Page 14 of The Night Is Defying (Nytefall Trilogy #2)

14

N yte— P ast

Nyte idly twisted the stormstone blade into the game table. His thoughts drifted from the fan of cards he held, watching the intricate black wings of Astraea’s dagger turning, spinning threads about her in his mind that carried too many questions. It was an interesting design, considering how the wings of her people were shades of silver, and the dark touch was considered profane.

He would know, since his own black wings branded him an evil mockery to the celestials. Most of the time he kept them hidden.

Smoke choked the air of the elite gambling hall he sat in. Nyte wasn’t here out of want or leisure but as a regular player. He couldn’t give the vampires here the impression he’d rather be anywhere else.

Nyte hadn’t gone looking for the star-maiden after her escape two weeks ago. His father thought that was what occupied his time away: tracking her down, following his outrage.

When Nyte became old enough to know his capabilities, his father’s short temper stopped being inflicted on him physically. He pitied whatever boy likely took his place as the outlet now, but at least it wasn’t Drystan.

His brother’s heart might never have felt love from their father, but Drystan had his mother to warm the coldness their father left. Under her protection and Nyte’s, he was safe from the king’s cruel ways, but not oblivious.

Nyte’s eyes flicked up with the thought, finding Drystan with a victorious grin aimed toward a scowling blood vampire at his table. He was winning. Suppressing his smirk, Nyte flipped the dagger before laying it on the table. The two soulless and three shadowless eyed the deep purple blade warily. It was made of the one material that could kill them instantly if plunged into their hearts.

The star-maiden had his thoughts starved for things he didn’t need to be able to kill her. But he couldn’t stop swaying from that goal. Couldn’t turn off the curiosities about her that were driving him to a very dangerous and irritable edge.

He had patience, however, and didn’t need to expend energy seeking her out when he knew she would come back. Her return to him this time grated on his ire. They weren’t any closer to discovering who would go down in the fire growing between them when their task was over, but worst of all, in the silence without her he’d discovered something that may very well test the limits of his patience: Astraea liked games.

Nyte chose the moment he felt her descending on the staircase to pretend he needed to hold his fan of cards. Placing his turn, he didn’t look up from them as the star-maiden sauntered into the room. Her confidence was a statement in this room full of those who might kill her despite the king’s order. A shame her brazenness was going to go unappreciated.

His inward smile didn’t mirror on his face.

“The quakes don’t seem all that important to you if it’s taken you this long to come back to me,” he spoke to her mind, keeping the table oblivious.

“Sounds like you’ve missed me.”

Nyte flicked a glance up, greedy for any reaction from her spectrum when he was too damn eager to sample them all. Perhaps he shouldn’t have torn his sight from the cards, because his full attention became hers in an instant. Observing the room, she was quick to realize what was happening since she still stood without disturbing a single person’s attention except Nyte’s. And he relished that satisfaction. She was his.

“None of them can see me?” she concluded. He didn’t need to confirm.

The headache that formed was too dull to erase her presence from the whole room. Even a splitting migraine would be worth it.

Astraea walked around the circular table and Nyte stalked her like a vulture eyeing its prey. Not to kill, not yet, but she was utterly fascinating. He wondered why the color black was what she preferred. Her attire was almost a dress but split high on either side to reveal her leathers beneath.

She stopped at his table, bracing hands on the back of the seat of the male opposite him. “How was your father’s reaction to my escape? I wish I could have witnessed it.”

Astraea flicked her cool blue eyes up from studying the male’s cards. Something in him stirred at that look. Something long dead given life with the challenge she stoked.

“What are you up to, Maiden?”

“You didn’t earn the reputation you have with such poor interrogation, Nightsdeath. ”

“My lord,” the soul vampire to his left prompted him to take his turn.

“You’re going to lose,” Astraea said.

“If I wanted to cheat I could do that easily myself.”

“They just trust you not to?”

“Believe it or not, my reputation is outstanding for more than just killing.”

Nyte’s attention returned to the table. Astraea didn’t know what cards he had, but she’d let slip the advantage that whatever she’d glimpsed in the other hands gave them high odds. Nyte found himself no longer studying the cards but a much more enticing game. Astraea wore a ghost of a smile.

Was she misleading him?

The thrill erupting in him wasn’t welcome, but he could admit he’d never felt such excitement before in this gambling hall, or anywhere for that matter.

She said, “I’m flattered for the protection, even if it’s unnecessary.”

