Page 30 of The Night Is Defying (Nytefall Trilogy #2)

30

A straea

Every time I woke it was a punishment. I didn’t know how many days had passed. My mind was foggy, my throat was dry, and I couldn’t peel myself from the hard ground I lay against. I had a cushion under my head and a blanket, but I was freezing.

Today was a little better. I came around enough to know my shoulder was bandaged but it ached so much with every movement that I often wanted to fall back asleep to escape the pain. My skin was slicked with fever. Maybe it was infected, or maybe I was still suffering the remnants of the poison Reihan had called Nebulora.

My eyes opened and I could finally get them to focus but I wished to be oblivious instead when the sight of the iron poles crushed my spirit. A tear slipped out the corner of my eye as I lay staring at them, wondering if I would ever be free of cages, or if I would always be this little bird easily captured in the palms of others.

I pushed myself up, gritting my teeth with the screaming pain of my dormant muscles. Panic rattled me when the ground beneath me moved and I gasped, thinking my disorientation was swaying my balance. Until my sight slipped out past the bars and horror doused me, seeing the true ground was far below. The cage I was in was suspended high in some kind of underground prison hall. Cells lined high up the walls too but they were vacant.

“Astraea.”

The whisper of my name was timid but it shocked me like a siren. I winced with a sob at the sharp stabbing in my neck, whipping around toward the direction it came from.

I wasn’t alone.

It was both a relief and absolutely horrifying to discover that inside another suspended cage a short distance from mine was a woman. She was beautiful with blonde hair and green eyes but the hollowness of her face along with the worn scraps of clothing she wore made it clear that she had been here for some time.

“How do you know my name?” I asked. My throat was hoarse and my voice barely came out in a croak.

The woman frowned, then her expression saddened, and I didn’t know why I felt like I had disappointed her. She inched closer to the bars facing me.

“It’s me, Katerina. I—we were friends.”

That fact slammed into me, and my hand braced to catch me from the wave of dizziness.

“You don’t remember,” Katerina concluded, and the small glimmer of hope on her face wiped away completely.

I was overcome with guilt. “I’m sorry.”

She smiled sadly, sitting back against her cage with her blanket. “Don’t be. I was part of one of the first groups that left Althenia to look for you five years ago.”

“Look for me?”

She nodded. “Auster and the other High Celestials decided to send groups of us to search for you when we all felt the quake of your return to land five years ago. Did they find you?”

“Yes,” I whispered vacantly.

All this time…

My people had been looking for me when I’d been cluelessly locked away in Goldfell Manor. Celestials were risking their lives in search of someone who was of no help or use to them.

I thought about Auster now with more guilt that I hadn’t made efforts to see him again in weeks. He’d risked so much for me.

“Why did he capture you?” I asked. This couldn’t be about me. I had to figure out what Reihan had been doing.

“For my blood,” she said. “I believe he trades it to vampires to keep them away.”

Stars above.

It was so cruel and heinous I struggled to believe the man I knew was capable of it. Reihan was like a father to me, so loving and kind and… did he know about me before?

My eyes stung and my heart might have been bleeding for how deeply I was wounded inside.

Goldfell was taking my blood, and it was more valuable than ordinary celestial blood.

Things I didn’t want to believe started to come together so clearly that denial wasn’t an option anymore. My head rested against the cold, sharp metal.

Five years ago, Cassia got confirmation from a healer.

Something Rose had told me during the Libertatem. A truth.

Only with their infused remedies was she given more time than everyone thought.

A partial lie. Cassia’s years weren’t extended by any magick from human mages.

You’ll find I have a rather upstanding agreement with the reigning lord.

I blinked hard with the final recollection of Goldfell’s words and the conclusion dawned on me.

He was trading my blood to Cassia’s father. It’s what kept her alive.

I couldn’t find it in me to be resentful or angry. All I felt was overwhelming sadness and betrayal. Because I would have agreed… if Reihan had told me, asked me, I would have given Cassia my blood for the rest of our lives if that could have kept her with me.

