The Stars are Dying : (Nytefall: Book 1)
The Stars are Dying: Chapter 22

My shivering body made the minutes drag to feel like hours. I shifted, antsy on my perch and debating my climb down, taking the time to study the guards. I mapped a path I could take, hopeful I could slip past their blind spots.

What would they do to a lost and wandering Selected if I were caught anyway? It was more desirable than freezing my shit off in that moment.

Just as I braced, the slither of light from the open doors exposed a dark silhouette. I crouched again. My chest drummed that there was only one person, about to sink with dread at what the escort could have done with the female fae, when…

It was her.

Walking far more confidently down the courtyard path, her honey hair caught in the moonlight. I scanned for the escort, but they hadn’t come back out.

Where is she going alone?

The guards did nothing, staying so stone-still it was only the occasional blink that confirmed they weren’t garden decorations.

The fae passed close by my hiding spot, and I scurried down, heading straight after her when she slipped back inside.

“Wait!” I choked out, rattled with unease. Something felt wrong. Ominously wrong.

The female stopped, turning to me with a fright that was warranted at having been followed. I scanned her from head to toe, looking for…

I didn’t know what I was looking for. Injury? An expression of terror? Not this. Not…fine.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“A-are you all right?” I stumbled like an idiot.

She smiled warily, looking behind me as though confused by my question. “Should I not be?”

I blinked. She was the same fae I’d seen being dragged away from her mother—I was certain. Yet her contentment right now, considering where she was, shrouded me in a blanket of doubt.

“I’m sorry about what happened to you,” I said.

Her brow knitted, the curve of her mouth only for politeness as she looked at me as if I would reveal the joke. “Nothing has happened to me,” she replied. Not as someone covering up the truth. Not with the fear she couldn’t speak freely. No—her confusion was so genuine it made my skin prickle.

I wanted to be wrong, yet I couldn’t accept her reply. “You’re fae. You were taken from a town called Illanoi near the edge of Alisus. There was someone who loved you dearly… They lost their life trying to save you.”

Her smile finally fell.

My heart slammed as her delicate brows drew tighter together and her blue eyes sank to the ground. I hoped she was searching within for the memory. I wasn’t wrong. Yet she couldn’t remember—not fully.

“What did they do to you?” I whispered.

She shook her head, which dispelled her will to discover what I was talking about. Instead she turned to me with accusation. “I am proud to serve our king in this war.”

“There is no war,” I said, my voice rising in desperation. I took a step toward her, but she backed up as if I were a monster. “He’s building an army, maybe to start one. You have to leave—”

“Cassia.” A smoky voice pricked the hairs on my nape. I turned rigid at the arm that wrapped around me from behind and the gloved hand that clutched my upper arm, dreading what I’d replace as I looked up at the crown prince.

He didn’t pin me with any hint of accusation or anger. In fact, it was jarring to be met with his easy smile and warm caramel eyes. “Is there a problem?” he asked smoothly.

Drystan was the epitome of unperturbed. His presence was unnervingly calming.

“No,” I said quickly.

“Hmm.” He slipped his attention to the fae. “You can go, Elena.”

As he dismissed her, my gaze remained locked on the prince, taking in his outdoor attire. My blood chilled despite the warmth that had returned to me.

Had he been Elena’s escort a moment ago?

“What had you wandering all the way down here?” Drystan asked, snapping back my attention.

I swallowed despite my dry throat, taking a step away from the proximity that felt both dangerous and alluring. “I missed out on the tour yesterday,” I said as my first attempt to save the situation. “I was looking for a library and got lost, it seems.” I counted my breaths, trying to catch every change in his expression that might indicate he’d heard my lie.

His brow simply lifted a fraction in amusement. “Come. I’ll show you.” He twisted slightly, facing the outside exit again.

I gaped like a fool at the simple yet unexpected offer. Alone time with the prince wasn’t something I desired, but it was like he was testing me. I jerked when something touched my shoulders but relaxed as Davina helped me into a cloak.

How did she know I was here?

It was the least of my worries as I realized there was no getting out of this. She gave me an apprehensive smile with a squeeze of my arm, and I could hardly return it.

Strolling side by side with Drystan outside, I was glad he didn’t let the silence linger.

“I have high hopes for you to win the Libertatem.”

“Why do you stake your belief so surely?”

“I read your profile. I can’t be certain what it was that made me so drawn to you without ever having seen you.”

