even when I believed him to be speaking aloud. I was now aware of the echo that put distance in it when it was only his illusion standing right before me.

“Before then…” I struggled to go back. While I was certain he had been there at the lake, everything else was cold and blurry. “In Hektor’s cell?” I couldn’t believe that every memory I had now required reassessment. “There or not there?” I asked.

“That is for you to decide.”

I scrunched my eyes, hoping he wasn’t hell-bent on driving me to madness. “Were you physically there?” I amended. I already knew his answer, but my heart squeezed tightly, wanting to be wrong.

“No.”

I turned to him, studying his finely made black jacket, this time with no color but beautiful black embroidery. Not a mark scuffing the boots over his fitted pants. An illusion. My face pinched as I looked him over from head to toe, admiring his clean face and tamed midnight hair. A lie.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” I whispered.

“With pity. I don’t need it.”

That wasn’t what I felt, but I only dropped my eyes. What grew inside me was something like anger crossed with heartbreak, so strong I didn’t know how I’d allowed myself to care this much. All we shared was a means to an end if I decided to agree to his partnership deal.

“Hektor’s men who grabbed me…they died. You-you had to have killed them.”

“If I were there, they would have died the second they touched you.”

I snapped my gaze to him, not expecting such cool certainty, for him to have decided so surely he would have killed for me. His features remained cut like steel, no teasing or taunting. Nyte leaned against the doorframe. I couldn’t stop my gaze from following the hand he slipped into his pocket, remembering the heavy iron he wore.

“Does it hurt?”

His lips firmed, deliberating every word he shared with me. “When you’ve lived through the worst pain invisible to the world, that which can be inflicted on flesh becomes insignificant.”

The hurt in me this time touched upon something deeper. So much more frighteningly deeper. I wanted to know so much about him. Things that should be meaningless. What color attracted him most. What he enjoyed doing. What he liked to eat. Everything that felt like a dangerous venture to find out.

“The soulless who would have killed me too…” I trailed off with the sudden horror of my realization. “You killed him?” I dared to look, and his grim expression gave me my answer.

He wasn’t there.

“You killed him,” he confirmed.

I leaned a hand on the countertop, feeling my heart beating and seeing shades of black. Darker and darker. I met my refection only to realize I too was a walking lie with my fake black hair and deep blue irises intended to imitate my best friend…who was gone.

I didn’t look at myself in denial when the memory replayed and it was there, reconstructing itself from what I’d wanted to see in all its dark, bone-trembling reality. I flexed my fist with the phantom feel of the dagger, how I’d been so overcome with grief and rage that perhaps I’d blanked it from myself all this time, unwilling to remember that second and final plunge through the vampire’s heart. Wanting to believe in a savior instead.

Nyte lingered, not stepping closer, and I had to ask.

“If you were really here…would I see your reflection if you came closer?”

He contemplated. “Yes.”

It wasn’t a comfort because it confirmed he wasn’t a soul vampire. Rather, it was a relief. I thought he deserved that assurance of being a living person after having spent so long as a ghost in people’s minds.

I reached behind myself, my back arching as I strained to find the loose end of my corset ribbon.

“You are exquisite,” he said, his voice barely audible as if he hadn’t meant to speak.

I pulled the string and my emotions soothed to something tender that stroked me within. This reaction I gave to him I wanted to deny, but I enjoyed it too much. I needed anything to distract myself from all that was lost and lonely within me and had been for some time.

“You are more of a survivor than you know, Astraea. It does not make you a monster.”

“How can you say that?” My anger and disgust built, tasting like bile on my tongue and coursing hot over my skin. I saw his chains, and for a second they weighed on me instead. That was what I deserved. How could I pretend to be any better than him? My life was one step forward only to be knocked two steps back. Every thread of hopeful discovery came with frightening truths about myself that darkened the path too much for me to see anything good. I was nothing but volatile fragments of an existence desperate to find my whole.

I sniffed. I would not cry in front of him. Unraveling my corset, I held the loose material to my chest before looking at him expectantly.

He didn’t even give a teasing smirk as he turned around. I thought about casting him away, but I didn’t desire solitude.

The leather dropped to the ground, leaving me bare-chested, and I quickly unbuttoned my pants.

“Knowing you are naked right now is the most riling madness I’ve felt in a very long time.”

