The Stars are Dying : (Nytefall: Book 1)

With the soft knock at the door, I folded the map I’d been studying for hours since Zath had left me on reflex. I was equal parts terrified and exhilarated to discover the person behind it.

It was neither Zath nor Hektor.

Sira lingered timidly without entering, and her ghostly expression sent a chill deeper than the winter’s touch down my spine. “He sent for you,” she said with enough regret that I began to tremble. Had the men returned, and he’d thought to progress things faster with his plan?

My breathing picked up. “What for?”

“Another guest, milady.” Sira wrote apology in her eyes, and I couldn’t bear it.

Desperate to find a place to hide, I even spared a glance over at the balcony with the ludicrous notion I could attempt to escape that way again. I rolled my shoulders, taking a deep breath to compose myself before I even knew what guest it could be. Then, with a nod, I followed her out.

The whole way to Hector’s study I fidgeted with my skirts, combed my fingers through my hair, and focused on inhaling regular breaths when my lungs threatened to stop taking in air. The door to his study was slightly ajar, and I heard him before I saw him. The other voice…

Time slowed when I entered and matched it to the face.

I blinked several times, hoping it wasn’t true, that perhaps I’d fallen asleep waiting for Zath. Still nothing changed. Cassia’s expression lit up at finding me.

“Ah, there she is,” Hektor drawled.

My skin crawled. His tone was cheerful to the room, but I heard the cover-up of fury. I dared to look and found the mask he wore fit true to that. His smile looked pleasant, but those green irises blazed.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Cassia. It came out as barely more than a whisper past the hands gripping my throat, and I nearly raised my own to be sure they weren’t real.

“Returning this to you,” Hektor answered before the words could slip from her parted mouth.

When I beheld the purple metal of the dagger he offered out, the room tilted, my situation turning worse. I shifted a step, floundering for how to respond since nothing would open the ground and save me from this confrontation.

“Thank you,” I said, sliding a look to Cassia, whose bright face started to fall. I tried to wipe my horror, forcing a smile to erase the concern that pinched her brow as she studied Hektor and me. Even Calix shifted his weight, his hand resting on his sword with careful observation.

The tension in the room could be cut with a knife.

“I’ll give you a moment to say goodbye to our esteemed Selected.” Hektor made to leave, stopping by my shoulder. His gaze, though unmet, turned me to ice. He slipped from the room, and still I couldn’t relax when the three of us stood alone. The click behind us jolted the first movement through me.

“Why did you come here?” I asked vacantly, staring as if I could still deny it.

“To bring your dagger and give you the plans for tomorrow. I was around the town anyway and thought to come myself—”

“You could have given it to me tomorrow,” I said, blank with fading hope. It was over. “Just one more day.”

Cassia took steps toward me, and I tried not to break as she didn’t know what she’d done. All she’d exposed. “Astraea.” Her eyes scanned me, and only then did I relax, realizing I had to stop her observations from running wild—that I was something weak, something to be saved, when I didn’t want to be either.

“Sorry,” I muttered, reaching out to hold her arms as she did mine. “I’m just surprised to see you.”

With her slow nod she didn’t seem fully convinced. I pulled her in for an embrace. Calix kept his expression firm, though I didn’t believe it was fully out of concern for me. As he watched our interaction his focus remained on Cassia.

“Now I’ve seen the profiles, I don’t know, Cass. The woman from Pyxstia might give you at least a worthy match,” I said lightheartedly.

Pulling away, Cassia chuckled, and I started to relax into the knowledge that at least in these moments with her I could find a gift no matter what came next.

“I think so too.”

“We should be getting back,” Calix interrupted.

A wave of grief washed over me, but I would not cry. Would not give her that last image before she left.

“The send-off will be full of commotion. We’ll pick you up on the road outside the city,” she said. “Tomorrow afternoon.”

How could I tell her it was over? There would be no escaping Hektor’s leash that would be reduced to nothing once they left for this.

“If I’m not there—”

“You will be.”

My teeth ground at her damn persistence. Her brow began to knit. Cassia would storm off to Hektor himself right now if she suspected anything, and I couldn’t risk that. So I put on a smile and embraced her again, meeting eyes with Calix and hoping he understood my pleading look: that if I didn’t arrive, he had to force her to go without me.

For the first time, he looked back at me with something like sadness and understanding, giving one single nod. It was all I needed.

Cassia and Calix left, and I remained looking over Hektor’s desk.

Don’t let him see you weak.

I didn’t turn when I felt him enter with a gust of cold that seeped to my bones.

“The reigning lord’s daughter,” he said with mocking disbelief. “You can imagine my surprise.” He entered my peripheral, his movements slow like a snake primed to strike.

Breathe. Breathe.

He laid the dagger on the desk in front of him. “Where did you get this?”

I didn’t answer. There was no point when nothing would soften the strike to his pride that I’d defied him. Eluded him.

By now I knew his impulsive triggers by a shift of energy. I braced.

