The Stars are Dying : (Nytefall: Book 1)

Every bone in my body fought the direction in which I ran. Tears streamed from my eyes as I rebelled against the pull of magick.

I couldn’t stop.

My fire of my rage overpowered that which torched my blood as punishment for my defiance. Maybe it would kill me when I finally got there.

I only needed a moment, just enough to hope my arrow or blade could stop whatever harm was being done to him. The last look of agony on his face wouldn’t erase itself from the forefront of my mind. It drove me, making me soar through the city streets. As I wove around the bustling pedestrian traffic some people shrieked, stumbling out my way. Others called after me with curses. Some looked inclined to come after me, but I blocked it all out. My feet slapped the stone, running faster than I ever had before, and my lungs tore in protest, my throat freezing with every breath of winter that speared it on its way down.

Yet still I pushed on, thinking the road ahead stretched farther than I remembered, mocking me that I wouldn’t get there in time, taunting that it would take no small attack to inflict pain on Nyte. He’d suffered so much it was branded on his skin, and what reaction he yielded to me was still a mask. He didn’t want me to witness the extent of what was happening to him.

Could they kill him?

The beat in my chest became a war drum, increasing to a climax, and I wasn’t sure what I was capable of. This kind of retribution might have been a shock even to myself, but I couldn’t explain the need powering me. It unlocked something from a dark past, an event I knew could consume me with its discovery, so I sealed it tight, only focusing on this task.

The castle finally came into view. I could have collapsed with relief. When I finally slowed—from the exertion of my sprint and my defiance against the magick—nausea rose, and I couldn’t stop the need to double over and splutter through my hard breathing.

I found an inconspicuous vantage point from which to peer into the main courtyard. I couldn’t enter that way—I needed a route around it to get to the library on the other side. But something caught my attention before I could move again.

The carriage Draven had taken here.

I stopped in place as a few guards surrounded it. One leaned in, struggling for a moment, until my hand covered my mouth at seeing what he dragged out—who he dragged out.

Stars above.

I didn’t care for Draven in the least, but seeing him hauled limply from the carriage inspired a chill as if death were laughing behind me, stroking my nape as if to say, “It should have been you in my arms.” Then that caress turned to a scorch of fire around my neck, and I gasped. I cast my eyes over the dominating stone structure, somehow knowing the pain was an echo of someone else’s.

Nyte’s.

Too many unraveling spools threatened to tangle around me. I had to cut them off one by one, though all of them felt dauntingly close to coming together to reveal something I wasn’t ready to know.

All that could matter right now was getting to that damned library.

I made it around the black castle perimeter fence. The bars I thought were wide enough to squeeze through—I just needed the guard to look the other way. Unhooking my bow, I nocked an arrow.

My aim targeted him, and my hand tingled with what it might feel like to rid the world of one more vampire. I shook my head. I’d watched them wander the streets among the humans here, and maybe it was through familiarity that they didn’t always scurry from them in fear. Or maybe I was learning there could be a whole different side to the world—a glimmer of coexistence.

My aim drifted to the trunk of a tree in the far distance. The guard, to his credit, was alert before it even made its mark. As soon as he was out of range I darted for the fence, wincing at the tight fit, but I forced myself through.

Keeping to the shadows, the sight of the library, its doors ajar, pierced me with such a rush of adrenaline my movements became a drift of wind, as easy as breathing and honed to calculate the quietest, darkest route. If there was one thing I could be glad of in my years of being Hektor’s sheltered, fearful pet, it was the stealth and careful observation I’d gained while being a fly on his walls.

Yet all it took was one keen eye to swat me. And this one I should have known had a target on me all along.

“I had a feeling you would come.”

The voice that stalled me could have made me crumble. I was so close. So fucking close.

I turned. The four guards around him were unnecessary when my fight had already been stolen. “Drystan…” I breathed, wishing I were wrong.

The alarm had been raised about him many times, but I wouldn’t listen. Even now I wanted to reject what was right in front of me. His cold eyes held nothing in them.

“What are you doing to him?” I tried, still aching to sprint to Nyte.

There was a time I would have balked at this confrontation. But I had been too late, too weak, and too cowardly to save Cassia, and Nyte was the sole thing that had kept me from following after her so many times I hadn’t even realized.

“Nothing but what he deserves for his interference. I knew he would find you. All this time, you thought yourselves cunning.”

“You’re a spineless coward,” I spat. It was a dangerous test, and one I paid for in blood when a guard stepped forward so fast I didn’t have a second to brace. With his immortal strength he only held back enough not to snap my neck from the force of his slap across my cheek. It exploded over my jaw, and my eyes swelled with hot tears as I clutched my face. It left behind a cut that bled on my cheekbone.

I had never felt such anger. Such a dark desire to fight back.

To do so, I had to kill the girl who’d spied from the rafters. The lost soul who’d chosen silence and compliance. She died with the movements I didn’t remember making until the guard who struck me choked, a small blade piercing his neck. A second was already in my hand, but it was only a temporary possession as it flew toward the next movement to my right.

“Stop,” Drystan ordered. Not to me. His guards halted their advance, but I was pinned by many sets of threatening eyes.

I mapped the ground. They were all shadowless. Blood vampires like Drystan.

“The king will be most livid when he discovers he had you in his reach and you toyed around him.” He took slow steps, a venomous snake priming to strike.

I thought to deny his accusation, but that was a coward’s response. So I tipped my chin high, owning what he thought I was capable of.

Drystan stopped only a few inches from me, and I stood firm. He lifted his hand to my face, twistedly tender until his thumb brushed over my cut, and I hissed. My chest rattled watching him examine the blood, and my teeth clamped hard when he brought it to his lips. His eyes closed briefly, and when they snapped back to me, I could have sworn they flashed a frighteningly brighter hue.

“So your father sends his prized hound for me,” I hissed.

Drystan’s mouth curled, the kind of leering smirk that made men tremble at the cruelty to come. “Precious thing,” he mused, tipping my chin, but I shrugged off his touch this time. “I don’t want the game to be over yet. My father doesn’t know. I, however, knew who you were the moment you stepped into the banquet hall. An excellent disguise, I must say.”

“Then how?”

This time, his grin widened to reveal his lethal pointed teeth. “We all have our secrets.” His hand curled around my waist, guiding me away from the library, and within, my soul cried at the wrong direction. I couldn’t fight them all, and even if I did, how would I free Nyte?

The game wasn’t over.