Page 6 of The Night Is Defying (Nytefall Trilogy #2)

6

A straea

I loved heights, but I couldn’t deny the turning of my stomach as I stood on a small flat plane at the highest point of the castle. It wasn’t from the lack of any barrier that would prevent a fall, nor the shortage of space; it was the way Nyte kept eyes on me like a predator and I couldn’t be certain what his next move would be.

He wouldn’t push me off the ledge…

Would he?

I couldn’t stop admiring his towering midnight feathered wings. The silver celestial feathers were ethereal, but Nyte’s would always lure me with their peaceful darkness. It trickled thoughts of Auster with the reminder I had to find a day that Nyte might be away long enough for me to leave. Guilt over the secret I harbored from him unsettled me, but it felt necessary for now, and hopefully forgivable later.

At least Nyte had the confidence to be up here while the bitter temperature made it even more precarious. I couldn’t take a step without shuffling my boot to test if there was hidden ice when I didn’t have wings like him to catch me if I fell.

“Why are we up here?” I asked, but he hadn’t answered me the first two times I’d asked.

“Show me again,” he said, folding his arms.

Part of me wanted to refuse, but I had to believe there was some method to it when he said he would help me learn my magick. My hands came together, building a tingling heat that spread out over every silver marking I wore like they were beacons of the magickal force coming to life inside me.

A glow formed—a breathtaking sphere of glittering silver and violet.

“You haven’t told me what I can do with it,” I said.

“You’re learning how to summon it with less and less conscious effort,” he explained. “It should come as easily as breathing soon.”

He was right. At first I had trembled with it, maybe even feared it, but now I was excited to feel its presence and it came lighter. I wanted to build on it, use it.

“Now, we need you to be able to handle this,” he said carefully.

My eyes fell on what he held at the same time my body reacted to a magnetic force so strong my magick winked out from my panic.

The key.

“You said it’s volatile for my untrained power,” I hedged.

“So long as you don’t know how to control it. I’m here to stop you if you get out of control with it.”

“How will you do that?”

Nyte shrugged. “It will hurt immensely. Please don’t take that as a motivator to make me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Tempting.”

He fought a smile as he held the key out to me.

As I reached for it a loud grunt followed by a thump from a few levels below and across the rooftops caught my attention. Zath was peeling himself off the ground while Rose stood, cross-armed and triumphant.

“There was ice!” Zath protested.

“You’re a horrible loser,” Rose gibed.

It was as close to getting along as I’d seen them since everything happened. Taking their frustrations out on each other became a language I could somewhat understand.

Nyte said, “I’m going to order them inside—”

“Don’t.” I reached to stop him. “They’ll suffocate each other indoors. The open air makes them seem less prone to explosion.”

“You need to focus.”

“I am.”

I thrust my hand out for the key. He handed it over and I breathed against the pulses of energy reaching inside me like it wanted to merge.

“You are the key,” Nyte said, beginning to pace the small space in front of me. “It is very powerful, but it answers to you, not the other way around. Even when you don’t realize it. Like what you did in the throne room.”

I shivered at the recollection, not certain how I had commanded such power from it then when I was driven by reckless desperation with the eruption of battle that day.

Nyte reached a hand into starry shadow, retracting from it a black blade.

“Why am I not surprised?” I muttered. The glistening sword was both repelling and alluring.

“This is obsidian; it’s particularly harmful to celestials.” He flipped the blade in his palm, and my mouth parted in surprise at the purple side. “The celestials have stormstone, a material first created from the House of Nova which is lethal to the vampires.”

My arm dropped with the key. His sword was artistic. Crafted to harm both celestials and vampires as if he chose no side or could decide to eradicate both. I wanted to get closer to take in the details of the hilt that seemed to hold a crescent moon in the center of the cross guard.

“Aren’t you… part celestial?”

“Not exactly. The wings are more like a brand.”

I traced them with my eyes again, greedily capturing every detail of the wings that shone as iridescently as raven feathers in the daytime.

“When you met the God of Death?” I realized.

