Page 19 of The Night Is Defying (Nytefall Trilogy #2)

19

A straea

The doors to the temple were open. I’d expected it to be bright within, but the slither of dark space wasn’t as inviting as I’d hoped.

“You don’t need to go inside,” Nyte said gently, waiting patiently a little behind me.

He wouldn’t follow me in. It wasn’t a welcome place for him. Yet he wouldn’t leave me alone and I didn’t want him to.

“I do,” I said.

I’d waited over five years for this moment. I knew I was the Daughter of Dusk and Dawn, and I needed to learn what that meant even if I would come to find I never had doting parents. Not like what I’d yearned for witnessing Cassia with her father Reihan. I wasn’t born, I was made.

Taking a long breath of courage, Nyte’s presence stroked my senses within one last time before I slipped into the temple.

Only a strip of light from outside cut down the middle and I used the key clutched tightly in my hand to expand more luminance. The sound of grating stone made me whirl around, and my throat tightened in panic watching the doors finish sealing behind me.

All was silent. So eerily silent. I didn’t know what I had expected but something felt… wrong.

I walked tentatively, using the key as a torch to examine the interior. Two giant sculptures towered at the far end and a long stone bench stood before it.

My hand reached up on instinct, and the moment I touched the bench a vision exploded in my mind. Nothing whole or certain. I could only see blurs of color and several spheres that moved. People. My heartbeat suddenly felt so small and precious. I tried to count how many could be surrounding me but I lost track at four, entranced by the murmurs of voices I wanted desperately to hear in full clarity when they tugged at something safe and familiar within me.

This is where I first came into the world as an infant.

“My child,” a feminine voice said. This was far more clear in my mind, sucking me back to the present time in this temple. It was too close, as if spoken to my mind.

I was about to search for her, but when I looked up at the ethereal stone face of the Goddess of Dawn, the voice attached itself to her in my mind.

“I—I don’t know if I am,” I said honestly.

“Who you are doesn’t change in a new beginning.”

“I came for my memories,” I said, trying to rally my bravery. “I can’t do what you need without them.”

“You bargained them to us for your return.”

“Why would you want them? It doesn’t make any sense and I’m so lost.”

My throat tightened in pain as I tried not to cry like the frightened child I felt reduced to here. In front of something I couldn’t see and could barely feel but if these were my parents I was crumbing with that notion when they were nothing I could hold, not people who would try to comfort me like Reihan did for Cassia.

“To give you the chance to do right this time. Yet you allowed darkness to claim you again.”

“Nyte?”

She didn’t answer. All I could feel was coldness and disappointment.

When I looked down from the goddess I gasped in fright, turning and turning to meet a hundred reflections of my own horrified expression.

Then screaming rattled my bones and I whirled to the noise, finding a scene relaying through a mirror I headed toward with vacant steps. I’d seen flashes of this day. Felt the anger and heartache and pain from it as I stood on a battlefield.

“We will always be enemies.” Nyte’s voice tore me away from the mirror.

He stood behind me and I blinked in confusion at his anger toward me.

“We don’t have to be,” I breathed.

He was wholly Nightsdeath with no warmth in those glowing amber eyes. Only hate and cruelty and his black-tipped fingers lashed out around my throat.

“Please,” I choked. His fingers only clamped harder, closer to crushing my throat.

I clawed at his vise grip as the frightening, merciless image of him turned blurry and my soul snapped in two.

Then he let me go with a careless push.

I fell backward but I didn’t meet the ground. Instead I kept falling down a well and those golden eyes watched me with such icy loathing I felt like I was dying inside. Closing my eyes, I succumbed to the misery.

“Astraea.”

I blinked, disorientated when I didn’t remember the impact after the fall nor how I stood again, watching my reflections and the approach behind me.

Auster was shirtless. His body was broad and toned and he was a stunning craft to behold. His front pressed to my back and his breath caressed my ear. My blood roared with a want to step away but I was stunned utterly still. Helpless to do anything but watch as his lips pressed to my neck.

“We are perfect together,” he said. “Made for each other.”

I knew it was true.

For the world. To the gods. To the celestials.

Not to me.

“No,” I choked out in a whisper.

He stopped his gentle touches, and his face firmed with a frightening wrath. As he spun me in his hold, he gripped my arms and I whimpered.

This wasn’t real.

“Stop,” I cried to the goddess.

“You keep choosing wrong,” he snarled.

Then he pushed me and I fell again, wondering if this was to be my existence.

Always falling.

Always choosing wrong.

Always failing everyone.

I sank into a pool of freezing water that shocked through my entire body then floated me in the embrace of a numb oblivion.

There was a time I had been drowning and I didn’t want to be saved. Yet Nyte had come for me. He’d defied the laws of magick just to reach me.

Through my blurry vision it was like someone stood above the ice this time, watching me drown.

This time, I reached for him.

I wanted to breathe again.

To live.

To fight.

I wanted him.

Agony sliced my skin and my lungs burned but I swam hard. Reaching the ice, I tried with everything I had to break it but I was running out of air. I wanted to get back to Nyte. Yet it seemed the more I wanted him the weaker I became. Still I fought with my last dose of strength until I had no choice but to let go.

“My Starlight.”

My eyes fluttered open and though I still floated underwater the image of him was so clear beside me.

“They made you. But they cannot break you.”

His mouth didn’t move with the words as he cupped my cheek and brought his head to mine. Our lips met, and I was content to stay here, but we only got a second before we were ripped apart.

I gasped and water didn’t flood my lungs.

It took a moment to feel the ground under my hands where I kneeled.

“Please stop,” I begged. She was trying to mess with my head. Get me to see Nyte as the enemy and show me there was another path for my heart.

