Page 17 of The Night Is Defying (Nytefall Trilogy #2)

17

A straea

Back in Vesitire, I changed quickly and couldn’t bear the restless waiting for Nyte to retrieve me to seek out Drystan. So I used the void to travel to Nyte, wondering if it was his blood or something deeper that ran between us and manifested stronger each day, making it easier to track Drystan to this mountain top.

He didn’t sense me right away, and I didn’t make myself known when the sight of him stunned me still. Nyte laughed. Not as hard as the others in the golden guard, and I didn’t know what they found funny, but he didn’t hold back that flicker of enjoyment even if it was fleeting.

A red-haired woman dusted snow off her shoulders with a scowl while a broad, dark-haired man dipped down to gather more in his gloveless hands. She knew it was about to be aimed for her again and tried to get away, narrowly dodging the incredibly fast throw of it. I was taken back by a childish normalcy I didn’t expect from the transitioned vampires. The woman gathered her own snow, throwing it with the same velocity, but the man twisted to avoid it, and it hurled straight for Nyte instead.

I inhaled a euphoric breath at the ripples of his dark power that created a veil of shadow and starlight as a shield with the wave of his hand. The moment the snow made impact it fell as shimmering dust once more, and his magick pulled away on a breath of wind.

I’d known the Guard respected Nyte and looked to him for leadership, but he hadn’t been forthcoming about how much they meant to him. Not a leader and his generals. These were friends, though I didn’t think Nyte would ever admit that.

When he spotted me with a casual slip of his gaze, his eyes locked on me and the expression that relaxed his face stole me away for a second. He was moving toward me in an instant.

“Astraea,” he said, stunned to see me here and scanning me over for harm. “How did you find me?”

“I’m not entirely sure.”

“You’re getting too good at the void.”

“Is there such a thing as too good? ”

“When you’re beginning to contend with me, yes. But then again, I do love competition with you.”

I pushed his chest at his playful smirk, and my sight fell to the four golden guards behind him and someone new I didn’t recognize.

“You know Elliot,” Nyte turned to them with me. “This is Zeik, Kerrah, Sorleen, and Nadia—the bold rogue we can’t seem to shake.”

Sorleen was the most standoffish, not even breaking a smile, and her eyes were distant. Nadia gave a sweetly prideful smile at Nyte’s comment and I had her pinned as someone cunning, perhaps deadly, already.

“So we’re all going to see Drystan?” I asked.

“No. His order was for you to go alone,” Nyte said.

My brow lifted at that; I didn’t think Nyte would agree.

“I’ll be right outside,” he said to my unspoken thought.

Why Drystan would want me alone riddled me with unease.

“Take me to him,” I said.

Though I was nervous to confront the prince after all that happened, I had to know if there was any hope of salvation in him. If what Nyte said was true, we had once had a friendship, and I hoped I wasn’t a fool to believe there could still be something there after all this time.

I knew this place which Drystan had requested to meet me. I’d seen it in the memory Nyte gave me. I’d been here before. It was the first time something in a vision unfolded as real before me, and I had to take a moment in the archway entrance leading to the elite underground gambling den. Sweat began to slick my skin. My heart raced. It was all true—what Nyte had shown me. I knew this, yet it still broke me in that moment. Nyte trusted me enough to open himself to absolute vulnerability and give me every thought and feeling in his memories.

“I knew you would come,” Drystan drawled from across the room. He sat in the empty space by a chess board with no opponent. “You would never let go of a spark of curiosity.”

I thought about the version of him I’d seen from the past, only a glimpse, but in Nyte’s memory his brother was so light spirited and happy. Who I saw now had lived through the kind of tragedy and suffering that ice-touched anything warm within. He’d become distant, untrusting, and that saddened me.

“Why did you want to see me?”

“Join me,” he said, nodding to the empty seat.

The establishment was fully vacant as far as I could sense. I couldn’t even feel Nyte though I’d parted with him just above the entrance.

Drystan smiled to himself as he spun the board to give me the white pieces.

“Your move first.”

Was this just to mock me? My teeth ground as I looked over the game. I picked up one of the front row pieces, moving it one square up out of nothing more than guesswork.

Drystan huffed a laugh. “You know far better openings than that.”

My cheeks heated. “You know I don’t.”

“Because you’re not trying to remember.”

“You don’t know anything.”

Drystan moved one of his front pieces two leaps forward.

“The pawns can only go forward. Two squares at first movement, then only one.”

“I didn’t come here to play a game,” I ground out irritably.

“Sure you did. You love games and puzzles.”

He was taunting me. Trying to prod at my vulnerability to see what I would react to.

“If you wanted me… you could have told your father who I was right away when I arrived.”

“I’m not a fool, Astraea, despite what you and my brother always believed.”

“We didn’t.”

“I thought you don’t remember?”

“Nyte is showing me.”

“And you trust it all to be the truth? Memories from the realm’s most notorious villain.”

“Why would he lie?”

“To keep you on his side.”

“He was prepared to leave the realm for me.”

Drystan’s jaw shifted, like that hurt him to hear.

