The Stars are Dying : (Nytefall: Book 1)

I knew the song. It had played at Hektor’s manor. I had danced for Nyte to it. It couldn’t be defined to me as just a melody anymore; it was an embrace, a soothing and beautiful comfort. As I glided into the room my body felt weightless. I wore no weapons, and the lightweight material further coaxed my desire to move.

I wasn’t alone.

Sounds emitted from across the space, and I found the flowing white bed canopy to be hiding two silhouettes. I headed for it, my skin pricking that it was wrong to intrude, but they wouldn’t know of my presence if I was silent.

Soft gasps accompanied by low groans disturbed the song, and though part of me knew what I was about to witness, I couldn’t stop.

As I neared the sheer material, I found a slight gap through which the full clarity of the passionate affair was exposed. The beat in my chest slammed hard, and a heat tingled over my stomach only to tighten lower down. Suddenly, my skin felt tight and my body lonely.

The woman straddled her lover, moving her hips with such sensuous grace I was as transfixed as he was, admiring her with a face painted with lust.

“Why do you watch?”

Nyte appearing behind me sparked a wild thrill.

“It’s…interesting.”

His chuckle was low and taunting. A hand slipped over my bare midriff, and I leaned back into him. “Interesting,” he repeated, mouth lingering by my ear. “What about it do you find most curious?”

The sounds she made, amplified by her ecstasy. The slow strokes she made that began to turn more urgent. It was like I could imagine the chase she was building. But it was the man who fascinated me the most.

“His attention,” I said. It was as if his pleasure were tied to hers. He left no part of her untouched. I’d never known that kind of exploration of my body.

Both of Nyte’s hands were upon me now. His lips traveled lower, then they pressed to my neck, and I parted my lips with a suppressed sigh of bliss. “You deserve to be worshipped—every damn inch of you.”

His mumble against my skin felt the realest it ever had, and I didn’t want to leave this place. Nyte’s groan only tightened the need between my legs.

“As much as I want to oblige, you can’t give in to your lust. You need to deny its pull this time.” He tried to step away, but my hands went over his, easing between the gaps. I couldn’t remember another moment I’d felt this alive. Nyte awakened new and exhilarating thrills I was near desperate to explore to their fullest.

“Please.” It was all I could do.

Nyte took me with him this time as we drew away from our sinful observation of the couple.

Then he slipped away.

I spun around, but thick darkness cloaked me. My chest rose and fell deeply at having been abandoned in the pitch-black.

“Are you afraid of the dark, Starlight?” Nyte encouraged my feet to move in the direction I thought his voice had come from.

“No,” I answered honestly.

“Come find me.”

My blood drummed. His voice changed direction, and I walked again.

Until I stopped.

“I already have.”

He was the darkness. The night. Right now, I was wholly consumed by him. It wrapped around me tighter, energy humming faster. Then his arm slipped around me, and I drew in a shallow breath when he brought our bodies flush.

“How do you find me so easily?” I asked, barely a whisper with my thundering heart.

His hand brushed my jaw, slipping over my neck. Every touch ignited new heights of pleasure in this beautiful darkness I wanted to bathe in for eternity with him. I didn’t need to see his desire, nor hear his affirmation. I felt everything with certainty and confidence now the light was gone.

“Because you are the brightest star,” he said, a murmur over my lips. “And the brightest star needs the darkest night.”

My chest exploded. I ran my hands up his black tailored jacket. “Kiss me. For real this time.”

In the manor it didn’t count, not when I’d considered it the first bind to our bargain.

“The trial is heightening your desire right now. It wants you to fail,” he said.

I shook my head, not wanting to hear what felt like a rejection. “You want this,” I told him.

He tipped my chin. “More than anything I’ve wanted in my long and torturous existence.”

It was too much. His words this close were sure to send me over the edge.

“Trust that this is straining every last damned tether of my control. I’m a selfish bastard for enjoying that this is what the trial has found to tempt your lust. That you’d want this if nothing else in the world mattered. But it is not the whole truth.”

I closed my eyes when his mouth hummed closer, thinking he would kiss me.

Then a breeze whipped around me like an acknowledgment I was standing alone.

This darkness felt hollow.

“It’s time to break out of it,” his voice echoed.

Snapping open my lids, my chest rose and fell deeply. My need raged, and frustration became entangled with it. Candlelight now spilled over my surroundings, and I yearned with a pitiful desperation to rewind the last moment.

Then I found him again. Sitting half-cloaked in shadow like the day our paths first crossed. I strolled up to him, and after a pause, a tight coil in my gut that he might deny me, I eased down onto his lap.

“Astraea, don’t.” Something darkly possessive rattled the air. He used the bond, but I strained to defy it. “It’s not me,” he said.

I ignored him as, contrary to his words, his hands traveled up my thighs. My head tipped back. I couldn’t stop—not when this was what we both wanted. When his arm encircling my waist pressed our bodies tighter together I could have whimpered. My hands tangled in his hair as my head straightened, needing to feel his lips on mine. I knew the detonation between us would be a devouring bliss and I’d become intoxicated by it. My mouth leaned closer. So close I almost moaned with my need for him.

“Astraea, stop. Now!”

The harsh command pulled me away sharply. For the bond it surged through, but more so for the threatening snarl of his voice in my mind. My eyes snapped open. It looked like him. But something wasn’t right.

The cunning smile wasn’t his, and the scent…

When I blinked, horror doused me all at once.

I pushed off his chest and stumbled back. Ice froze anything of lust and desire, replacing it with repulsion and incredulity that I’d been so thoroughly tricked as the intruder’s red hair now eased into the light.

Arwan stood with arrogance, brushing off his clothing as he straightened.

“How did you get in here?” I spluttered, blinking as though he too could be part of the illusion.