“Celestial wings are tones of silver,” he explained. “Black is an omen of Death Angels to them. It’s His mark. To your people, I’m a mockery and an abomination.”

He added the last part with a wicked smirk but I wondered if it shadowed some part of him that was affected by the notion. An angel of death seemed a fitting way to describe Nyte, though not in the way he spoke of it. Like being cursed. Shunned. I thought him beautiful. Then there was the term my people that didn’t settle right when it felt like a divide between us.

“When I… stabbed you,”—I winced—“What happened to you?”

“You killed me, essentially. I’ve died many times; I’m pretty good at it.”

The casual way he spoke it disturbed me deeply. Just like how he spoke of his torture in the cave. Nyte had long since given up believing it wasn’t normal… that no person should live through the suffering he had lived through.

“You’re looking at me like that again,” he said, so stiff and ready to raise a guard against me.

“Like I want to drive a blade through your chest?”

Just like that, his tension dissolved and a cunning thrill upturned his face. What had grown sorrow within me didn’t ease; however, I could pretend for him when it was clear he didn’t want to be vulnerable with me. Suddenly the thought of him leaving and never having the chance to see under every layer that formed around him seized me with despair. That he would forever wear them and believe his burdens mattered to no one but him.

“Make the key a blade,” he instructed.

I wasn’t in the mood to engage in combat.

“How many celestial houses are there?” I asked instead.

Nyte propped himself in a slight side lean with his blade against the ground. I fought against a scowl.

“I don’t like swords,” I complained.

“Because the one you wield as the key is not like steel or any other material. It’s featherlight and can inflict far more than a cut when you channel magick through it.”

I remembered. The way an unfathomable sheet of light magick had expelled from the key to kill the guards who had held Nyte on his knees in the cave. Then again to shatter the veil.

As I thought of that moment, my palm tingled, and when I looked down I marveled at the shape-shifted weapon.

“Very good,” Nyte said with genuine excitement. “There are four celestial houses: Nova, Sera, Luna, Aura. They govern Althenia.”

The knowledge in exchange for practice seemed fair. Though for every piece of the world he shared I strained with a hundred questions. I would visit Althenia soon, but it was helpful to gain a little insight to not be a complete clueless fool to Auster.

I don’t know why I cared about his opinion of me, but it had been riddling me with anxiety since I met him.

I lifted my arm to admire the lightness of the key. He was right—it wasn’t like any sword I’d tried before and swiftly gave up on. It glowed beautifully and with a near shimmer. The cross guard was like metal filigree. Beautifully delicate with an ethereal touch. The amethyst crystal of the key shone in the center above the silver blade and in the pommel.

“You can also make it a bow,” he said. “With light arrows that never run out because they’re crafted entirely of your magick.”

It didn’t feel like that could be possible. That I could be capable of that but still I became exhilarated by the prospect.

“One thing at a time though. Each method of using the key drains you differently and we have to start slow. You are powerful but not unstoppable. No matter what you feel, never forget that.”

“The houses; which do I belong to?”

“None of them. You are the ruler of Solanis—raised by the Guardians from all species to be fair and unbiased even though you come from celestial blood as the only heritage that could sustain what you are.”

It seemed inconceivable. That this fable he spoke of, the star-maiden, wasn’t such after all.

She was me. I was her.

I took a long breath trying to absorb what he was saying. Denial wouldn’t help me in this.

“Are you ready to try combat with your magick?”

I nodded vacantly.

“Good.”

It was the tone of that single word that stroked my instincts like a declaration of battle, lashing my other hand to grip the hilt of the key and bring it up in the nick of time against Nyte’s attack.

I met his wicked gleam, glowing from the key, with incredulity.

“No warning?” I choked out.

“I didn’t think you’d need it.”

He moved again, and I yelped, slipping with clumsy footing. My heels went over the edge and seconds from gravity’s claim—

My flailing arm was caught and both my hands wrapped Nyte’s forearm as I leaned off the fatally high ledge, my soles close to losing their purchase on the roof. Nyte’s hold was the only thing preventing me from falling back completely.