“Then why is he still here?”

“I’m not ready.”

He regarded me with a pitiful look.

“Take your turn,” he said.

I took a breath to calm my irritation. Drystan leaned back casually in his chair, his expression bored and distant.

Looking over the pieces, I didn’t know how any of the others could move and it seemed hopeless. Out of nothing more than a faint pull of gravity, I reached for the horse. Picking it up was like a shock of energy. I didn’t have images flood my mind but somehow… I knew exactly where I wanted to place the piece. Still, I did so hesitantly in case Drystan scolded me it was wrong.

He didn’t. When I dared to look up, he was staring at the horse piece like it had taken his thoughts elsewhere for a second. His eyes glazed with ice the moment they were back on me.

“How do you think you can throw daggers with such expert precision despite seeming to have little training? You’re adept with a bow. How do you think you solved the puzzles in the Libertatem so easily?”

My chest pounded as he recalled the unnerving things for me.

“How long have you been watching me?”

Drystan dropped his gaze to take his turn.

“You’ve not been engaging in the things that you did often before. Perhaps if you do, you’ll find yourself again somehow.”

Nothing about his reception was kind. He didn’t appear to want me here at all. Yet why did it feel like that was a small nudge to helping me? I thought back to the night in the woods with the fae resistance. When we were under attack, it was like I knew what to do. How to fight back. Right now I had a similar instinctual feeling toward Drystan. That no matter what, I couldn’t give up trying to reach him to help us both.

“I’m sorry,” I said. It slipped from me before I could brace for the daggers it would earn from him, like I’d insulted him instead.

“What for?”

“We were friends… and I abandoned you.”

Drystan searched my eyes, until his narrowed and a bitter smile stole any vulnerability.

“Did he tell you what to say? That poor little Drystan is wounded and all he needs is a hollow apology?”

“He didn’t tell me anything.”

“Maybe not directly. But his manipulation will always hold you.”

“Why did you want to keep us apart?” I asked, recalling how he kept trying to steer me away from Nyte—painting him as a monster.

“Because he was never going to leave this realm if you kept giving him a reason to stay.”

“You really want him gone that badly?”

“Our father is going to kill him.”

That silenced the world around me.

“It’s impossible.”

“That way of thinking is exactly what will make it very possible.”

I moved another pawn and Drystan mirrored. Then my knight crossed one square and I almost lost myself to the game as my concentration started to sharpen like we’d played this exact strategy before.

I was winning.

“You still care for him,” I said quietly, like a single wrong word would shatter the glass we walked on.

“I feel nothing for him. Nor you. I just have to live in this world when you two are finished destroying it and I would rather you took down my father with you.”

“What happened to us?” I asked sadly. “We were friends, weren’t we?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. You can stop looking at me like something to save.”

“Why did you want to see me then?” I ground out irritably.

Drystan assessed me, scanning to the entrance and back.

“I can’t trust my brother isn’t eavesdropping this very moment. In your mind or outside close enough to hear.”

“I can’t trust you don’t have spies somewhere either.”

I moved my final chess piece, and somehow I knew…

“Checkmate,” I said.

Drystan looked over the game board but not in surprise. He studied it like it was an answer he had been waiting for.

His chin tipped a fraction when he seemed to decide something.

“Trust your intuition, Astraea. If it’s all you have, it’s enough.”

Drystan leaned forward. “There’s a particular memory I’m waiting for him to show you. You’ll know which one. And then you’ll come to see me again. A hint—it involves something you’ve been holding onto since the maze.”

My mind flared with hope and giddy intrigue.

“The celestial dragon egg?”

His eyes spoke all the confirmation I needed, twinkling with the same fascination I harbored.

“What do you know of it?”

“Find me when you have the memory.”

“That might take too long,” I protested in ire.

“Everything has an order, maiden.”

The unfriendly way he addressed me stung.

“I trusted you,” I said as he made to leave. Drystan stopped with his back to me. “In the Libertatem. I shouldn’t have, but I did.”

“Then maybe your intuition can lead you astray too, and you need to take caution with what you felt in the past and what is true now.”

“You helped me. You gave me the map that helped me find my trials faster.”

“Yet you still kept getting distracted by my brother,” he said sourly. “I wanted you to get it over with and find the damned key. Then you let it fall into the hands of my father, something we were all trying to prevent, and you have no idea what it’s done.”

I was taken aback by the snap of his tone. Rising, I was near trembling with foreboding.

“You know what he gained?”

Drystan’s lips pursed tight.

“Tell me,” I pleaded.

“I owe you nothing.”

“Please.”

He contemplated, like he too battled with the echoes of the friendship we once had, but the wounds of loss and betrayal still bled between us.

“All I can say is if you truly cared for him, you’d make him leave.”

I shook my head. “That can’t be the only way.”

Drystan didn’t answer, only dropped his eyes, and it was the second time today I was hit by the notion that I was the cause of devastation in my selfishness.

“Did everything fall because of me?” I asked him, so quiet in case Nyte could hear.