“I’ve been following you.”

“Clearly.”

“For longer than we’ve been in the Central.”

I backed up with every step he took toward me, trembling as those words settled.

“You don’t recognize me. I don’t blame you, for you fled before we had the chance to properly meet, leaving your kin to fight for you.”

I shook my head. “You must have me confused with someone else.”

“It had me wondering why he wanted to protect you so urgently and why you didn’t stand to fight—until I discovered how powerless you are. Though I’m yet to figure out why.”

“Stop,” I breathed, having nowhere to flee as my back pressed to the wall.

Arwan didn’t come closer. Instead he studied me from head to toe, and I was glad to feel myself back in my full leathers now the trial had set my mind free.

He dipped into his pocket, and I inhaled with surprise at what he held up.

His full key.

The pieces looked similar to mine, even though held fully together I could still see the breaks, as if the key remained too defiant to become whole again. It wasn’t a key like any I’d seen before. It was beautifully carved and too straight, without teeth at the bottom to unlock something.

“Have you tried it?” I asked, but I dreaded why he would show me. Why he was here at all when he should be waiting for the other Selected at the temple to try theirs, even if it meant taking them by force like Draven.

“No,” he said, but his smile crawled over me. “Because you’re going to.”

He advanced, and all I could do was tense, subtly reaching for my dagger, but Arwan didn’t attack. Instead I felt a weight enter my pocket. I stiffened when his finger slipped through my hair, observing the black tresses as they slipped from him.

“Like you, I know how to remain hidden. And how to kill a Selected to be here.”

“I didn’t kill her.” The confession slipped out of me too fast.

Arwan smiled with triumph. “It doesn’t matter how you came to be here, only that you are. The king is looking for a particular key, and I plan to get it before he does.” His eyes drifted to my neck, and I pressed further into the wall with the flash of recognition at the look.

Hunger.

My gaze flicked behind him, and I turned to ice as I glanced in the distant mirror only to find my own horrified reflection. “You’re a vampire,” I said. Soulless.

His brown eyes met mine as he reached up, tucking the red lengths that framed his face behind a delicately pointed ear. I swallowed hard, wondering how he’d eluded the king so easily.

“Why do you think I can get it?”

Arwan chuckled then laughed. Each note of it grated against my skin, and my eyes pricked at the ridicule. He reached the chair he’d sat on and retrieved something. I gasped as he tossed it to me, catching it clumsily.

“Find your final piece, then I’ll take care of the other Selected so you have their keys too. From there, you’d better hope you can figure out how to use them.” He strode for the door, casting a look over his shoulder. “I’ll be waiting to collect. If not the true key, then your capture as a consolation prize.”

When the door clicked shut, I was left with nothing but a hammering chest from the explosion of so many unanswered questions. The world swayed. I needed a moment to brace myself against the wall.

My mind reeled over everything he’d said. Doors opened and images flashed, nothing of sense, but I was missing something crucial, and my thoughts were bursting to find it. Arwan knew things, and he goaded me like I should too.

In my barrel of anger and frustration, my palm slapped the wall with a cry. I had felt like I was making strides in this game, completing the trials on my own, and perhaps I wasn’t a hopeless contestant. Now I couldn’t be certain of anything. I had another Selected’s key— No, he wasn’t a Selected, and I spared a second to mourn the life I didn’t know that had been taken for this vampire to have claimed his place.

“The king isn’t powerful at all,” I thought aloud. “How did Arwan get past Nightsdeath? Why does it seem like Drystan doesn’t care?”

All these questions battered me, and I rubbed my temples. If Drystan was now refusing to be his Nightsdeath, the one they feared, then maybe that was why the king’s control over the soulless was slipping, and maybe he wasn’t even aware of the uprising against him.

I laughed. A delirious, drained sound as I slumped to the floor. This was the biggest puzzle of my existence, and I was constantly holding the wrong clues. I breathed in and out, making it my only focus. Nothing would be solved with the current lattice of my mind.

Eventually, I peeled myself up and stood outside.

It wasn’t only the shock run-in with Arwan that had kept me down. I remembered what I’d done before. How I’d imagined Nyte and what I’d wanted from him. It buried me. I had to know what he thought, but embarrassment kept him locked out of my mind, and he didn’t seem eager to try to push through.

Stars above. I had all but shamelessly confessed my attraction to him. My desire for him I’d spent so long trying to deny. It was infuriating, and I wished I could let go of what had taken root within me, but in truth it had only grown with every appearance he’d made, and now I feared what it would feel like when he inevitably needed to be ripped free.

A carriage awaited, and only then did I remember Drystan saying he would send for one. I couldn’t complain about the special treatment when I was in no mood to trek back on foot anyway. I needed a full night of rest before I set out for the final key piece.

“Don’t mind if I do,” an irritating voice sang.

My objection stumbled in my throat as Draven shoved past me, his brute form nearly knocking me off-balance. He flashed a cruel grin before opening the door to the carriage.

“You’re welcome to join me,” he said, making a show of mock chivalry for me to go first.

I kept my face blank. “I was planning to walk anyway.” As if I would spend even a minute locked in a confined space with that bastard.

“Suit yourself.” Draven disappeared, and I couldn’t see him through the curtains of the carriage.

When it took off, my shoulders slumped and my eyelids weighed heavy.

“Will you come with me?”

I turned to find Nyte standing a few paces behind me. An eruption in my stomach jolted me wide-awake. I thought I’d feel embarrassment at seeing him, the need to insist that what had happened earlier was simply lust fueled by the trial to get me to break. But as soon as I looked at him, the return of those feelings stole my denial in fluttering echoes.

I glanced at the sky. It had to be around midday. “Okay,” I said, knowing I would follow him even if twilight were falling.