He couldn’t decide if her confidence despite being alone in a room full of vampires was admirable or foolish.

“Actually, I’m about to win a very large sum of money and you erupting chaos would jeopardize it.”

Astraea fought the curl of her mouth, continuing her stalk around the table, eyeing the players’ cards.

“So your father sends his most notorious leader to gamble for the funds for his armies?”

“If you’ve come to talk about my father, you can leave before I release the glamour on you instead.”

“Touchy subject.”

Nyte’s jaw clenched. “You’ve come for my help, Starlight. Don’t provoke me.”

Her cool eyes lingered on him, but whatever she thought of disappeared before she spoke it.

The player she stopped behind reached for a card. As Astraea reached with him, Nyte’s whole damn body tensed as he fought the impulse to jerk when she touched him. He could hide her from sight, but he couldn’t erase her fucking existence. The soulless felt her guiding his hand to another card instead. His brow twitched, as he likely believed that intuition, a mere gut instinct, changed his mind. He lay down Astraea’s choice.

Astraea met Nyte’s warning look with a twinkling challenge. Briefly, he caught Drystan’s eye across the room. His brother’s brow furrowed, suspicious of Nyte’s behavior. When Astraea’s hand slipped over the chest of the soulless, Nyte slammed his cards to the table before he knew what he was doing.

The room hushed at his disruption. Astraea made him look like a damned fool for reacting to seemingly nothing. If she wanted to play, fine.

Nyte released the glamour on her, and in an instant, every set of vampire eyes pinned on the star-maiden, who wisely backed up a few paces to the wall, straightening her stance, ready to retrieve the key strapped at her waist.

At the first snarls through the room, purple light flared from the weapon she drew as she shifted it to a staff.

“Nobody takes one fucking step toward her,” Nyte said with calm but deadly authority as he rose slowly.

It became a challenge to keep track of so many vampires holding their dangerous restraint against lunging for her. Both the soulless and the shadowless wouldn’t pass on the opportunity to indulge on celestial blood. Unlike human blood, there was a far more compelling and powerful property to it.

One taste of Astraea and he knew none of them would have the will to leave a single drop.

Nyte’s head snapped with a vicious glare at the first movement. Drystan held up his hands, edging closer cautiously, and Nyte had to take a few moments to push back the darkness of Nightsdeath that was clawing inside him.

“Perhaps we should take this elsewhere,” Drystan hedged.

“I know who you are,” Astraea said to him.

Drystan’s face relaxed, even seemed pleased, though it wasn’t said in friendship. His brother had been eager to hear more about the star-maiden since the last time they saw her, and Nyte had been reluctant to give away that he thought of her at all.

Storming to her, Nyte hooked her elbow, leading her to the exit.

“You have no idea what you’re doing,” he hissed in her ear.

Outside, she ripped her arm from his hold, matching his stare.

“I didn’t need you in there. One step toward me and they would have been dust,” she snarled.

Drystan had followed them out; he whistled low as if to cut the tension. Astraea made a target of him, her key flaring at her command, and Nyte felt the rise of Nightsdeath beginning to blacken his fingertips and darken his sight.

She took in the changing features carefully, then his neck, his ears. So slowly but not with the fear he anticipated. Instead it seemed to distract her, fascinate her. So much so her key winked out its light.

“What are you?” she asked, more a slipped thought than as if she expected any real answer.

“Why did you seek me here?” Nyte bit out.

“You told me to.”

“You could have done so more privately rather than cause another rage from the king when he hears of your mockery around his territory.”

“Your father has no territory,” she snapped. “Don’t forget for one second that it doesn’t matter where you hide or try to settle, you are in my realm.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Drystan cut in, “Does one of you want to tell me what this is about?”

“Why is he here?” Astraea grumbled.

“Why are you here, Maiden?” Nyte countered.

A muscle in her jaw worked. “Follow me.”

She wasted no breath before starry shadow began to encase her. Nyte only had seconds to grapple her projection to follow.

Before Drystan could voice his protest, Nyte said, “I’ll tell you later, promise. Try to do damage control in the hall before father loses his mind hearing outlandish versions of it.”

His younger brother groaned, Nyte clapped a hand to his shoulder in farewell before following Astraea’s trace through the void.

When the smoke cleared, he surveyed his surroundings. Unimpressed, he wondered why an out-of-commission bell tower was her location of choice. Spying the last flicker of silver hair before she turned a corner, Nyte followed across a narrow, precarious rafter.