His hand wrapped around my nape, pushing me forward, and my lips tightened against a cry as my palms met the wood to stop the force. His mouth met my ear as he said, “You know what your silence does to me when I expect answers.”

“I found it.”

It wasn’t a lie. I’d always figured it had been left by one of Hektor’s men, or perhaps a guest, when I’d come across it while wandering surreptitiously one night three years ago after spying on an inspiring training session below the manor, but I’d never seen the likes of the purple metal on them since. I’d stolen the dagger brazenly and spent the weeks following on a razor’s edge of anticipation that I’d be caught when it was declared missing.

“What displeases me more are your lies.” His grip tightened a fraction, and I prepared for what he might do…

A knock made the air shudder out of me. Hektor paused with a deep breath of anger, releasing me, but I whimpered at the fist he slammed that rattled everything on the desk before he called for the person to enter.

I didn’t know who it was, but, catching words but not whole phrases, I concluded it required his attention and he would unleash his wrath toward me on everyone else until he got the chance to come back.

As they continued to talk, I despised my cowardly submission and reflected on the hand still imprinted around the back of my neck. I wanted to tear it off. I wanted to hurt him back, to make him fear, and my dark thoughts…I didn’t feel shame for them.

My eyes were pulled by compulsion to the wavy purple steel, the image of driving it straight to its beautiful black wings into Hektor’s chest filling my mind. Could I really do it? My fingers subconsciously reached for the hilt, my grip already firm as I calculated the steps I would take to plunge it to where I wanted before he could stop me.

Hektor’s hand lashed around my raised wrist, and I yelped. “Does it make you feel brave, darling?” he cooed.

I despised him. I despised him.

“I might let you keep it if you tell me everything. How long you have been sneaking away from this manor without my knowledge? It must be some time, and I am fascinated to know how.”

His mockery slammed my teeth together. Hektor spun me around. An arm around my waist brought our bodies flush, and I wanted to kill him.

“I want to know everyone you met. Everyone who knows your name and about me. Everything you’ve told them.” He took my jaw in a painful grip that stung my eyes. His green irises burned through me as I prepared for something to finally snap.

Like the flip of a switch, his face relaxed all at once. I had to blink at the contrast. He stroked my cheek with false love, and I feared this more than his true wrath.

“Come with me.”

He took my hand, and I had no choice but to follow. A creeping unease settled, and my breathing quickened at the thought of where he would lead me to. It put a strain on our joined fingers. His grip tightened with the warning glare he shot me over his shoulder.

“Hektor, please,” I tried, but I didn’t stop walking. “You don’t have to do this. I’ll stay locked in my rooms.”

“Now I know you’ve found a cunning way out, I cannot trust you’ll stay in there until I have the balcony doors looked at.”

My eyes scrunched shut. I will not cry. I will not break.

We came to the door, and everything in me dropped at the sight of the thick iron bars from wall to wall at the end of the room. I choked a dry sob as he continued to lead me to it, straining against his hold again, but with his groan of frustration all I could do was brace. My back hit the wall and my head followed with the hand that wrapped around my throat. Pain shot through my skull, but I pressed my lips tight together. His frightening expression was made even more monstrous by the light pooling in from only the entrance. Hektor seethed in silence, and I held still.

“Look what you did,” he said as though he cared. His hand uncurled from my neck, smoothing down the back of my hair where it throbbed. “You moved too fast and hit your head.”

I nodded vacantly. Hektor sighed deeply, planting a kiss on my cheek.

“You don’t have to do this,” I whispered.

There were no windows in this room, and when the door was sealed, the darkness that would devour was not of wonder and beauty. It taunted abandonment.

He didn’t listen. The high pitch of the cell door opening rattled every bone in my body, and I stopped before it.

“If you loved me, you wouldn’t do this.”

Hektor turned me to him, his hand grazing my cheek. “It is because I love you that I do this, Astraea. Trust I take no pleasure in it.”

I could have fallen to my knees. There was no changing his mind. If I fought, I would lose. If I tried to run, I would be caught. In this helpless existence I was trapped.

He coaxed me inside, and my drifting steps passed the bars. I tunneled far to keep from breaking in a frantic plea that would only feed his superiority; fuel the control he had over me. I stayed silent when the cell door echoed a groan and shut. A stiff tremor shook me to my core with the resonating click of the lock. I made it to the feeble cot, but I couldn’t feel my body as I sat, curling my knees up to my chest.

This place welcomed me with the cruel embrace of satisfaction at seeing me again after so long when I’d promised it never would. I’d managed to stay away from Hektor’s worst punishment for a year. I would have taken anything physical over this, but I knew his mind was made up, and to disobey would only follow one with the other.

So I didn’t look to him again when I knew he lingered there. I wondered if there was a shred of regret in his heart that made him doubt his choice, but ultimately one thing would never change about Hektor Goldfell. Come right or wrong, he never took back a decision.

Only when true darkness fell and lonely taunts replaced him did my cheeks turn wet and my chest hollow. Only when I had no one did I truly break.