Page 32 of The Night Is Defying (Nytefall Trilogy #2)

32

N yte

My younger brother was already grating on my nerves with the way he walked, one hand in his pocket while the other tossed and caught the compass absentmindedly over and over.

“Can you stop that?” I hissed.

“Still as easily irritated as ever,” he grumbled, pocketing the compass. “When you showed father the other one… from your realm, what did he say?”

My mind conjured the image of the item with a twisting in my gut.

“He didn’t have a lot of time to react under the circumstances.” I didn’t know what kind of ground we walked on with this temporary common goal, but I supposed if it was glass doomed to shatter at the end, there was never a better time to ask questions that had taunted me for years.

“Why did you bring it to me?” I asked. “Why did you keep visiting me under the library all that time?”

I didn’t expect the answers to come easy. Drystan’s jaw shifted in the glance I stole as we walked through the quiet streets of a town near the edge of Vesitire.

“I realized that one of you had to be triumphant, and I guess you were the slightly lesser evil.”

“Then why did you act on his order to seek out Astraea when she fell?”

“I was going to kill her.”

My steps slammed to a halt. Drystan stopped a few paces ahead, dragging his bored sight to me.

He said, “Well I didn’t, did I?”

“To get back at me?”

“To stop a cycle that will never end,” he snapped. “You will always choose her.”

I couldn’t deny that, nor could I get him to understand, because my feelings for Astraea could not be placed in mere mortal words. No language could move another person to fathom even a fraction of all I carried for her.

“She was your friend; she trusted you even in this life.”

“And whoever is truly after her in this one didn’t kill that arrogant son of a bitch in the Libertatem.”

“Draven?”

Drystan’s jaw worked and he avoided my eye like he hated to expose himself.

He’d killed that player.

“Why?”

“Because he would have killed her at the end to take her key, and I didn’t think she could contend with him then.”

“You gave her your map.”

“That was obvious.”

“Then why pretend you don’t care for her?”

“Because I fucking don’t,” he said coldly.

Yet his heart was betraying his mind.

“She has something I need, that’s all.”

I was beginning to itch with a promising wrath as I heard about more and more people who wanted to use my Starlight.

“What is that?” I asked through gritted teeth.

Drystan held me with dead eyes for a second before he turned away and continued his walk down the snowy street of a town just outside the central. He declined to answer my question.

“The person who killed her handmaiden, however… they had to have been after her,” Drystan reflected.

“You couldn’t find a trace?”

“I did. You’re not going to like what the identifier was though.”

“There’s nothing about it I could like.”

“There was a silver feather.”

“A celestial? That had to have been from one of them just watching her.”

“Didn’t you say her own people had attacked her in the past?”

“Until she was adamant she was mistaken about that first assumption.”

Drystan cast me a look over his shoulder that said I was being complacent.

“They have no reason to harm her.”

“Don’t they? What if others found out about the two of you in the past and condemned their maiden?”

“They’ve been hiding for centuries waiting for her return. Auster would have caught wind of any upset or movement against her.”

As far as we knew, only my father and Auster had found out about us. The High Celestial wouldn’t have wanted that abhorrent scandal to get out—worse than their maiden sleeping with the enemy, the fact that she’d rejected Auster as her bonded for it was a secret I had no doubt he protected vehemently from getting out.

Drystan merely shrugged. “That’s what I found. If it was vampires, I don’t know what they sought to gain from trying to kill her either.”

I had to calm myself right now. It was taking everything in me not to defy her bond right now and go to her with the thought of that threat still lingering. Every moment she was out of my sight was haunting.

We came to an establishment like Goldfell Manor. A place where the higher members of society came to gamble, drink, and fuck.

Apparently Drystan knew a mage inside. I listened in on his conversation with one of the ladies who leaned into him with eager flirtations that he indulged.

“They’ll be a moment,” he informed me, returning with two glasses of wine.

Impatient ire pricked my skin but there was nothing I could do but take up a table with Drystan.

“Not in the mood for a game?” Drystan said, indicating the card tables with his chin.

“No.”

“Sour as ever.”

“If you knew where Astraea was all that time—did you know of the abuse?”

Not knowing might be safer for both of us, but I was trying to figure him out since everything I’d thought was being contradicted when it came to how he felt about Astraea now.

“I knew that Goldfell was selling her blood to keep the vampires away from his establishment, yes. I didn’t know his hand could be cruel too. He doted on her any time I saw her.”

My hand tightened around my cup.

“I didn’t expect the alliance he’d make. He was smarter than I thought,” he continued.

“What alliance?”

Drystan cast me a look over the rim of his cup, like he didn’t believe I wouldn’t know.

“Shit. I thought you just hadn’t told her to spare her heart.”

“What fucking alliance?” I snapped.

“You should really be nice to people when you want something.”

The only type of kindness pressing on my mind right now was imagining my hands around his throat.

“Nice trick in erasing his name, by the way. I wonder where you got that idea,” he said sarcastically.

Now I was really itching to strangle him.

“Drystan, my love, you’ve neglected me for years and I don’t anticipate this to be a social call given your company.”

The interruption came from a tall person with dark skin and gold eyeliner complimenting yellow catlike eyes that had to be an enhancement of magick. Their black shirt was open to expose a toned chest and they held a glass of wine as they approached, seemingly having been interrupted from some private affair they didn’t mind provoking anyone’s speculation about.

