Page 21 of The Night Is Defying (Nytefall Trilogy #2)

21

A straea

Every time I gained a vision of the past I battled two minds in one body. My fingers brushed my lips as I stared in the mirror, skin prickling with the remnants of Nyte and me discovering our passion as enemies. It was as damning to the world as it was igniting to our souls.

Thinking of what I’d said about Auster as that spirited, curious version of me… it made sense to my feelings now. Maybe I even found it a relief to know I had been reserved about my attraction to him in the past too. He was no doubt beautiful and Auster radiated power and protection. It was me who was completely and utterly broken not to want him the way he wanted me. That filled me with guilt and despair. Wondering if I simply wasn’t trying hard enough, wasn’t letting myself see him as anything more.

“You didn’t tell me about the bond you suspected,” I said with Nyte lingering behind me. I reached for the dress ribbons I’d abandoned.

“You despised me as it was. There was no reason to tell you when I didn’t think anything would ever come of it.”

“When did it change?”

He approached as a looming shadow in the mirror’s reflection. His fingers caught the laces of my dress and he took over.

“There are a few more things you should see before we skip there.”

I was growing impatient. Needing the whole story not just chapters, desperate to turn the next page while Nyte held the book.

“Did you wear such darkness just for me?”

I traced my fingers over the black lace bodice.

“It was my preferred color before it was yours.”

“It’s color less , love. And it’s my favorite on you because it is yours.”

I tacked back to the memory. “You agreed to help me, but you still wanted to kill me at the end of it.”

When he finished with the tie, his hands slipped to my waist.

“I’m sure you had your own plans on how to betray me too once we achieved the goal of our alliance.”

“You never found out?”

“No.”

There was only so much Nyte could give me. His own version and plan of events. For now, I was so eager for the next page of his story that I wanted to abandon today. This reckless plan.

“I need more,” I said.

“You’re exhausted today. It’s going to take time. I’m willing to give you all I can but not at the cost of your health. We’ll take it slowly while you adjust to each memory, and hopefully you’ll find your own somewhere in between.”

My impatience irked me, but I understood. I thought I’d done a good job at hiding how tired I was today, thinking it was just a bad day because of my blood deficiency.

It slipped my sight to the bottle of silver tonic Agetha had given me in Althenia. I should take it; there was no reason for anyone there to harm me.

I swiped it from the table, hesitating to catch Nyte’s curious eye.

“Can you tell me if this is safe to take?” I asked him.

He approached, taking the small bottle from me. “Where did you get it?”

“A healer,” I said, hoping he didn’t query deeper than that.

“You don’t trust them?”

“I do, I just… never mind.” I reached for the tonic but Nyte pulled his arm back.

I watched him pop the cork off and sniff, then take a sip. His expression soured and I bit my lip from amusement at the reaction.

“Safe, yes. The taste, however…” Nyte cringed handing it back to me.

I relaxed within. It was a potion from Althenia and Nyte didn’t know that to be a reason I shouldn’t take it. That was confirmation enough that neither could be manipulating me through it. Staring at the swirling silver liquid, anger simmered in me. I despised how Goldfell had made this so difficult and that I questioned the help.

Drinking the tonic, the taste was bitter but I could hardly register it considering my resentment.

Nyte’s fingers grazed my chin, tearing my glare up from the empty bottle as I thought of Goldfell. Of how he would place his pill of control on my tongue and I’d been his willing victim.

“Are you all right?” Nyte asked tenderly.

“I will be.” That was a promise to myself.

I would be no one’s pawn again and it was time to make those who thought to try see there was steel behind the guise of a delicate maiden. Starting today.

“Can we get this over with?” I asked quietly.

His mouth leaned to my ear. “I don’t want it to be this way,” he said, his breath like sand scattered across my neck, which inclined a fraction.

“I’ll be bleeding in a hall of vampires particularly attracted to it.”

“I’m rather looking forward to the test of their restraint,” he said nonchalantly. “I would enjoy getting to make an example out of one. There won’t come a second chance, not even a hesitation, for any advance made against you.”

“That’s a little harsh,” I said.

His head tilted a fraction. “Don’t tell me you’ve grown merciful for those seeking to overthrow you.”

“I don’t need you to fight all my battles.”

Without warning, his mouth came down on mine with a firmness I yielded to instantly. I had to bite back my embarrassing whimper of a protest when he pulled away too soon.

“I will always fight them with you, not for you.”

Held by the sun burning in his irises, I wanted to believe the promise of the world in them. Wanted to give in to everything he might offer. But I couldn’t escape the nagging thread that it came at a cost. Maybe one day it wouldn’t feel so cowardly to accept what our alliance could mean, but right now, how could I ever feel equal when I hadn’t the chance to discover who I was myself.

