The Stars are Dying : (Nytefall: Book 1)

“We don’t have much time.”

Nyte’s true voice echoed through the cave with a touch of irritation. I wasn’t sure if it was his impatience for me to get down here after the prince left or whatever they’d spoken of that lingered with him.

“What did he say?” I asked, realizing how out of shape I was from rushing down here with the heavy tome.

“All I remember was an irritating buzz.”

Stopping close to the veil, I dropped to my knees with the book, cutting him a look, though he hardly appeared in the mood to talk about it. “I know the feeling,” I muttered, flipping through its pages.

“Astraea.” His tone of warning stopped my movements. Then he crouched in front of me, and my gaze traveled along the thick chain that clanked along with him, its links disappearing into darkness. “He can’t find out you know I exist. If there’s a moment of suspicion, you have to sway it completely.”

My eyes flicked up to his then, catching a frown of turmoil I didn’t expect.

“Most importantly, he can’t find out who you truly are.”

“I’m no one,” I whispered.

He pressed his lips into a firm line, the flinch around his eyes revealing he was suppressing his next words. Instead he looked to the book. “Drystan is going to seek you out. We have to do this now.”

“Why would he be looking for me?” Dread flushed my body.

Nyte’s mouth curled with the flash of his honey eyes. “It seems you’re doing well to draw his attraction. Is that what you wanted?”

I refrained from a childish scowl. “Only if it can help me end him. If he is what Rose says he is…” I trailed off with the rise of horror at what I was planning to do. What I thought myself to be capable of. Killing a prince. Or a king. That was Cassia’s goal, and I’d promised to follow it through.

Flicking my eyes to Nyte, I felt it somewhat ironic to ask for one evil’s help to take down another, but I wondered what it was that made me want to side with one at all.

“With this bargain, you’ll help me kill them…?” I had to shake my head to expel the desire to exclude Drystan. What I’d seen and felt of him didn’t match the malicious persona he was said to have, and perhaps he deserved a chance to explain…

“Yes.” There was no hesitation, and Nyte didn’t break my stare so I would feel his promise. “Because you’re going to help me.”

I shook myself out of my stupor. I had to give to gain—of course that was how it would be. I also had to remember that after it was done, he would be done with me. Nodding vacantly, I flipped through a few more pages until I found the one I’d come across while searching above.

“The Binding of Bargains,” I recited. “It requires blood.”

“Mm-hmm,” Nyte hummed, and my eyes widened with realization.

“You knew how to make the bargain this whole time!”

“But we had a lovely time together, did we not?” He was prodding at my irritation, and the sparkle in his amber irises switched to tell me he enjoyed it.

Standing, I closed the book, and maybe it was childish, but the frustration he’d triggered needed some physical release. I threw the book at him, not even remembering the veil until the book collided with it, echoing a high chime, and I winced with my stumble back. Then it passed through it.

Nyte straightened and side-stepped effortlessly to avoid it as the old book skidded across the stone. “How considerate of you to provide me with tedious reading material.”

I blinked at the rippling veil as it lost its echo and stilled to near invisibility once again. “Can you pass it back?”

“No,” he said, retrieving the book. “You’d best hope no one goes looking for it.”

Shaking my head, I wished I’d scouted for a book on wards too, if only to figure out their magick. “If I passed through…?”

His eyes skimmed from the pages to me. “As tempting as that is for me, we would have a far bigger problem on our hands.”

“You’ve been wanting me to touch it.”

“Have I?” he taunted.

I didn’t respond.

“It may hurt to pass through. Or kill you. I can’t be certain.”

I gaped at him for how close he’d beckoned me toward it several times knowing the danger. Nyte didn’t pay attention to my incredulity, continuing on.

“As much as your true voice here is highly desirable, you have to get back. So here.” Nyte crouched again, leaving the book open on the ground. “You’ll need something to cut yourself with. Then recite this phrase.”

A blood oath suddenly felt like the most damning commitment.

“Starlight—”

I stood abruptly. “How can I trust you?”

He didn’t straighten. Instead he held my gaze with a coaxing sort of patience that confused me. He was concerned, but he wasn’t pushing me into this.

“Come here.” He spoke the soft words I already felt in his gaze.

I obeyed, lowering myself back to my knees. Taking a few seconds to breathe, I couldn’t decide if it was the real proximity between us or the pulse of power I felt drawn to that set my pulse racing and my veins catching low fire.

“You’re not going to like this part,” he said.

“There’s a part I should like?”

