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

2

A straea— P resent

I held a dagger to my heart, knowing he would come. This bargain, our bond, would summon him from the risk to my life.

“There are more enticing ways to get my attention, Starlight.”

I wanted to deny the silk of his silvery voice caressing my skin in pleasure. I wished the rage I harbored would translate it to disgust.

“If what you said is true, this shouldn’t kill me,” I challenged.

Maybe I was losing my sanity, but being held captive between stone and iron, even for the single day he’d locked me here, had grown my resentment beyond caring.

“No. But it would hurt. A lot.” His hand curled around the bar as his golden irises danced. The bastard was enjoying this. “And there is only one place I wish to hear your screams—where I can own them.”

My hand poised with my stormstone blade fell as I pinned him with a heated glare.

“You own nothing of me,” I seethed.

I made the dagger vanish through the Starlight Void. I paced, trying to focus, focus, focus. While I had become accustomed to retrieving that one item, I had yet to figure out how to move through it like Nyte could.

My fists flexed as I paced, as though imagining them around his neck would spur enough determination to succeed.

“Astraea.” His voice dropped low and my eyes scrunched to it, hating the low tone of a plea. “Just one more day.”

I gave a bitter laugh.

“I hope it was worth it,” I said. My teeth clenched to the ache of my heart. “Gaining their loyalty at my expense.”

“That’s not what this is.”

“Then what the fuck is it?”

My eyes burned but I wouldn’t shed a single tear for him.

“Protection.”

“Control,” I corrected in a cold calm. “That’s what you told them. You forced me to retrieve the key to display your power over me. You should kill me with it, for the second you let me free I will find a way to kill you.”

He’d taken the key and somehow blocked my ability to retrieve it. Maybe I was glad when this captivity made me volatile, and I couldn’t be sure what my untrained power could be capable of.

“You are absolutely stunning.”

My resentment took an ugly turn.

“I called you here because I want you to tell me about my Bonded. The one Drystan mentioned,” I said, enjoying how it wiped the smile from his face.

“You had a lot to process as it was; Drystan had no right to throw that at you when he did,” Nyte snarled.

“I’m glad he did,” I taunted. “Maybe I’ll find this other person more tolerable than you.”

Shadow touched me before his skin did. A featherlight caress of his fingers mimicked the darkness, trailing up my arm.

“Why won’t you wear the things I brought you?”

“I don’t want things; I want to get the hell out of here.”

I didn’t look to the change of clothing on the bed. It was tempting and beautiful. Something like a gown but there were also leather pants and high boots. My pettiness made me not want to take anything from him.

“It wasn’t safe.”

“It’ll never be safe. You have a court of vampires above us that all want me dead.”

“Wrong. They want you alive, now that they understand that so long as I live too you being alive keeps the celestials weak.”

The reminder of our doomed existence crushed me every time.

“Controlled, then.”

“More like it, yes. You would make their greatest ally.”

“You would force me.”

“I could.”

Nyte loved this game between us. I wanted it to burn.

He tipped my chin slowly and I kept my eyes cold.

Nyte murmured, “I want you to belong with me.”

The next beat of my heart traitorously stumbled.

“Possession,” I stated.

“Alliance,” he corrected.

“It is only your desire.”

“Are you sure?”

“ Other Bonded,” I said to divert his attention. That key word of Drystan’s had played a tormenting loop.

“Surely you understand by now why you followed me so easily, even though I wasn’t truly there. When you were frozen on that lake in Alisus you yearned for me. Through your trials you called for me. Your soul… I wish I could say I hate to tell you this, but I don’t—I’m your Bonded, Starlight.”

I thought a part of me had always known, when the confirmation didn’t come as a shock. Instead, my stomach fluttered. A reaction I wished I wouldn’t have when the words repeated over and over in my mind.

“We can’t be. Our mere existence together is collapsing the stars.”

His lips inched closer to blow warmth against mine.

“I tried to be selfless for a moment in coaxing you toward the veil instead of coming to Vesitire for the Libertatem, but the moment you were right before me there was no letting you go.”

We shared breath, and I was torn between wanting to kiss him and wanting to stab him again.

“You didn’t try hard enough.”

“I assure you, that small push toward the arms of another tore apart every fiber of my being.”

His lips slanted against mine and I was a damned fool for letting my anger melt under the heat of him even just for a moment. He pressed his body to mine, not against the wall but rather with an arm around my back, eager to feel how my body curved effortlessly into him.

I pulled out of the kiss abruptly, remembering my irritation with him. I pushed his chest to gain space.

“How can I have two Bonded?”

“A trick of fate. A loophole, if you will,” he said. “Every person has a Bonded. Same sex or opposite. I am not from this realm. We never should have met, and it is cruel yet punishing that two souls from separate worlds came to a perfect collision. Hence, you have two of them.”

Stars above. The rarity of us—it was as magnificent as it was tragic.

“What does it mean?” I whispered. “To be my Bonded?”

It flared a light inside me I tried desperately to snuff out.

“Nothing, should you wish.”

Hearing it thrown away by him unsettled me. I tried to distinguish if it was how he really felt about this thing that ran between us. A bond that could tie us to each other.

