Page 31 of The Night Is Defying (Nytefall Trilogy #2)

31

A straea

They took me out of the cage but I could only glare at Calix across the dining table.

“You need to eat. For the blood you’re losing,” he sighed, like I was a defiant child. I was close to picking up the plate of delicious food and throwing it at him.

They’d taken at least two cups full from me and I fought the dizziness as I relied on the tall back of the chair to keep me upright. Then they bandaged my wrists and brought me here to eat helpings of red meat to recover.

“Burn in hell, Calix. I look forward to sending you there.”

He barely reacted, only dropped his eyes like he could hardly stand to look at me.

Calix surveyed the small room. We weren’t alone. Two guards stood by the door and I didn’t doubt more were outside. They were afraid of me, and though I felt weak and helpless physically, part of me retained a sense of power and satisfaction that they remained wary of me.

“Can you please eat?” He tried again.

I was planning to, if only to get some strength back. My slowness wasn’t resistance, I was merely simmering in my hatred toward him and too tired to move.

He groaned, pushing up from the table and coming around to my side. I hoped he would turn to ash with the stare I kept on him. I was restrained in shackles that had created thick red abrasions. More Nebulora, I assumed. If he got close enough I might just muster the will to attempt to strangle him with the chain between my wrists.

Calix started cutting up the meat as if that’s what was stopping me.

“You try to feed me and I’ll bite your damn fingers off,” I warned.

“Trust me, I don’t want to.”

He speared a piece, and gave me a cautious look over before setting the fork back down on my plate. When he moved away again, I reluctantly lifted my hands that felt like heavy stones, taking the fork and bringing the meat to my mouth. It was as delicious as it looked and my head tipped back to savor it as I chewed.

Reaching for another mouthful, it was pitiful how much effort it took me to simply eat. I might have been embarrassed, but that was drowned under everything I was calculating to try to get out of this. I wasn’t weak, not really. This was all cheap and dirty tactics to put me at their mercy.

“What does he want from me?” I tried. “A few cups of blood to sell isn’t going to last long.”

Calix sat back down opposite me, once again looking to the two guards like they would object to anything he said.

“Is it true that you and Nyte… you’re the reason the land shakes every now and then?”

Sorrow clenched in me with the reminder. “Yes.”

“And Nyte. He… he can’t be killed?”

“Why do you care?”

“If there’s a way, you have to take it.”

Pinning him with a glare, I wanted to hurt him. Badly.

“Is that what he’s tried to tell you?”

“When falls Night, the world will drown in Starlight—Cassia would recite that riddle. I know he’s made you care for him, but he’s going to kill you again if you don’t find a way to kill him first.”

“You don’t know anything,” I hissed.

“Astraea.” He said my name in a jarring soft plea. “You spared me in Cassia’s name. This is me trying to return the favor. Whether he wields a weapon or not, Nyte is killing you. Every day he’s too fucking selfish to admit there is no you with him.”

“You think we don’t know what is happening because of us?” I snapped.

“Then you have to hear what Reihan has to say. At least learn how to do it and then decide if you have the strength to stop history from repeating. If you don’t end him… someone will end you, if not Nyte himself. Just like before.”

I would not break. I would not cry.

Every time I was reminded my soul couldn’t have what it yearned for I came closer to wanting to burn everything to the ground because it wasn’t. Fucking. Fair.

“Screw you, Calix. You’ll never atone for all you’ve done and I hope you never get to see Cassia again in the stars. I’ll make sure of it.”

That made its mark. For the first time Calix showed fear. There were no threats nor words that could strike him as hard as the promise that he’d never reunite with Cassia. He knew her as well as I did, how much she believed our souls watched over those still living at the end. Perhaps he believed it now—it was all he had left. The belief that when his time was over here, he would be with her again.

“I’m only trying to help you,” he said quietly, but he blanched, seeming to realize what I was capable of taking away from him.

“Sure doesn’t fucking feel like it,” I grumbled.

My wrists were becoming itchy beyond belief and I still shivered though my skin was slick with sweat.

I finished eating, sad when I chewed on the last piece. I reached for the cup of water and Calix stood. I watched him carefully as he came around. He lifted my cup before I could, and placed his own in my hand.

It was so quick I paused to process the maneuver. Calix wandered around the back of my seat, taking a sip out of my cup before seeming to aimlessly wander again.