“They’re waiting,” I said.

With that acknowledgment my stomach tightened the knot that had formed since waking this morning.

Nyte scanned every inch of me. As though he was savoring it for the last time. “You are absolutely magnificent,” he said. “And brave, and resilient. I may be the villain to all those we face today, but I will never be yours. Even if you choose to see me that way.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I was glad when he saved me from needing to by stepping away, extending an arm to the door.

“Time to tempt the damned and the deprived.”

If it wasn’t for Nyte walking by my side rather than awaiting me down the aisle, the setting of the throne room would have spiked my nerves high enough to sway my vision with the thought of a darkly twisted wedding. Though I suppose binding my life to the devil I walked side by side with was far more permanent.

Nyte’s hand grazed my lower back; it was his gentle influence on my emotions within that soothed the sharpness of my panic I appreciated more. Soul and blood vampires gathered down each side of the hall. Perhaps some of them were fae but I couldn’t distinguish without checking for both a shadow and a reflection. It was the furthest concern right now.

Only when we met at the dais did I glance sideward to find Zath, Rose, and Davina.

“No one will get a step toward you before their knees break on the ground,” Nyte said to my mind.

“That’s not my concern,” I thought back.

“Stage fright?”

“Something like that.”

When we stopped walking, I faced him. “Only you and I exist in this room,” he said. “To me, only you and I exist in this world. It’s been an empty three hundred years I don’t plan to repeat.”

I gave a barely there nod. My throat was too tight for words, and my mind was racing to think of anything but what we were about to do.

“This union between our notorious Nightsdeath and the esteemed star-maiden will be most legendary.” Tarran’s voice crawled across my nape as we past him.

To my surprise, he kept near the back, leaning casually against a pillar like he awaited a grand show.

Nyte’s hand gave mine a gentle squeeze, and though he kept his expression neutral for the crowd, there was no mistaking the hatred he bore for Tarran. Whatever their history, it went beyond me.

He gave me his attention as if the room of spectators didn’t matter to him. I wished I could feel the same, but I was hyperaware of every set of eyes.

Nyte unfastened his sleeve, beginning to roll back the material to expose his forearm. His eyes didn’t leave mine as he brought it to the sharp teeth he’d exposed to cut himself. My hand lashed out before he could, heart leaping up my throat with what was about to happen.

“Can I?” I asked, painfully choked out of nerves.

My hand reached into a pool of glittering black, retracting with my stormstone dagger from the void. The material of it I now knew was fatal to vampires if aimed at the heart.

I held Nyte’s forearm in my hand, angling the sharp tip of the waved blade over his skin even though it twisted my stomach to harm him.

“You had no trouble plunging it through my chest,” Nyte mused.

I flicked up a scowl which quirked the corner of his mouth.

My blade cut deep enough to bead crimson along the purple steel. It was like my senses became acute to him, and while I might have otherwise been horrified at the notion of drinking blood, his filled my nostrils with a sweet copper tang my mouth parted to.

“How fast will you heal?” I asked to distract myself a few seconds longer when I’d finished scoring his flesh.

“A couple of days. Stormstone is a particularly irritating material to be cut or stabbed with, even for me.”

Nyte’s hand cupped my nape as his arm raised to me. My pulse drummed hard in my ears, my breath became labored. This was insane, and I was fully convinced I was out of my damned mind to go through with this.

Just before my lips could meet his open skin, my sight flicked to Rose. Her expression, trying not to twist with disgust over what she was witnessing, pinned me firm, and I coiled inside. Zath appeared pained by her side, like he wished this circumstance was different but there was nothing he could do.

Tasting Nyte’s blood again was as powerful as I’d expected. This time and the last my existence felt broken into finite threads that searched for something equal and promising to bind together with. Every fiber of my being was searching for him and I became addicted, feverishly addicted to the essence of Nyte, believing I would never find completeness unless he found me back.

I might have moaned with the pleasure rocking through me, completely unaware now of where I was, who was watching. I didn’t care. My back pressed to something so warm and safe.

“If you don’t stop I’m seconds from bending you over that damned throne,” Nyte strained in my mind.

I registered his arm around my waist while I had the other clutched in my grasp, drinking from him. He held me against him while I drifted on a cloud of euphoria.

My eyes snapped open to that awareness and I let him go. I stared at the impression of my teeth on his skin while I scrambled to piece together where I was. Who I fucking was. My heart raced to a dizzying speed. I hadn’t anticipated how much his blood would affect me, and I still had a task to do.

