Page 26 of The Night Is Defying (Nytefall Trilogy #2)

26

A straea

Everything was exactly like I remembered. Grief crashed into me but I kept walking through Cassia’s room despite the rising storm. The color blue, which she favored, was littered throughout and it was like she watched me through every note of it. I don’t know what I’d expected, but it felt right to be here.

I laid on her bed and mapped her starry ceiling, pretending she was lying right beside me as we’d done so many times.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I confessed as though she could hear me in those painted stars.

The silence was cold and heavy. I rolled over, hugging myself against the lonely chill. Until my chest warmed again like a pulse of three beats and I felt I must have been conjuring it from memory and desperation.

This time it made me remember… Cassia kept a diary.

I’d seen her writing in it in my company; she was never shy to tell me how she loved to write her thoughts and plans, finding it gave her wonder-filled mind reprieve and sealed her promises to herself in ink.

I looked in drawers and around the room, growing heavier at the thought I wouldn’t find it. Perhaps she’d taken it with her to central and it was lost in the belongings I’d never recover. Until my eyes were drawn to the edge of her bed, and I knew…

As I lifted the mattress, my eyes lit up at the familiar deep blue dyed leather journal. The stamp on the front was a constellation I traced the points of.

For a while I merely sat on her bed, hugging the journal to my chest and trying not to cry. I wondered if she would protest against me reading her thoughts, but my chest kept warming and maybe that was her permission.

I just needed to hear her, even in silent words.

Just before I could flip open the pages, Cassia’s door creaked open tentatively.

Rose entered as gentle and lost as a ghost. I didn’t disturb her. Letting her wander around, observing and reflecting on our friend in her own ways.

“Seems fitting,” Rose said, quiet to the peace of the room like we were careful tourists in the remains of our dear friend’s life in our physical world.

“Everything in here speaks to her personality,” I said with a glance at the roof. Rose followed and smiled.

“You had more in common with her.”

I shook my head. “There are many commonalities that can connect a person. She might have loved the stars like me, but she was a warrior like you.”

Rose regarded me then; her brown eyes became thoughtful and this gentleness was rare from her.

“You’re a warrior too, Astraea. You just haven’t had the chance to prove it yet. Even to yourself.”

I gave her a smile of gratitude. I was trying to see that in myself.

“I think I’m going to stay in here tonight,” I said.

“Can I stay with you?”

“I’d like that.”

Rose lit the fire and we sat on Cassia’s bed. Neither of us were tired yet.

“Are you not worried Calix will try to turn Reihan against you?” Rose asked.

“I don’t think so… He loves Cassia still, and I have to believe his amity with me is true to her memory.”

“What are you going to do about him?”

For the first time, I felt real authority. Calix’s fate was in my hands right now and I had a choice to make.

“I’m not sure yet,” I admitted. “I spared his life for Cassia. She truly loved him and despite the very bad choices he made… it was all to try to save her. How can I fault him for that?”

“Nightsdeath said it was his fault Cassia died.”

“His name is Nyte,” I cut in. “Nightsdeath is just a dark part of him.”

“He is all darkness.”

“Maybe. But he’s a person.”

Rose might never understand why I defended Nyte, but at least it seemed like she was starting to accept it.

“What’s that?” Rose asked, breaking me from my thoughts.

Her attention bore down on the diary I clutched.

“Cassia’s thoughts and dreams. I don’t know if it’s wrong to open it.”

Rose didn’t immediately say it was, and I slipped her a look, finding her pinning the book with a frown of contemplation.

“No one else knows about it?”

“I don’t think her father or sisters would have left it there if they’d found it.”

“What if it could tell us something she never got the chance to?”

My heart skipped. I had thought of that. Cassia had shown me pages within it before. She’d expressed to me what she was writing sometimes, but still I wondered if some things were private and this would be an invasion.

“You said Reihan is like a father to you too…” Rose trailed off.

“He is.”

“He seems… afraid of you.”

That sank in my gut. “A lot has changed about me. I guess I’m not the person he used to know and he had the right to be wary.”

“I guess,” Rose said, in a way that didn’t seem convinced by that reasoning.

I pushed the diary across the bed. “You read it.”

For a time unmeasured I sat dangling my legs off Cassia’s bed, enjoying the gentle strokes of the fire, and listening to Rose’s voice take on a soothing tone as she recited some things from Cassia’s diary. Though my heart was melancholic as I glanced at the familiar things around me without their owner, the tales of her weaved through the room. I found myself giggling at things I already knew. My eyes would tear up with more touching things to come from her pages. For a while it was like she was right here with us.

“She really loved Calix,” Rose said quietly.

“Yeah,” I whispered, watching the tango of fire. “Which is why I have to let him go. He was going to try to start a new life but seeing him here… I don’t think he’ll ever let her go.”

We shared a pained look of agreement. Even though Rose didn’t care about Calix, for our friend, we couldn’t disregard him completely.

“She thought you were special,” Rose went on.

My brow pinched at that. “She had the biggest heart.”