I trembled at the low, silvery gravel of his voice, easing over to the water and dipping my toes in first. I couldn’t bite back the soft sighs as more hot water caressed my skin.

“And those god-damned sounds you make, Starlight.”

Nyte turned when I was submerged. My body relaxed under the hot water, bringing on a sleepy aura. I wasn’t shy to have him present, real or otherwise, while I bathed. The gaze we shared only added to the heat, sparking a tension I needed a distraction from.

“I found the location of the next key piece.” I tipped my head back, slipping my eyes closed in contentment. “All of them, actually. Turns out I don’t need you after all.”

“Yet you didn’t gain another piece today.”

“I, uh…got distracted,” I admitted. “I ran into Drystan in the city.”

Nyte was silent for long enough to make me peel open an eye. His expression had locked firm, looking not at me but through me as he pondered something.

“Are you disregarding my warning on purpose?”

I huffed. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Then what are you trying to prove?” he asked, edging on a dark challenge as he stepped closer.

The knot in my gut tightened. “Nothing. I can make my own judgments and want to give him a chance.”

“For what?”

“For me to decide how I feel about his character, not what you want me to.”

We stared off. His molten gaze was electrifying, sparking over me more intensely with the water.

“Astraea.”

Something about the way he spoke my real name tightened over my skin. It felt like a warning, a dare, something I wanted to provoke further to see what he would do, and that was perhaps more deadly than any trial I could face out there.

“You warn me about the prince, yet I’m to trust you?”

“No. As I don’t trust you.”

I gave a humorless chuckle, but Nyte remained serious. “I didn’t ask you to.”

“You owe me a bargain.”

I decided to push. “I said I don’t need your help anymore.”

“After you have already accepted so much of it,” he growled. He stalked closer, right until he touched the edge of the tub, and then he lowered. “You don’t get to back out now, or let me tell you…unfulfilled debts will always become a penance.”

It felt like a threat. It was. Something I had provoked in him. Nyte was dangerous, dark, and perhaps capable of vicious things that had bound him in iron and sealed him behind an impenetrable veil. But that was only the surface of him. Every time I was around him he built my compulsion to discover more.

“You’ll get your bargain,” I said, and that seemed to relax him.

“Good.”

I slipped under the water to my neck. “Do you know what the next trial will entail?” I might as well test how much he would offer.

“You’ve faced pride. Next you’ll be tested against greed and envy. When you’ve discovered the things you desire the most and managed to resist the temptation, how will you react when you watch someone else have it all?”

I thought over the concept, and even in my right mind my gut sank with want.

Jealousy.

That hideous, tormenting emotion I had felt trickles of before while watching the freedom of the dancers at the manor, how people had effortlessly enjoyed the night’s entertainment while I was an invisible tourist to the main attraction.

“How do people fail the trials…? What happens to them?”

“If you had continued the puzzle and not broken your pride to save the girl, it would have been reset, and you wouldn’t have remembered the last attempt. Every time you failed you would have forfeited a year of your life. Once you are in the game, you either win or you die.”

“The king didn’t tell us that,” I breathed.

“Why would he? There is only one he keeps at the end even if you all make it. If a player is killed in a trial, the game completes their key, and it will await them outside the temple for another player to try.”

I had only passed one trial, and the new daunting outcome didn’t inspire me with confidence. “How does he give the Golden Guard immortality?” I asked.

Nyte canted his head. “They started off as an experiment. A way to build his army faster. To transition humans…into vampires.”

Stars above.

“But there is always a consequence. Their hearts do not beat, and they are cursed never to attract true love. They are perhaps his most deadly weapon as they keep their shadows and their reflections. Their ears are round, and a human would never know the new bloodlust that walked among them.”

“Who would choose that?”

“None of them do.”

This event had become so much more sinister than I’d originally thought, and I didn’t know what to do with the information Nyte revealed.

A new, unwilling breed of vampires…

It couldn’t continue. I couldn’t fathom such a heinous act being forced upon me, especially not on Rose. There was no glory in winning; it would be nothing but another manipulative gain for the king, and I loathed him more powerfully than I thought myself to be capable of.

He had to die.

“Drystan said there’s a sixth key—that’s what he’s truly looking for,” I said, calculating while trying to keep my calm.