I wiped the blood at the corners of my mouth and stared at the crimson on my thumb. Nyte swept my hair out of the way to expose my neck. His lips pressed softly but I was numb to it.

He turned me in his hold as I finished whispering words I hoped I recalled right.

“Are you ready?” he asked, inching sharp teeth and hungry eyes toward the veins throbbing against my flesh.

“Yes,” I choked out.

Nyte didn’t hesitate. My brow pinched tightly and my eyes fluttered the moment he sank his teeth into me. The heat from before gathered quicker between my legs and I was shamelessly teetering on the edge of a blissful finish from the rush of lust infusing my adrenaline. I had to keep chanting to myself to stay present.

He seemed to lose himself too, groaning quietly against my skin and, stars, I wished we were alone. That this was different circumstances. That we were different people.

When he pulled out my flesh his breath shuddered out of him. I reached fingers to the wound, swiping my own blood onto my fingers.

Then I touched the thing I held and finished my final verse.

Nyte locked still against me.

“What is that?” he asked, but he already knew. He could feel what I’d done before he had a chance to tie the mating bond.

His head only pulled back enough to rest against my forehead. He stared down at my hands.

At the feather—his midnight feather—I held.

“The Primeera bargain,” I said through my tight throat. “Complete command of another. Far stronger than your basic blood bargain to have will over me. Our blood combined on an item belonging to you.”

“Oh, Starlight, what have you done?”

He let me go, stepping back and those golden irises became unreadable to me.

“Kneel,” I said.

Nyte’s eyes flexed, fighting it for as long as he could.

Then, when he lowered with clear resistance to my command, murmurs broke out among the crowd.

“What is happening?” a soul vampire demanded.

He only got a few steps before I said to Nyte, “Stop him.”

Nyte didn’t even have to look away from the intense stare we’d locked on each other. The low growl of outrage from the vampire told me Nyte had seized his mind against movement.

I dared a look over, and my sight snagged on one vampire I didn’t expect to be leaning against a pillar near the back, watching with amusement on his face. I’d thought Tarran would be the most outraged, at the front to bear witness to all of this, and it was almost a disappointment to see him smiling.

“Now make them all kneel.”

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Nyte taunted to my mind.

I didn’t. This plan I’d conjured only knew the present with no steps paved ahead. Only defiance and determination that I wouldn’t be another pet. Never again would I allow my choice to be made for me.

“I’m going to walk out of here, and you’re going to make sure no vampire can come after me. Then I forbid you from coming after me, Nyte. Until I break this bond, you will not follow me.”

“How could you allow this to happen!” another vampire barked.

“She’s the star-maiden,” Nyte said calmly. “We shouldn’t have underestimated what that meant.”

I couldn’t decide if I was glad about his cool demeanor. That he didn’t pin me with loathing and betrayal, or maybe that would have been easier to bear. It could have prevented the swell in my chest that wouldn’t let me do this without regret.

I was the star-maiden, and it was time for me to stop underestimating that too.

When I turned to the onlookers of furious vampires on their knees before me, I delighted in the power I had over them. With Nyte at my command, they would be helpless to stop me. My hand reached into the void again, and the power that hummed through me with the weapon in my grasp quelled my anxiety.

The key came to life as its true staff form, the faint purple glow winking out when the stars did.

“Rose and Zath are coming with me,” I said, glancing Rose’s way, and only then did the two of them snap out of the stun that blanked their expression. Rose nodded once, the fierceness in her returning.

My head dropped to Nyte again, and so much conflict waged inside me to see him on one knee in submission to the betrayal I’d inflicted on him.

“Order them to free Calix,” I said coldly.

Nyte’s jaw locked in defiance. “No.”

“Order. It.”

The bond within us strained hard with the demand. Hurting him but not me. I was prepared to keep amplifying it if he kept denying it.

With fury lined reluctance, he asked a nearby couple of guards to release Calix. My insides calmed when he did. Despite everything, I took no joy in hurting Nyte.

“If you’re going to shine, may as well blind them with it,” he said to my mind.

My shoulders squared, turning from him to face the crowd. Vampire rage choked me when I looked at over them, but I didn’t let it show.

“My name is Astraea,” I said, letting the power of the key soothe my senses like we were one. “I am the daughter of Dusk and Dawn. The star-maiden. And I’m back. There was once a time this land knew peace and I plan to bring it back. You’ll either become a part of the new Golden Age, or you’ll become dust, forgotten in the old.”

I didn’t get two steps off the dais before Nyte’s low voice, shadow-touched and daring, echoed through my mind and caressed my spine.

“Run, Starlight. Run far and fast. But when I catch you… you’d best be ready for it.”