I glanced inside the cup he’d given me with suspicion. It looked like water, but he could have put any poison in it, knowing I was desperately parched. When I didn’t taste anything that would trigger alarm, I couldn’t help myself greedily gulping it down.

“Let’s go,” he said, hooking my elbow and pulling me up.

The cage they suspended me in could be craned in to the balcony, and the sight of the open door waiting to capture me again filled me with despair. Calix leaned in to remove my shackles. As much as I despised the closeness and teetered on the dangerously unhinged idea of screwing the consequences and trying an attack, I had to be smart and he could incapacitate me easily like this.

“Rose and Zath are detained in another cell block, where I think he’s keeping other celestials,” Calix murmured, so quietly I almost missed it under the loud chafing of metal as two humans reeled in my enclosure.

My eyes dared to snap to him as he unlocked my second binding. He didn’t look back, but my heart sped with the information and I had to tempt him to give another piece.

“Nadia?” I asked.

“He hasn’t found her. She seemed to escape somehow.”

Would she have gone to Nyte to tell him?

I had no choice but to walk into the wobbling cage, taking cautious steps to adjust my balance.

“Is this really necessary? The height?” I groused.

I’d never been at sea, but this was how I imagined shallow waves might feel. So I decided I was no longer enthusiastic to try a voyage one day.

“I think it’s in case you reached your… wings,” Calix said, eyes trailing over my shoulders like the idea was daunting to him.

“How considerate of your lord to give me flight practice.”

It wouldn’t have made a difference. Suspending the cages like this was only a mockery. To display his prized trophies like perfect trapped birds.

“Hang in there,” Calix said, once again almost inaudible as my cage started to reel away from him on the edge of the balcony.

I couldn’t figure him out. He’d been so hot and cold that I didn’t know what of him was true anymore. He was only trying to clean a fraction of his conscience for Cassia.

“Did you know…” I tried to tell myself I didn’t care. What did it matter? “What Reihan was doing with the celestials? Or that he was using my blood?”

“No,” he said quietly. I wanted to believe him, but I didn’t know if it made any difference to the sting of betrayal even from someone I knew hated me. “Like you said, Cassia never would have allowed this to go on.”

I turned away from him with the grief that weighed me down to my cushion. Then it was just me and Katerina again as I shivered and folded my blanket up to my shoulders.

“You don’t look so well,” she said, sitting like me against the bars.

I was feeling better after the meal, but still so tired.

“I don’t have a lot of blood as it is,” I said with heavy eyes that contemplated sleep.

“What do you mean?”

“That it’s not the first time I’ve been used like this,” I whispered. Then it hit me all at once. How I was right back to where I started.

“Oh Astraea, I’m so sorry for all you’ve been through.”

“Me too. For you. And everyone else who tried to come for me.”

Guilt would never be enough for all that was growing in me because of the stranger’s sacrifices.

“Zephyr wouldn’t stop until we found you.”

My eyes slipped back open then.

“Zephyr? Not Auster?”

She smiled but it held something like uncertainty. “Him too, of course, but Zephyr insisted on leading many of the searches himself. He cares for you a lot.”

That knowledge was unexpected. Zephyr had been easy company, though I hadn’t had as much time as I would have liked to have had with him when Auster kept me close in his own province of Althenia so far.

“You and I… were we close?”

I realized I couldn’t fully trust anything she might say. I had no memories and that made me frighteningly vulnerable.

“Yes.”

There was something hesitating, held back, in that single word. She didn’t add anything else. Anything people told me about my past life could be riddled with lies or only half truths.

“Did Auster find out about me and Nyte?”

“Eventually, yes.”

I had a feeling it wasn’t by my confession nor Nyte’s.

I closed my eyes and thought of neither.

“We’re going to get out of these damned cages,” I said, with my determination growing and my rage simmering.

I was fucking tired of being trapped in iron. So I focused on stilling my mind, feeling and bonding with my magick to learn to reach it past the numbness and pain of the Nebulora. In the calm of my thoughts, Nyte’s words trickled back as I thought of the cage around me.

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

The fire burning inside me from the poison hissed, rebelling to my will to pass through and claim back the magick it guarded.

My name is Astraea. I am the daughter of Dusk and Dawn.

I had to retreat from my battle to reach my magick when my skin slicked hot and I trembled, panting with the exertion, but I was so far from giving up.

I am the star-maiden, and my light is eternal.