I knew Nyte would tell me no. That I was never the cause and he would blame himself.

I added, “Was everything better without me?”

For the first time Drystan looked at me not with disappointment or resentment, but pure tragedy.

“You’re the reason,” he said gently. “But it doesn’t make you the blame.”

My lip wobbled but I didn’t want to break in front of him. I turned around, trying to grapple with the threads of my composure, but I was so tired.

Of trying to figure out who I was.

What I should be.

Who I wanted to be.

Everything would have been better if I’d never come back.

His hand weighed on my shoulder and my brow pulled together tightly. My chest felt so tight that I was going to collapse. I was torn with the strong desire to turn around and embrace Drystan, but it was only the echo of an instinct from long ago. Now, our broken friendship was only cutting deeper the more time I spent around him.

His hand squeezed once, then let me go.

I waited until his footsteps turned lighter and disappeared. Then I broke. I couldn’t hold back the sob that wrecked me, then the emotions that drowned me.

My hands braced on the chess table and I could barely make out the blurry pieces. My past was right in front of me in the way I’d won that game but it was merely a mockery. She was never coming back. Maybe I didn’t want her to.

With a cry of anguish I scattered the board and all its pieces, which crashed around the room. That was merely the lid bursting free off of a bottle of rage that had strained too long.

The table I gripped flew across the room next, breaking against the wall. The chair Drystan sat on was in my grip one second, then in splinters around me the next. The impact of it slamming against the wall that shuddered through my body was merely fuel for the emotions that were pouring out of me now.

“Astraea.”

I felt Nyte’s presence before I heard the soft echo of my name, which so contrasted the scene he’d walked into. I didn’t—couldn’t—stop. I picked up glasses, throwing them against anything that would shatter them.

Everything I was inside started to mirror around me and that only drove my anguish harder. More broken pieces. More destruction. More nothingness.

Then my skin was glowing and prickling and I didn’t feel weak anymore. I felt dangerous. On the verge of burying us both under the rubble I would make of this place.

Nyte approached me and I wasn’t thinking when my hand cast out. A flare of silver shot for him but it was engulfed in darkness. When it cleared he was gone.

He appeared fast out of darkness right in front of me and I braced both hands charged with magick against his chest.

He’d pulled us through the void before my strike sent him flying back from me. The impact threw me off balance too, landing on my back to watch Nyte’s wings catch him in the night sky. I felt the cold, wet grass beneath my fingers and snow was falling heavily now.

“Get up,” he ordered in a vicious snarl.

He hovered above me like an angel of death and my teeth clenched tight with a rush of frustration because I couldn’t reach him up there. I should have been able to and I was a pathetic celestial, a laughable maiden, to still be without them.

Nyte dropped to the ground, slamming into it with an impact that vibrated under me.

“You’re not done yet. Get. Up.”

He pushed on my defiance and anger as I rose from the icy ground and tracked him through the dark and the snow. He blended in so hauntingly, with only bright gold eyes to split the night.

I slipped the key out of the holster at my hip and it formed a beautiful glowing staff as I twisted, lunged, and sent a streak of pure power toward him. I anticipated his easy deflection, so I struck again and again, lost in a dance of memory and passion.

Then Nyte stared to attack.

Darkness collided with light and the trees around the clearing bent with the velocity of our merging power. I’d never felt more alive. My blood roared, my heart sped, but I felt unstoppable.

When our collision broke, I was panting, facing off with Nightsdeath.

“You’re going to keep moving forward,” he called. “Even if it kills me and you and the fucking world. You’re not allowed to give up.”

I rolled my shoulders back.

“I’m just getting fucking started.”

His smile was all wicked delight. Then I struck first.

Our power battle continued. A push and pull of darkness against light. The snow hindered my movements, but I didn’t have any option other than to keep my focus no matter what because Nyte wasn’t going easy.

It made me push through the fire in my lungs. It drove out a will and defiance to contend with him. But he was undoubtedly still stronger right now. It didn’t slow my drive.

He’d forced me into the tree line with his onslaught of attacks. His darkness dissipated against my blocks with the key that spun from hand to hand and around my body as I moved, at one with the weapon.

Doubt started to creep over me when I was still on the defensive, still retreating through the trees that were splintering with the explosions of our magick.

Out of the trees again, I managed one sideways glance to discover with a trickle of trepidation that we were coming to a cliff’s edge.

That didn’t seem to concern Nyte and I wondered if I’d lost him to Nightsdeath. If he would keep going until he achieved what he wanted, which was always to cancel the light. I couldn’t tame my magick right now, not before he might end me.

Our blasts ceased and I panted hard with ice battling fire in my throat. Nightsdeath stalked to me still with glowing, terrifying gold eyes and black vines crawling his neck and jaw.

“I can’t go on anymore,” I wheezed.

“You should never start what you can’t finish,” he said in a low chilling growl.

I met the edge of the cliff, my heels almost slipping off.

Nyte stopped walking. He was so beautiful, and horrifying, and I was mesmerized by his wings. We locked stares and our heartbeats thundered in the silence.

Then I let myself fall.