He didn’t expect to find a room laid out for living. With a grand bed decorated darkly like the tone of everything else but the brightness from outside the several open archway windows gave it beauty.

Astraea leaned against one overlooking the city. Nyte discovered then they were in the heart of Vesitire. The grand castle reflected proudly in the near distance.

“Why here?” he asked, feeling a strange sense of peace so high and hidden.

“It’s away from possible trespassing.”

Nyte studied the contents of the room with more attention. A few personal items sat on the dresser. There was a tub for washing and the scent so prominent here…

“You come here often,” he stated.

“Expectations are heavy on the ground,” she said distantly, pushing away from the window. “Up here, they don’t exist.”

Nyte could relate. He didn’t want to find common ground when he could feel an attachment to her threatening to wind around him. They might share a common goal for now, but he wouldn’t forget his enemy.

“Your mission was to find out about the quakes—where do you suggest we start?” he diverted.

Astraea sat on the bed, leaning back on her hands. “I’ve been making inquiries around the High Celestials in Althenia. Everyone is at a loss. I thought it might be worth trying to see if you knew anything, or if there could be someone among the vampires who knows. Like your father.”

“He’s never mentioned it.”

“Why would he?” she countered. Pushing up, she leaned on her thighs, observing him curiously.

“You didn’t come to me for an alliance,” he said darkly. “You think I have something to do with it.”

“It would be foolish of me not to have considered it. If I kill you, I’ll have my answer.”

“Try it.”

“You have no other suggestions to explore before I do?”

Nyte turned to view the city, but he felt her try to use that as an opportunity to stab him in the back. He spun to catch Astraea’s wrist, the sharp tip of her stormstone blade hovered inches from his heart. The instinct in response to the threat forced all his darkness to the front at once, and she became a bright, insufferable source of light.

Her silver-blue eyes widened, but he was lost in something sinister that needed to snuff out the light. As Nyte held her, twisting her around, Astraea gasped as he pushed her and she was forced to lean out the low window with only his hold on her arm keeping her from falling out.

“You don’t want to contend with me,” he said, taming the beast inside him that wanted to kill her so badly it pained him.

“Let me go.”

“Fine.”

Releasing her, Astraea fell from the high height. Nyte stepped up to the short ledge, taking a few long breaths of the calm air that helped to subdue Nightsdeath. His eyes opened in time to watch her magnificent wings come out from hiding, splaying wide to stop her rapid fall before beating strong to shoot her high.

He spared a few seconds to admire the most magnificent thing he’d ever seen. Her wings were light silver but uniquely touched by a faint purple hue around the edges of the outer feathers.

Nyte dropped into the air in pursuit.

It wasn’t often he flew in the daytime. He preferred to blend into the darkness with his black wings.

Astraea soared high past the cloud bank, and when Nyte broke through he came to a hovering stop a few meters away.

He felt the energy of her magick before he saw it. What formed from her was like pale glittering stardust, and it blasted toward him to meet his starry darkness. The collision was exhilirating, like nothing he’d experienced before, and it took all his effort and focus to push back.

Light against dark.

An utterly mesmerizing and catastrophic rage of forces.

Both of them withdrew their magick, and he was left panting with the exertion, having never been tested like that before. The clouds had cleared around them, showing the specs of the city buildings far below. On the ground, their power battle could be devastating.

The star-maiden was unpredictable, volatile. But what stunned him with sudden conflicting feelings was how he’d become so addicted to her that he wanted to collide with her again.

He needed to be away from her. Out of the line of that look she pinned on him while chasing her breath. Nyte was as desperate for her thoughts in that moment as he was terrified of them.

Terrified.

He didn’t think anything frightened him anymore. Yet there it was, adrenaline that raced through his veins and exploded in his chest like it could end him, or complete him. She became a new beacon of terror.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” he said to her mind. “Don’t come to me in that place again. I won’t intervene if you do.”

Nyte took off before she could give a response.

He flew, hard and fast. His shoulders protested but he pushed and pushed. As if the thin air would force him to focus on his breathing or the pain in his body would flood his mind. Anything to drown out the revelation that wouldn’t stop blaring.

He’d felt it the moment he met her but believed it to be a celestial bewitchment. Yet now that he’d felt her magick it was so undeniable.

She was his Bonded.

A primal, dangerous urge was taking over him, and he kept flying as if he could reach the end of the world and his denial would reverse that curse.

He kept flying against everything that wanted—no, needed— to go back to her the moment he left her.