“A bond has no heart. You told me it didn’t require love.”

“You misunderstand,” he said carefully. “I never claimed there was no heart to a bond. It is a life partnership. You vow to protect and strengthen each other. You bond your soul to another.”

“What happens if one dies?”

A plummet in my stomach accompanied the cold touch of expanding shadows around him.

“A pair that have claimed the Bond? One heart becomes a burden to keep beating without the other.”

The way he said it answered a question about us I wasn’t ready to hear out loud yet.

“You knew all this time…”

“Of course.”

“Everything you feel for me—”

“Has nothing to do with it. There was a time I wanted to kill you. You were my enemy in more ways than one. I was my father’s son—it’s all I knew how to be—and you were something that would always be in his way of getting what he wanted. To be the ruler of Solanis.”

“You didn’t follow through on your father’s order…”

“No.”

“Why?”

“You made me believe that maybe monsters aren’t born, they’re made. I was never a son, only a ruthless soldier. Even when you were gone, I still couldn’t figure out why you cared. You approached a villain everyone would sooner run from as the star-maiden, but over time, you showed me Astraea. Just you, no title. It was then I understood there was a light I could not just tolerate but crave.”

I would never deny Nyte was capable of monstrous things, but he was not a monster. Then I had to wonder if my own feelings could be betraying me to think that. I felt his care and it was deep. He came for me, stayed with me, guided me. But how could I be certain it wasn’t all for his own gain in a way I’ve yet to discover?

“Me being alive keeps the celestials weak…” I muttered. Pacing to the wall, I leaned a hand to the stone, needing to feel something solid when my world was as fragile as glass. “How can I be sure you’re not keeping me here for that too?”

“I took no pleasure in overpowering you on the rooftop,” he said darkly. My skin tightened at the growing presence of him at my back. A shiver broke me from the wrap of shadows, hands made of them that turned me around by my waist before his real body caged me against the wall. “You have every power over me. Tell me you know that.”

It couldn’t be true. How someone as influential and dominating as Nyte could be under my power.

“Release me from your bargain,” I said.

His jaw worked. “It’s to protect you from doing foolish things.”

“Like saving your damned life?”

He tried to force me away through our blood bargain when he was in trouble and the pain to defy it was like nothing else.

“Exactly like that when it could have ended a hundred different ways that would have gotten you killed.”

“A regrettable decision now.”

“But look at what fun we’re having.”

“I hate you.”

“Hmm.” Nyte refused to keep personal space around me. The slither of air breezing between us became static. “Try saying that again; see what happens.”

The dare in his tone was enticing. A dormant language I felt awakening between us.

“I—”

Pausing, the suspense rose from the tips of my toes. It flared a passionate light gold in his irises.

“Yes?” he coaxed.

A challenge. I shouldn’t provoke him, but shit, I wanted to.

“Hate you.”

I gasped at the sudden, familiar pull of the void. Sharp air surrounded me, and I had no choice but to wrap my arms around Nyte’s neck when all I saw around us was clouds. My incredulity was stolen for a few seconds by the beauty of the moonlit landscape, and above us, I treasured the map of the stars.

“One more time,” Nyte said.

My sight snapped back to him, and my irritation returned. He carried me in a position where he could easily drop me. His large, midnight feathered wings beat the night air around us.

“I have wings too.”

“Do you? Let’s see.”

He let me go.

My stomach flipped and tumbled with the rapid descent and there was no grace to my flailing form.

Nyte was a twisted, infuriating bastard.

He dove after me. I could just about make out the dark form of him through my blurry sight with the slicing wind and cold stinging my eyes.

“I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” I screamed in my mind.

I wasn’t sure if that’s what made him dive faster until he reached me, slipping a hand around my back and our fall lessening, slower and slower. Until my body felt tugged up against gravity.

Then stillness. A jarring, confusing stillness and warmth soothed the sharp cold nipping my face. I had to blink a few times to reorient. He’d taken us through the void again and I now lay on a bed with Nyte and his magnifi cent wings towering over me. His body pressed into me lightly and I was too stunned and dizzy to do anything.

“I love it when you hate me,” he purred over my jaw. “Don’t you find it thrilling? It’s one of your brightest forms of passion.”

“My hate is going to find something sharp and drive it through your heart.”

“You remember where to aim this time, good girl.”

He was positioned between my legs, and I couldn’t deny my hate wanted to unleash in other traitorous ways right now.

“Release me from the bargain,” I repeated.

“Astraea, I release you from your blood bargain to me.”

My lips parted with the faint tug within me, and I knew it was done. Relief that he didn’t fight or elude me on it relaxed me into the mattress. Nyte’s wings disappeared in a wave of shimmer like stardust. He shifted to lie propped up on his side next to me and it was only then that I started to take in more details of the room and knew we were in the one I was assigned for the Libertatem.

“Why didn’t you make me retrieve the key sooner, when you could have commanded it?”

“You were healing.”

“Your father had the deadliest weapon he’d been after for centuries.”

“You were healing, ” he repeated. “Even attempting to call it in the state you were in could have killed you, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t let burn to the ground if it meant your safety.”