Nyte’s eyes narrowed a fraction. I couldn’t decide if it was the prince’s name or the knowledge he was reacting to. “Yes. The star-maiden’s key.”

My breath came short. “Why does he think we can find it?”

“Because long ago the star-maiden made sure that should anything happen to her, no one would be able to wield it. She broke it into five pieces and scattered them throughout the city. Every one hundred years, anyone with even a shred of magick can feel the pieces awakening. It’s a very powerful tool, and it can only stay dormant for so long before it has to expel something. The king didn’t create these trials; he was the first to ever participate in them. Over and over, until he had five whole keys, and it almost drove him to madness. But none of them opened the temple door he’s been trying to get inside for three centuries since. He started the Libertatem as a brilliant political structure to keep the kingdoms obedient and under his control in exchange for their safety from the savage vampire attacks that were close to wiping out entire human populations. At the same time, he has five people playing the star-maiden’s trials, hoping each time the real key will be among them. He kills four Selected out of nothing more than spite and rage, and one he keeps to form his Golden Guard to keep up the pretense of a reward for the victor. That’s all the Libertatem is for.”

My fingers gripped the edge of the bathtub, not realizing what I was doing as I sat forward. Only the bubbles concealed my upper half, and Nyte’s golden gaze flashed a dark shade, but he did not look down.

“You’re hardly being fair,” he said huskily.

I stifled a shiver, but my mind was reeling with the information. “What is beyond the temple door?”

Nyte remained at eye level, and when his hand reached for the water I almost barked out a protest. But this wasn’t real, and instead I tracked the fingers he danced across the surface of the bathwater with some intrigue as to how they would feel.

“It’s a place to summon the God of Dusk and the Goddess of Dawn.”

“Why does he want that?”

“He has always craved magick as someone without it and despises that he has always needed someone else to keep his empire under his control. The king has found a way to call the God and Goddess to mortal form, and with the star-maiden’s key he would hold the greatest weapon. They might very well grant his wish in exchange for it.”

I didn’t want to know really, but I asked, “What is his wish?”

“To become a god, and he plans to kill them.”

“He can’t.”

“Agreed,” Nyte said, his voice still low and distracted as if our conversation were about the weather: insignificant compared to what truly held his interest in this moment. “Which is why you must free me. I can help to stop him.”

“I’m afraid,” I said honestly.

Nyte’s head tilted, his hand dipped past the water’s surface, and my lips parted. “Of me?”

“Of what you could be capable of.”

“You should be.” His fingers grazed my calf, and I breathed steadily.

Not real. This is not real.

Yet the more I chanted it in my mind, the more tangible it became. My body betrayed my thoughts to want it.

“That’s not convincing me.”

“What if I promised I would never harm you or your friends?” he said.

“You would bind that in the bargain?”

“Yes.”

Zathrian would be safe, and I would make sure Rose and Davina were too.

“I want answers,” I said.

Nyte’s eyes flexed, debating. “Deal.”

“I want to know how you saved me on the lake.”

“That, I might give you after you free me.”

“You haven’t told me how I can do that.”

“We find the key.”

“He’s been searching for it for centuries—we might not find it.”

Nyte inhaled a deep breath and his fingers moved higher. “Don’t worry about that. Just get through your trials.”

I wanted to argue, but all I could think about were two things. His touch, so believable it was frustrating to remember it wasn’t real, and the bargain with the devil I was slowly being seduced into.

“I need to know you’re not going to be a threat.”

“What people see as a threat often speaks more about them.”

He was impossible.

“Turn around.”

Mercifully, he did.

I stood, grabbing a cotton robe to sling around myself.

Nyte kept his back to me, his tone dropping a few sinister notes as he said, “I can slip into your mind. What makes you think I can’t do the same to the king or prince?”

His threat to out me turned the mood sour.

“You would have done so by now,” I said. For the first time I felt like I’d won a challenge against him. “If you could reach their minds, you would have tormented them until they released you. Something is protecting them. You need me, and if I die you lose that.”

This time when he turned I couldn’t read his emotion. Annoyance locked his jaw, but maybe he fought approval on his mouth.

“What makes you think I can’t find some other like you?”

“Another fool to answer to you?”

“Something like that.” He shrugged, but the bastard was enjoying vexing me.

“Then I hope you haven’t been down there too long. It may be some time before you lure another to bargain with you.”