My head angled back and I knelt under the harsh judgment of the still figure. My heart became cold. All my short life I’d yearned to discover if I had parents. But it seemed all gods were merciless and cruel, and I was merely their failed creation.

I only had one purpose; to right the world. They would never forgive me if I didn’t let Nyte go.

It was another god who spoke next—the deep tone of the God of Dusk, and I cast my eyes over his dominating sculpture.

“You have flesh and you bleed. You have feelings and a heart that beats. We created you in the image of mankind and you are capable of their flaws. We brought six guardians together to raise you and teach you the ways of the species. Yet still you abandoned all you were destined for. Your heart calls to darkness, and you cannot give yourself to it again.”

“The dark isn’t frightening. It can love too.”

“There will come a time when your heart is tested, and you must not choose to sacrifice yourself for it.”

“I don’t know if I have the strength to let him go,” I confessed quietly.

“Look not for strength, but righteousness.”

“I need my memories, please.”

“They cannot be given back, my child, as you bargained them to us and it is absolute. But the mind is a powerful tool. All is never lost.”

The glow of the key discarded beside me returned and loneliness swept in; no energy pulsed through the space except what was bound to me.

I didn’t want to cry but tears fell before I could force them back. There was part of me that passed the years believing I didn’t need to know who my parents were, that I didn’t need their love. Now having the answer and knowing I would never gain such affection, I mourned for the lost child in me.

But there was a single flare of hope that my search wasn’t over. The confirmation that I had been a child in the past, and I had been raised by six guardians, as the God had said. So I straightened, breathing a long inhale to compose myself.

When I turned, I saw the light leading out of the temple, as if the doors closing had only been an illusion. Who waited beyond them pulled me with more eagerness to be outside than in.

I breathed in the cool air and found Nyte sitting on the steps with his back to me, leaning his forearms on his thighs. He didn’t speak, or even look at me, but I joined him.

“I would go inside and ask for their blessing, but they might just find a way to cast me to hell sooner rather than later.”

“Probably,” I said. “And that job is mine.”

His mouth twitched, but something was preventing the break of a smile.

I said, “The gods weren’t any help; I might be just as damned as you are to them. But I want to visit the Guardians… to know if they think any differently or could help.”

He only responded with a nod. His thoughts seemed elsewhere.

Nyte’s tone turned so haunted. “When you died, I called to the gods. Any gods that would listen, and I was answered by Dusk and Dawn. They said they would take you back. I can’t face going inside that temple, and I almost fell to my knees watching you disappear into it just now because it’s where I had to bring your body. Walking out of there all those centuries ago… watching those doors close with you inside…”

Nyte didn’t finish, but the slam of his grief and sorrow was enough to prick my eyes. I reached out a hand, and his unclasped to entwine with mine as I shuffled closer.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what else could soothe the sharp pain slicing both of us.

Nyte sighed before his forehead fell to mine; his other hand cupped my cheek.

“Even if you hate me. Fight me. In the company of your rage, your defiance, your heated passion. It is my peace, because you’re alive to throw it all at me. And only when I’m around it do I feel alive.”

I didn’t know what to say. There were no promises I could give when our paths rocked so uncertainly. He wasn’t looking for a response when his lips pressed to my forehead and he stood, seeming to bury any insecurity with it.

“I didn’t think they would help, but it was worth a try,” Nyte said.

I followed him down the steps.

“What do you know of the prophesy… When falls night?”

“That it’s a fickle and convoluted thing. I’ve never been a fan of riddles, and one tied to fate serves no purpose other than to bring out madness in men.”

His hand slipped around my waist without warning and I held his arm as the familiar pull through starry shadow took us away.

“So what do we do now?” I asked, hoping he had something else.

He took us to the castle rooftops again and my stomach flipped as I eyed him suspiciously like he could push me off in an attempt to train my flying this time. The bastard gave a wicked side smile reading my apprehension, but it was a strange relief to see after the kernel of vulnerability he let show at the temple.

“When you came back, I was surprised it was in Alisus at first. Until I remembered that’s where one of the Guardian Temples is—there’s many of them throughout Solanis. Perhaps your parents knew Vesitire wasn’t safe and the king would find you there if you wandered without memories.”

“Considerate of them,” I grumbled sarcastically.

Nyte reached through the void to retrieve his stunning black sword again. My shoulders slumped as he looked to the key I held expectantly.

My key became a blade and Nyte’s eyes twinkled in satisfaction.

“Don’t slip off the edge,” he taunted. “I might not be fast enough to catch you this time.”

My eyes narrowed to a glare. “I’d catch myself.”

“We’ll see.”

I moved first, using steps Rose had taught me before. Nyte sidestepped my vertical strike, but I spun to clash blades, giving off a beautiful flare from the key against his obsidian. Pushing off it, I reeled into a focus that came to me by instinct. Nyte began to push back, dancing with me.

We pushed and pulled through the bitter air for some time. I became lost to it, enjoying the feeling of release through the movements that answered his like it was a rhythm we’d found before. Our blades cut a symphony through the silence, and each time our eyes met with the passion of battle a pulse of energy expanded in my chest, racing through my blood.

When our blades locked again, Nyte spun his arm, nearly disarming me, but instead of claiming victory, he claimed me. His arm wrapped my waist, drawing me flush to him as a surprised gasp left my lips.

“No matter what the gods have to say, you are incredible, and powerful, and they won’t admit it but they fear you,” he said huskily, before bringing his mouth to mine.

“They’re only disappointed I didn’t turn out to be their perfect maiden despite their efforts.”

“Disappointment only comes from their own egos. Gods are very proud and very selfish. They fear you because you do not fear yourself and therefore they do not control you. It is the greatest power you’ll ever hold.”