I wanted to push him away but instead this tether to him wound tighter beyond my control. Only to make the impact that much sharper when he left. How could I forget that he planned to leave this realm?

Leave me.

“What did your father do with it?”

Nyte eased away, sitting with his back to me on the edge of the bed as I pushed up on my forearms.

“He managed to get inside the temple, but I don’t think they granted his wish. The doors were open, but something wasn’t right.”

“You have the key?”

“It’s in the Starlight Void. The key is a powerful weapon, but it is most lethal in your hands. You have unparalleled power without it; at least I have to believe you still have it in this life and can get it back. The key is an amplifier for you. To anyone else, it’s a volatile catastrophe waiting to happen. It will corrupt the mind of anyone who tries to wield it when it was only intended for you. In turn, it weakens the magick you harbor in punishment for allowing it to slip out of your possession.”

“But I was able to call it back even when your father had taken it.”

“This time, yes. But you can be blocked from that; my father just didn’t figure that out.”

“You did.” My gut twisted with betrayal. Then realization. “You’ve done it to me before. In the past.”

He didn’t deny it.

“I want to help you. Do you believe that?”

Nyte’s gentleness would never fail to bring out the fool in me. The pining heart that wanted to trust him.

I shook my head. “You haven’t given me much reason to.”

“Bond with me.”

Each word struck like a knife. Widening my eyes on him to search for the joke.

“You can’t be serious.”

“You are half my soul. Whether you choose to bind yourself to me or not, that will never change. But this gives them what they want. The vampires are restless; they’ll stop looking to you as a threat with our powers merged.”

“I am a threat,” I hissed. “I will become everything they fear before I give them the satisfaction of thinking you or they own me.”

Nyte’s mouth curled, suppressing his approval.

“Sometimes the key to winning is letting your opponent think they’re in the lead.”

Nyte stood and I was compelled to slip off the bed too. We were like two resisting magnets. My irritation kept my feet planted, but Nyte gave in more times than I thought he realized. He approached and my hands subconsciously curved back around the bedpost to him, erasing the space between us.

“Bond with me,” he repeated in a low murmur that skittered over my skin. My head leaned fractions to the side, to the brush of my hair he spilled over my shoulder to expose my neck. “Power and loneliness corrupts. We are infinite together.”

My breaths came shallow at the light press of his body. My blood ignited at the thought of his teeth in me again.

“You can’t ask that of me.”

“Why not?”

“You have a knowledge of my past that I don’t have of yours.”

“Yet.”

Nyte’s lips pressed to my throat. The seduction was a distraction to scatter the rational thinking I was grappling to keep hold of. He was addicting in ways that felt timeless, endless. That made me prey in his hold and tuned out the voice of reservation.

How much could I trust myself, my instincts? Or perhaps that was what led to my fall in the past and I had to be wary not to repeat history.

So in the arms of the one who was once my enemy, and perhaps could be even now, I had to craft a plan. One that might tear my soul. But what were wounds to the heart became armor to the mind.

Over the last day, I couldn’t stop picturing the veil. Imagining the winged celestials beyond it.

My people.

The concept riddled me with as much exhilaration as it did terror when I didn’t know if I was worthy of being what they thought I was. What I once was.

“I will bond with you,” I said.

His face pulled back and those beautiful golden irises searched me in surprise at my agreement, but I gave him nothing else. My emotionless answer seemed to affect him.

“Good,” he said, equally as cold.

Nyte turned from me and headed for the door.

“No more cages?” I said.

I walked to him this time. A muscle in his jaw worked.

“If you ever find yourself in one again you’re going to have the means to break it.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I know what’s hiding within you.”

It was hiding from me too.

“The vampires?”

“Won’t touch you. I’ve ordered most of them away. Only Tarran and a few others linger as part of our agreement.”

“What agreement?”

“Once we are Bonded, you are one of us. In alliance, of course; it will not change anything about your celestial heritage.”

I had so many questions on what would change. How this tie between us would affect me and if it meant I could never escape him. Not alive.

“How am I supposed to discover what my heritage means and what I can do when I can’t go to the celestials in Althenia?”

“I’m going to train you.”

That took me by surprise. “Why?”

“To get your power back. I have to say it’s for them—to show them you are still powerful, and this bond is a great advantage. But they know nothing of my plan to leave. This is for you. To get back what has been suppressed against your will. Your magick and your wings; it is for you we do this, so you stand the best chance to end this war when I’m gone. Do you believe that?”

In the hours he’d left me in that cell I had been practicing one retrieval. One maneuver.

My hand thrust to his chest, slamming him back against the door as he was caught completely unawares. My other hand reached through the void and my fingers gripped the cold and twisted handle of my stormstone dagger.

My heart thundered but my hold didn’t tremble with the point of the wavy purple blade under his chin.

“You ever lock me in a cage again, this goes through your heart. Only for me to watch you wake and do it a second time.”

Nyte smiled, a stark warm contrast to my icy glare. His hand reached up, and though his teeth gritted with the added pressure of my dagger, he tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

“Welcome back, Starlight.”