“Nadir, this is my brother,” Drystan introduced, sitting back and allowing them to trail an admirable hand along his chin.

My brother had no preference for gender in people when it came to his sexual relations, and there was no denying that these two had been involved before.

Nadir’s lips parted and they gave me a second intrigued assessment.

“The notorious Nightsdeath.” They drawled that name with a deep air of wonder but still a trickle of fear. Then their attention fixed back on Drystan with a soft look of adoration. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your esteemed company, Your Highness?”

“We need you to enchant an item for us.”

Drystan held up the compass and Nadir took it, setting down their cup on our table. They flipped it over.

“The Wanderers Compass?”

Drystan nodded. “Can it find a person?”

“Of course. The Wanderers Trove makes sure nothing that is lost is forever and nothing that is hiding can stay so.”

Nadir took a long drag of a pipe offered to them by a woman in a feathered nightgown. So maybe it was quite like Goldfell Manor, but this place was far more eccentric and bold in its affairs.

“Who shall I spell it to obey?”

“Me,” Drystan and I said simultaneously.

He cut me with a look. “We wouldn’t be here without me.”

“I would have found another mage,” I countered.

That earned a disgruntled huff from Nadir. “Good luck finding another that will touch that thing. One wrong move and it can curse the mage responsible for tinkering with it,” they said.

“Wrong move?” I inquired. I didn’t think there could be any repercussions from using the item.

“Items like those of the Trove are never meant to fall into nefarious hands. It can sense ill intent.”

“Such as?” Drystan prompted, also curious.

“The compass never used to need a mage to activate its power. Until the previous owner began using it to find people to kill them. Always a specific type. The compass would point them to any child-free, blond, and unmarried person as their prime victim. They say he raped and killed eight before the compass stopped working and never helped again.”

Drystan and I exchanged a look.

He said, “We are hoping to track down our father and kill him.”

Nadir took a long inhale, then another drag of the pipe, as if to collect a plea for the ask.

“A very risky request given the intent. What shall you give me in return?”

“What do you want?” I asked.

“A vial of the star-maiden’s blood.”

“No.”

“Deal.”

My sight blazed at Drystan’s agreement.

“It’s not ours to give. Her blood runs in me right now, you can have mine.”

Nadir contemplated my offer with a tip of their chin.

“Are you Bonded?”

“No.”

“Then it’s hardly as powerful to me. Only the Bond truly makes you one source. Your blood, your soul. It’s as powerful as it is vulnerable to the likes of you. A god, are you not? The one who cannot be killed.”

It was like they mocked me with that last sentence, knowing something I didn’t and that itched my skin toward violence, which I did a commendable job of suppressing. I didn’t know what they were trying to provoke out of me, but I didn’t appreciate the probe into my Bond with Astraea. Forged or not.

“The offer is my blood or nothing,” I said firmly.

Nadir challenged me with those yellow eyes primed with amusement. I thought about testing their mind, but decided it was best not to risk getting what we came here for unless they kept resisting.

“Very well.”

Nadir took the compass and claimed they needed peace to work the spell. I undid the button of my sleeve, rolling it up as a woman came around to my side with a small knife to collect my blood.

“Did you ever try using the compass to find her killer?” Drystan asked curiously.

“Yes. It didn’t work. For a while I thought it might mean they were dead, and I can’t decide if that would be worse when I’ve been counting on revenge for centuries.”

“How did it not work?”

I shrugged. “The mage spelled it, and it never moved.”

“Then they could be dead.”

“It should have at least taken me to the remains.”

“Unless they’re dust or shadow.”

That was a fair point to make. I’d erased all physical trace of many bodies in my wake. The thought that I could have unintentionally already killed them ground on dark nerves.

“Who did Goldfell sell her blood to?” I asked again.

Drystan sat back, contemplating whether to be kind and tell me or test the limits of my patience.

“I thought it was rather obvious, given that you knew about the reigning lord’s daughter.”

That’s all it took for the weight of what he implied to slam into me.

“Reihan Vernhalla?”

Drystan’s look of disappointment over the fact that I didn’t figure it out sooner was all the confirmation I needed. In truth, I was loathing myself right now for not thinking of it sooner.

“Goldfell heard about his daughter’s condition, and he knew from the vampires that Astraea’s blood was no ordinary celestial’s. I don’t think it would have kept Cassia alive forever without some greater consequence for attempting to evade her fate, but it extended the human’s years, at least, and she was Astraea’s friend. I figured if she’d had the choice, she would have given her blood anyway.”

“The point is she had no choice,” I growled. Thoughts of her being controlled and taken unawares boiled in me. She was magnificent and powerful and her first years back had made a mockery of the goddess she was.

She’s alive, and she’s with me now. It was taking everything in me not to slip through the void to her this second.

“She’s heading there right now,” I said, so low and dark while my vengeance was stirring. “I’m going to fucking kill him.”

“Can you really blame him for wanting to save his daughter?”

“Yes. When it required taking something against Astraea’s will and pretending he cared for her.”

“I think he did, truly. Goldfell was a powerful man and Astraea’s blood kept his daughter alive for a while longer. What would telling her have done other than upending her world and what she knew, and Astraea would have had no one to help her then. Time and order; you of all people know destiny works in often cruel ways.”

The woman finished taking my blood. More than I thought was a vial but I didn’t fucking care right now.

“You should have told me that sooner,” I growled. “Astraea is with the lord right now and I’m not leaving her there a day longer.”