Is he toying with me, testing if I’ll fall for his flattery? I shook my head at the thought. Why would he care about my feelings?

“Then meeting you…”—he gave me a sideways look that made my pulse skip a beat—“was most surprising.”

“What about me makes you say that?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.

“You have…a particular aura about you.”

The mention of my aura was not what I expected. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

His lips curled wider, pulling back to reveal two pointed teeth. He was a vampire. He had to be. My fear of his kind raced through my blood. While he could pull off a charming demeanor, something about the way he tracked me felt predatory.

I cast a glance behind him, not sure if I was more unnerved or relieved by his missing shadow.

He was a blood vampire.

Drystan didn’t seem as thirsty and volatile as the soul vampires I’d come across, and the hum under my skin was curious, if cautious.

We reached the doors of the massive outbuilding, which spanned so high I risked dizziness as I trailed its length. The dark wood was ornately carved as if a garden grew from it. Stunning.

A whole building for books? My exhilaration climbed at how many I was about to witness at once.

Drystan reached out a palm. I watched in complete fascination, my lips parting on a shallow gasp at what I saw. A shimmering veil. My skin pricked with an energy that built the closer his hand got to it. When his palm lay flat, the veil gave off a surge of power that made me clamp my fists. Then it slowly dispersed and the doors groaned against the stone, opened by invisible hands.

“What is that?”

“A ward.”

It made sense such a place would be guarded by magick even on royal grounds. I walked into an expanse like nothing I could have ever conjured in my mind, let alone visited before.

The vast library was so much larger than I thought possible from the outside. I stood in a trove of wonder and endless possibility. No steel or iron or craft could come close to the weapons surrounding me. It was only when I stood around more books than I could consume in a lifetime that immortality became desirable. Though I had lived many lives because of books and learned more than a sheltered girl ever could in five years, my gaze skimmed everything still to be discovered with a thrill.

I gravitated toward the wide circular balcony. Heights were not a fear of mine, and it wasn’t the long distance that made my stomach coil; it was the large center cut-out on the ground five floors down.

“What’s down there?” I asked. It appeared like a black hole, but something about it felt beckoning.

“Have you ever heard of the celestial dragons?”

I slipped my sights to him, and his smile widened to a grin as though he took great delight in my lack of knowledge so he could spill the tales himself.

“They existed long ago as Guardians of the Temples. As history tells, they were hunted and slaughtered during the first war when vampires came into creation. The vampire king who reigned here before the first era of the star-maiden kept the last dragon captive below us for many centuries. Her name was Fesarah, a brilliant white dragon, and it was said that when she flew her wings were made of stars.”

The void cut out of the ground pulled at me, so much so I had to clamp my fingers around the railing as dark whisperings coaxed for it to be ventured.

“Do you believe in a god, Cassia?”

As though I’d been snapped back into myself, I had to blink at Drystan to catch his words. “Am I damned if I don’t?” I asked.

Drystan leaned a forearm on the railing, turning his body toward me. “Some say if you pray to the God of Dusk and the Goddess of Dawn your soul will be cycled to the stars. Pray to the God of Death and he’ll make sure you don’t even need a soul. His afterlife may be dark, but it is just as necessary. This thing the celestials encourage people to believe is the orbit to their existence—their soul—makes them slaves turning the lock on their own shackles. Do you want to know what I think? They say my father is the evil one for the control he took of a realm on the brink of ruin, but how are the celestials any better? The humans worked for them, worshipped and obeyed them, all for a promise of their soul returning perhaps a century from now, and they won’t ever remember.”

“You have a soul,” I said, wondering why he spoke as if he didn’t care what happened to it.

“Many don’t. The ‘soulless,’ as the people so eloquently call them. Victims of a curse that was cast upon them by long-ago ancestors. Who speaks for them?”

“No one,” I bit out harshly, without thought, as the memory of the soulless who had killed Cassia sliced me. “They kill without mercy. I have seen and lived through it. This whole spectacle is to gain safety from them.” From you. I didn’t voice the thought.

Drystan didn’t move. My exhale came out hard as I realized how I’d spoken to a prince. “Evil exists in all beings. It is another measure of control that lingers still from the celestial reign that thoroughly warped the minds of men. Brilliant, really, to make the people believe monsters only exist outside the control of their beloved saviors.” He shifted a fraction closer, our bodies near touching as he looked at me with thoughtful hazel eyes. “Even the beloved star-maiden was no exception to what it takes to rule an empire.”