While his mouth curled, the smile that stole my breath was what sparked in his eyes instead. “If this ward didn’t exist, I would make sure of it.”

I took one breath, collecting my sanity. “You can just say you’re lonely.”

“That would imply I seek others’ company.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

Nyte tipped his chin to the side, and I found a sharp rock. My skin pricked with what he wanted. A bind there would be no coming back from.

“This past century has had its perks in solitude. I haven’t slept so well for so long without a single demand or duty.”

I didn’t hear anything past the small kernel of information he let slip so casually despite it falling with the weight of stones in my gut. I swiped the rock. “You’ve been here a century?”

At the flex around his eyes, I realized it was something he hadn’t intended to tell me.

“What part of ‘the prince is looking for you and will be most suspicious the longer he doesn’t find you’ didn’t you understand?”

I didn’t react to his tone, thinking it only sharpened as a deflection. I fixed my attention on the task. “You still haven’t told me why I can trust you.”

“Because it matters not what I say, but what you feel.”

That inspired me. Frightened me. I suddenly wondered how long I’d been fooling myself.

“What happens if I don’t free you?”

“Only I get to decide your consequence, and you will have until the end of the Libertatem.”

“I don’t understand. Why me?”

“You don’t need to understand.”

Still, I hesitated.

Nyte looked up as though praying for patience. “Or walk away now. But you are on your own, and I warn you, the lamb will never survive in a cage of lions. Perhaps it will outsmart them, remain hidden for a while, but on its own its fate is to be devoured.”

I didn’t want to be the lamb. I didn’t want to depend on anyone, but that wasn’t what this felt like. Nyte guided more than he saved; he encouraged more than he told.

“What do I have to do?” Reckless words, but I had nothing else to lose.

“Cut your palm and pass the rock through to me with the drops of your blood on it.”

The first nip spiked my adrenaline. I had never felt so brazen or darkly seduced. My teeth clenched as my skin broke and the sting intensified. A little deeper and I whimpered.

“Good,” Nyte said, and it was enough of a distraction to steal my sight so I could slice fully.

“I don’t need your praise,” I hissed. I squeezed my fist and the warm trickle of crimson slipped over my pale skin, landing on the rock.

“Maybe not here.”

“Not ever.”

“But you would enjoy it.” He said it with such certainty and promise I wanted to drown in the lake all over again to smother the heat creeping over me. Nyte fought a devious smile that triggered violent thoughts.

My blood stopped dripping, and with a huff I slipped the rock toward the veil. So close we almost touched. Sparks skittered over my skin, and I retracted at the electric shock when it was through enough for him to retrieve it. The drumming in my chest beat harder, louder, as I acknowledged there was no going back now.

I had officially signed myself over to the devil.

Nyte picked up the stone with a small pooling of my blood on it. Those eyes of dawn I swore darkened to a burned amber, so filled with hunger and desire, and I might have made the biggest mistake with the darkness I felt creeping toward him.

I didn’t know what I expected he would do with it. Draw a marking, chant a spell. What never crossed my mind…

Was that I would watch in horror as his lips parted and three drops of crimson landed on his tongue.

I was transfixed.

Every move he made was a danger of the most lethal kind. Because it was alluring, desirous, and even though he drank my blood my horror was quickly subdued as pleasure relaxed his face. The thought of what it would feel like for him to take it directly…to bite…

I launched to my feet in shock at my thoughts.

“You didn’t say you would drink it!” I choked.

“You didn’t ask.” Nyte’s voice took on a darkly enticing tone I shivered at. He kept himself turned away from me, the back of his hand resting over his mouth as though he were collecting himself. “Recite the words on that page. Now.”

My mind roared to object as my body locked itself in place. Only when his eyes flicked to me did my knees weaken enough to ease back down. His irises came alive, burning brighter than I’d seen them before, but the fire in them was sputtering out quickly.

“Now,” he growled.

I saw the words but knew no meaning. I spoke them but I couldn’t hear them. This was wrong, so dark and wrong, and I was a fool out of my depth to have placed my trust in a chained being as my savior.

My forearm tingled as I continued to recite the words. Then it burned, and I stumbled on the words as I whimpered with pain.

Nyte crouched before me. “Keep going. It’s almost done.”

I breathed long and deep and finished the final line of the verse.

The silence echoed with the impact of a siren.

The same heat scorched hot on my skin, and I cried out, needing to see what it was. I undid the sleeved garment I wore over my dress, peeling out of it, and stared at the silver constellation that had been etched over the moon phases I wore.