“It’s more than that. Listen—” Rose shifted behind me and I cast a look back over my shoulder. Rose recited Cassia’s words, “There’s something about Astraea that is magickal. I can feel it. And when I look at her, she’s so ethereal I wonder how she can’t see it. Sometimes I imagine her as an angel. One with beautiful silver wings like the ones in father’s office.”

My pinched brow of sorrow smoothed out with those final words.

“Wings?” I repeated like it could be wrong.

“It’s what she wrote,” Rose said with a shrug.

She showed me the diary and I was taken by the sketch next to that page. My fingers brushed over the charcoal lines of the feathers.

Were there celestial wings in Reihan’s office now?

Adrenaline sent my heart thumping hard and I stood from the bed.

“It’s the middle of the night,” Rose argued, anticipating my intentions.

“I just want to see.”

“You should ask him tomorrow.”

I shook my head. “Cassia would always say it was the one room out of bounds to her. She would talk about the celestials with such fascination like she knew they were real even when no one had seen them in generations. This must be where she got that belief from.”

“I’m coming with you,” Rose said, slipping into her boots.

I didn’t protest as I headed for the door.

We avoided the guards that were sparse at this hour. I knew where the office was since I’d passed by with Cassia many times.

Down the next deserted hallway leading straight toward the office, a body jumped out of nowhere into our path. The key was in my hand in a heartbeat and my next breath choked in my throat, but my attack tensed my body against unleashing when the violet glow revealed a familiar face.

“I love a secret mission!” Nadia gushed in a whisper.

“Shit, why did you do that?” Rose grumbled, letting go of the hilt of the dagger on her thigh.

“If you’d thought to invite me, I wouldn’t have had to.”

“It wasn’t exactly a planned venture.”

Nadia assessed us head to toe. “What is the venture?”

“Just be quiet and don’t touch anything when we get inside,” I said, passing her on my way down the hall.

I listened first, straining my hearing against the wood.

“There’s no one inside,” Nadia confirmed.

“Can you hear better… as a vampire?” Rose asked warily.

“Hear, see, smell, taste; honestly aside from the whole bloodlust annoyance, it has a lot of perks.”

She said it with a nonchalant attitude, but I had a feeling it still wouldn’t have been a choice she’d have made.

“I’m stronger too—want me to break in?”

“No,” I said quickly. She could be quite impulsive. “He can’t know we were here.”

“Ughh,” Nadia groaned, reaching into her high ponytail. “The human way it is, then.”

We watched her use two hairpins in the lock with fascination.

“I could have done that too,” Rose commented.

I slipped a curious look but she only shrugged at it. There was a lot of Rose I still had to figure out.

Nadia cast a victorious, feline smile at the unmistakable click of the door unlocking.

Inside was dark, ominously so. The only light to flood in right in front of us on through a long window made the prominent desk and tall back seat appear as daunting figures of judgment even though they were vacant.

“You should have brought a torch,” Nadia said, already across the room. I figured her vampire sight was a little more advanced than ours.

To my command, the key flared to life in its staff form and I smiled proudly. “I did.”

“What is that thing?” Nadia asked curiously.

I didn’t know how to explain what the key was. It could do many things— an extension of my magick, as Nyte had called it.

“Astraea,” Rose said my name with a note of dread that slithered down my spine before I turned around.

My heart stopped.

I didn’t feel my movements but as I got closer to the wall Rose stared up at the light from the key revealed unmistakable finer detail with every step.

We stared at celestial wings.

Huge, breathtaking wings.

They had to be a life-size replica. They couldn’t be real.

I didn’t bask in their beauty; I had to know for certain.

My hand was compelled to reach for them, to touch those shimming silver feathers…

I gasped sharply when my mind flooded with images the moment I did.

A grim, horrifying reel played for me, showing that I was no longer in that office.

I was somewhere so terribly cold. In a small square cage high off the ground. There was no color, hardly any light. And worst of all, it spanned years of lonely isolation.

“Astraea!” Rose snapped my name and I plummeted back into myself with a harsh shake of my shoulders.

“They’re real,” I breathed.

Oh stars…

“And I think…” I shook my head, dizzy with the confusion and pain of what it meant. “I think they’re still alive. The celestial they belong to.”

I thought I might be sick. Sinking to my knees I tried to scramble for any reason for why Reihan would have someone’s wings. Perhaps he’d won them, or bought them from some sick poacher. The explanation for why he owned them could be a mere innocent though ignorant admiration of the celestials. Right now, it’s all I could believe because the alternative I couldn’t fathom.

Reihan was like a father to me. Always so kind and warm, even though I knew there was a side to him that had to be firm and sometimes harsh in order to rule the people of Alisus.

“Someone’s coming,” Nadia hissed at the door. “They’re far away enough that we can get down that hall before being seen but we have to go now. ”

I wasn’t ready to leave. What else could I find in this room? I could discover where he’d bought them and begin to trace the poacher. What if they were still at large, capturing innocent celestials that ventured out of their safety behind their veil?

Rose pulled my arm to get me to leave but one last lingering look at his office chilled me with a sense of foreboding. This enlightenment to what cruelty lurked in the world showed that Nyte had been right about what he’d told me on the rooftops in the city during the Libertatem; battles came around and ended, but war was ever-present.