My tears fell but I couldn’t make a sound.

“We’ll get you out of here,” Katerina said fiercely. I had to admire her spirit, more resilient than mine right now despite her years of captivity.

I had to be strong for her. For my people, who had been strong for me.

“I’m getting you out of here,” I said, staring at the grim dark walls and beginning to calculate a way out. Whatever it took.

“Does someone know where you are?”

My first thought was that it was only a matter of time before Nyte found me somehow, but then I remembered Rose and Zath and my head straightened.

What had Reihan done with them? Now my anger was creeping over every desolate feeling. If he’d harmed them… I hoped my dangerous, vengeful thoughts wouldn’t need to be translated to action. That he’d merely locked them up too so they didn’t try to help me or warn Nyte.

“My friends are here with me,” I said.

I had to push out of the drug. Getting to my knees, I tried to take in everything I could about where we were. It was a simple underground room with no windows. There were more cells around the perimeter of the ground floor, and I had to wonder if they had put us up here as some sick twisted joke.

“Do you know if we’re still in the keep?” I asked.

“I think so,” she said. “I’ve heard the guards talking about it.”

I needed my key. Just enough strength to reach into the Starlight Void and retrieve it.

So I folded my legs, cupped my hands, and sat straight, slipping my eyes closed. I had to focus. My mind was hazy like I couldn’t see through the fog. My headache worsened and I could barely hold this upright position. I kept trying.

The harsh grinding of metal against stone snapped my eyes open. Across from me on the balcony perimeter stood Calix, and rage flushed through my body when I met his eyes.

“You spineless, deceitful bastard,” I spat.

His firm expression didn’t flinch.

“Your blood kept her alive,” he said.

So Calix too had only just found out what extended Cassia’s years. I didn’t answer him. Calix could burn in hell for all I cared now. I should have left him to Nyte.

“Where’s Rose and Zath?” I demanded.

“I don’t know.”

My teeth ground. “Fuck you, Calix.”

“Astraea—”

He stopped speaking when Reihan entered behind him. Like a good obedient dog, Calix dipped his head before stepping aside.

I wanted to keep my anger hot and coursing, but seeing him conflicted me with so much pain because I still wanted to deny he’d wronged me and my people so despicably.

“I didn’t want to do this,” Reihan said, and there might have been a time my soft heart would have fallen for those words too easily.

“It’s never about want,” I said. “You know what you’re doing is barbaric.”

“There is a cause to all things no matter how extreme the method.”

“Cassia would be disgusted with you. All of this. She never would have wanted it.”

He didn’t respond. It was like he’d come to examine his pet in a cage—to know if I was still too feral to touch.

“How many have you killed?” I asked with deceiving calm.

“It changes nothing to know that.”

No. But now I knew he wasn’t just a deplorable man, he was a murderer of innocents.

“It’s not Nyte you need to fear,” I said. “It’s me. When you came for my people.”

“Aren’t we all your people… maiden?”

My eyes narrowed on him. “I don’t condone evil. In my time, people like you would have had their souls wiped from existence by the soulless in treaty with the celestials for peace. ”

“Your time is over.”

I smiled, but there was nothing friendly in it.

“My time is just returning.”

What I’d hoped would gain a wary reaction from him only seemed to invoke a thrill. I couldn’t decide if he was just taking sick enjoyment in my fight, or if he was waiting for it to return so he could break my spirit.

“I’ll be seeing you without bars soon. You might come to find our goals align more than you think.”

Reihan left and there were few times I’d felt such a bottle of rage inside me that I couldn’t unleash.

I didn’t expect the bigger twist of betrayal to be from Calix. I should have known he was capable of this. He’d been willing to sacrifice me before and I guess when the opportunity came to win back favor with his lord he did it again.

“I should have let Nyte kill you,” I said to him.

He didn’t even flinch, like he had no emotions at all left to feel anything.

He said, “Rest, Astraea. You need to build your strength.”