The shift of material drew my attention to Nyte as he finished rolling up his own sleeve. The waning moons on his skin had also been decorated with a constellation.

A damningly familiar one that made me raise my hand to my chest.

Nyte said nothing, but his look was all-knowing. He reached behind himself, and the air around me grew humid as he unfolded himself from the torn shirt he wore. Every muscled contour of him came to moonlight-flooded glory before me, and I didn’t know what to hold my attention on. Every dip and angle of him was honed like a warrior, his strength reflected in the many scars he wore.

So. Many. Scars.

My eyes welled to map them. I wondered if they were memories of battle or if malicious hands had inflicted them. Then I found what he wanted me to see—what had always drawn my intrigue when I’d caught glimpses of it.

The constellation that spanned over his neck and chest in a metallic gold.

“Constellation Phoenix,” I breathed. It was what he wore—I was sure of it. And now I did too, in silver. “What does it mean?”

I was so swept away by the beauty of him that all caution toward the bargain now branded on our skin dissipated. He wore other gold markings over his arms in a different style from mine, but for the first time…I didn’t feel my existence was answerless.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” he said, so quiet and vulnerable. He hadn’t hesitated to show me this part of him, but his whole body tensed as though my eyes were stones of judgment.

“Nyte,” I whispered, but I didn’t know what words to follow up with that would be enough to make him believe he didn’t have to hide. “I’m not afraid.”

There was only a split second of deliberation—all I needed—before his defenses hardened. “You should be.”

I shook my head.

“Astraea…” He said it like a plea as his knees met the stone. “You have to go back now, but you are right to be wary of the prince.”

“Are you…a blood vampire like him?”

Nyte debated his answer before he said simply, “Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

“Does that really matter to you?”

“Yes.”

Nyte’s jaw shifted, reluctant to explain. “I have never been where I am supposed to be.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“It does. You’re smarter than you know.”

My lips pursed, and I didn’t press. I was unable to stop my attention from dropping to his naked torso, wanting to memorize every mark on him, and that was a frightening desire.

“Are you cold?” I asked.

Nyte’s brow furrowed as though it was a question he’d never heard before. “Not like you think,” he said. “Nothing is the same behind the ward. I don’t need food nearly as often, and I don’t feel the winter as it thickens.”

My sadness still rose for him in his isolated stage, especially now I’d learned just how long he’d been there.

“I’ve known many centuries of torture,” he said, so quiet it touched me gently. “And yet the greatest agony is you.”

That stunned me. A thrilling but sorrowful tug, and I knew in that moment what I wanted.

I wanted him.

Just for a moment, if that was all I could get. With the only true memory I had being only half-conscious, it wasn’t nearly enough for me to know if what I’d felt was something I could taste and forget.

“I don’t spare your thoughts because I’ve gained some moral code; it’s because I don’t need them. One look in your eyes and you don’t even realize you tell me everything. Like right now, you have no idea the punishment you’re inflicting with that look, knowing should this veil not exist, one touch would make the stars collide, and neither of us would care if we collapsed the world with it.”

Part of me acknowledged the distant drum of alarm. The danger I had sworn a blood oath to. What drowned it was the impulsive, careless side to me creeping in as if it had been locked away for too long and I’d forgotten its addictive adrenaline.

We stood simultaneously. I didn’t think I would feel this yearning to stay. I knew I could see him the second I stepped out of this cave, but it would never compare to this realness.

“I need one more thing from you,” he said as I backed away to leave. “A vial of your blood.”

I opened my mouth, but the refusal wouldn’t form. It was right there, but I couldn’t spill it from my tongue. I tried again and again, my hand rising to my throat until it dawned on me.

My gaze snapped to him in horror. “What did you do to me?”

“Nothing but what we agreed.”

“Why can’t I say no?”

“A precautionary measure.”

“You tricked me!”

“No,” he growled.

“I can’t refuse you for anything…”

“Are you afraid now?”

I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. At least not in a confession, but perhaps he’d stolen that from my mind already. Any inkling of sympathy I had for him was now snuffed out completely.

“Now I see why you deserve the chains you’re in,” I hissed, trying to rein in my composure so as not to let him win a damn thing from me again.

Nyte’s irises flickered, displaying maybe a flash of hurt before the burning amber subdued it. I tore mine away from him to storm for the exit, casting my sharp final words behind me as I went.

“And this place seems exactly where you belong.”