“We need to work on that,” he commented. “You are very agile; you shouldn’t be this clumsy.”

“Nyte.” He didn’t pull me back up and my rapid breaths clouded the frosty air.

“You’re thinking too much. You have an acute instinct to defend yourself; I’ve seen it. Past life aside.”

“Rainyte!”

His eyes snapped to mine, not in warning but with devilish challenge.

That bastard.

“You know, it kind of turns me on when you use my full name like that.”

How he stood like stone holding the weight of me from falling was against all laws of gravity.

“Don’t you dare let me go.”

That was the wrong thing to say.

“Since you’ve made it a dare—”

“Nyte—!”

Too late.

My stomach flipped when he let go. My utter disbelief didn’t get the chance to dominate when fear gripped my free fall. I caught the fading shouts of Zath and Rose before air roared in my ears and the sharpness of the cold cut across my cheeks and lobes.

“You have wings. Use them,” he spoke to my mind.

Nyte was absolutely insane. Completely mad. Utterly twisted.

If I didn’t die, I was going to fucking kill him.

I closed my eyes, feeling for something. An essence of magick I couldn’t fully grasp.

“Fly, Starlight.”

“I can’t.”

Too many emotions cut through any belief I was trying to gather. That I could do it. Fly. The possibility felt almost tangible and I wanted it more than anything. Until my mind rebelled, chanting that I deserved to fall, and suddenly it was like the ground grew vines to reach up to ensnare me. Making wings impossible to form in their tangled clutches. Pulling me faster and faster so I would shatter when it ended.

An arm wrapped my middle and on instinct I clung to the safety. My legs wrapped around Nyte’s waist, arms clamping his neck, and I couldn’t help the sob that broke from me as the rapid decline turned to a gentle floating.

When Nyte met the ground I unhooked myself from him, unable to stop the barrel of rage that flattened my palms to his chest, and pushed hard.

“You’re an ass!” I hissed.

He remained unyielding to my outburst and that only fueled my hatred more. The hum in my palm reminded me of the tight grip I still had on the key.

I attacked.

It was Nyte’s turn to respond with only seconds to spare as he reached into the void to call his blade. Every time our swords clashed it didn’t emit the clang of steel I was used to hearing but instead they sang to each other in a hymn that soothed my senses. No longer was it my anger driving my movements but a song I was sure I’d heard before.

A memory started flooding into my present.

The trees we’d landed around began to fade away.

The daylight slowly darkened to night and the air wasn’t as cold anymore. It was smoke-clogged and warm.

Nyte wasn’t clean and well dressed, he was battle-worn and tired.

So much heartache stretched between us like every attack and defense we made against one another was tight with regret but somehow necessary.

I stopped, panting hard, and the daylight returned like a lashing back to our current surroundings.

The key dropped from my hand and Nyte only stared back, assessing my every flicker of reaction.

I fell to my knees, touching the frosted grass with gloved fingers while my mind reeled with the memory that had filtered its way into my present.

“We were really enemies,” I recalled through a labored breath.

What I’d seen was another piece of the day I’d given him the scar he wore from his right temple and over his cheekbone.

“Yes,” he said.

“Why did you never heal that scar?”

Nyte’s knees entered my vision in front. When I couldn’t look up he took my chin. I could hardly stand to look at my mark on him.

“Because it’s a piece of you.”

“It’s proof you narrowly escaped my attempt to kill you.”

“Your determination and anger are two of my favorite things.”

“How—” I shook my head trying to make sense of it. Us. “How did we look past what we are? Everything that makes us wrong together.”

“We realized that what made us wrong was in favor of the world, and for a while… we got the chance to choose selfishness.”

“That didn’t work out in our favor either,” I whispered. Words that were daggers in my chest.

He didn’t try to soothe the truth. “No.”

I nodded, sniffing against the emotions that were threatening to spill.

“Just as well we don’t have to worry about it again,” I said coldly, pushing up, I marched past him toward the castle. I would not break. “You’ll be gone soon anyway.”