That heightened my intrigue, causing me to forget the proximity that skipped my pulse. “You were around when she was?”

His smile grew with delight. “I was younger, but yes. She was adored, wild and free. Honorable and just. But like all things, she was not immune to the touch of darkness.”

As a distraction, I tipped my head sideward to glance back down. Waxing and waning moon phases adorned the hole, the waning quarter glowing beautifully. Looking up through the glass dome roof, I confirmed it was the phase that shone beautifully tonight.

“It’s a lunar calendar. Created by—”

“The celestials,” I finished.

His irises danced, and finally he straightened, putting distance between us so I could breathe, think, a little more clearly. “Yes. They are rather brilliant.”

His admiration of them made something flicker within me. Hope. Drystan didn’t seem entirely hateful toward the species his kind were at war with, and I had to wonder if there would ever be room in the world for both of them to exist, along with the fae and humans, in harmony.

“So, what do you like to read?” Drystan diverted, holding out an arm as an indication for me to walk with him.

I wondered if there was a right answer. Or at least a favorable one.

“Fiction, to escape.”

“You can do better than that.”

My cheeks heated at his challenge. Something about exposing exactly what excited me most in the books I read felt too personal. “Books are sparse. I read anything I can get.” My mouth tugged upward at the playful roll of disappointment his eyes gave as he cast them away.

“Very well. You leave me to figure out what kind of topics will spark your intrigue.” Wheels scraped along the ground and the hinges of the ladder screeched with age as he pushed it. “Not afraid of heights, are you?”

“Not at all,” I said, giddy at the chance to climb it.

As I hiked up my skirts, I almost missed Drystan’s attempt to avert his gaze from my legs. At least he had some consideration for modesty.

I wasn’t used to a climb being so structured. I’d scaled rooftops and rafters, so this careful ascension felt too safe. I wasn’t even looking at the titles, only wanting to taste the feeling of getting to the top, until I was there, peeking up at the endless expanse of bookshelves coated in thick layers of dust. It was wondrous.

Drystan’s chuckle traveled up to me, and peering down, I wondered if the fall would break bones. I found a prince with a dashing smile staring back at me, displaying no hint of the monstrous vampire I thought he should be.

I had to look away, and only then did I replace the first script on a leather book. Plucking the book from the shelf, I flashed the cover at him:

An Immortal Heart of Vengeance.

“Do you assume women are only interested in hopeless romance?”

He could hardly feign innocence with his shrug. “That one doesn’t sound hopeless.”

He was right, and admittedly a part of me was thrilled by the title. Maybe I even related to it.

I began the climb down with it hooked under my arm. Planting my feet firmly on the ground, I surveyed the bookcases, remembering this was where he’d brought Elena—yet that only confused me more.

I found Drystan watching me with curiosity, looking so ordinary it was easy to forget what he was. Who he was. I had to remember he would watch me die in this game. He was the son of the man responsible for the slaughtering of the human kingdoms he’d forced to compete for safety. I blinked at the daunting realization I wasn’t certain how many Libertatems he had watched. All of them? That would make him over three hundred years old, and that fact paled me.

He took a step forward and reached out a hand while my thoughts were distracted. I drew a sharp breath at the faint sting of his touch. Drystan studied his fingers when he pulled away, and my pulse lurched up my throat at the crimson over his skin.

The prince said nothing for a painfully slow few seconds, and my adrenaline spiked wondering if my blood could trigger his impulse of thirst.

“How did this happen?” he asked with a new low darkness to his tone. I couldn’t decipher if it was restraint.

“I fell,” I said through my drying mouth.

When Drystan finally tore his gaze from his hand, his pupils were so large I swallowed hard. Until he fitted his gloves back on and took a long breath as if pushing back his dark instincts. My pulse thrummed, unable to replace relief thinking he could snap at any moment.

“I’m growing tired,” I choked. It was a lie. I never felt more awake than when the stars came out.

I wondered if I’d conjured his skeptic look that blinked to impassiveness in my mind, but I needed away from him before I risked falling for more of the kindness that wouldn’t do me any favors.

“I’ll escort you back,” he said, leading the way.

“Is there a way I can come out here again?” I asked.

“The doors are warded. You will need me with you.”

Requesting the prince’s company wasn’t something I was keen to do. But somehow, I had a feeling I wouldn’t need to.