The Stars are Dying : (Nytefall: Book 1)
The Stars are Dying: Chapter 25

A girl was running through the woods. Sharp bites stung her with every step over the rocks and fallen branches. The icy air coated her bare arms and touched her skin through the holes in her thin white gown.

Waiting for her when she awoke had been the Reaper of her previous life, and he had come to claim again. The betrayal clawed at her within, more searing than the fire of her lungs as she fled from them. Tears streamed from her eyes, but she couldn’t stop running. She couldn’t lose before she’d had the chance to replace the one she’d come back for and to right the wrongs of the world.

A figure emerged onto her path, and she stumbled to a halt. A new threat. One who might have tracked her from the scent of her blood, which had been drawn out by the woodland’s spindly limbs reaching to grapple with her.

In the dark she couldn’t replace a shadow to confirm whether he was soulless or shadowless. It didn’t matter. They would both feel the raging desire for her blood, especially when it was all but offered to them like this.

“What a gift the gods have sent my way this night,” he sang. His demeanor exuded the arrogance of a predator who knew his prey had no means of escape.

Her heart pounded furiously. While the person she ran from was another threat to her life, it would be better than having time or blood drained from her.

In her next blink, the vampire’s body was pressed to hers.

“Please, you don’t realize what you’re doing. I’m going to help you—help everyone—”

He chuckled darkly, mocking her, as his hand curled around her nape. He studied. Her eyes, her neck, her exposed arms. “Our king said such a thing once too, yet he is just as spineless.”

“He is not a king,” she spat.

“Agreed. Yet he defeated you.”

“He didn’t, but he stole the glory of my death when the real coward never would have let it be known. My people would have turned on him.” She only admitted this to keep him distracted while she reached within herself. The magick she harbored was still somewhat dormant, and she’d already expended the small well she’d mustered while escaping the first awaiting evil.

“Interesting,” the vampire said, his voice softly seductive, but he didn’t release her. His fingers trailed down her neck, and she turned rigid with alarm.

“You won’t be able to stop,” she breathed in panic. “And if you kill me…”

“Yes, I know,” he said, but she knew the thirst in his eyes wouldn’t allow him to let her go. “They would be most disappointed in me if I let you die since your existence is what helps keep the celestials weak.”

That wasn’t wholly true, but it confirmed one thing that sparked a bout of determination within her, along with a squeeze of yearning in her heart. He was still alive. Still in this realm…

“I just want a taste.”

“No—!”

Her cry was choked by the immobilizing grip on her body when the vampire’s teeth sank into her neck. It was hard to recall how excruciating the pain was when she’d lived it before, long ago. Unlike a human, whose bite could ease off and become pleasurable, a vampire bite torched her blood like poison.

“He-he’ll come for you,” she rasped, blinking through the canopy to the stars as if it were their way to each other. “He’ll c-come…”

“My child.” A feminine voice echoed through her.

She almost whimpered.

“I told you not to return.”

“I had to,” the girl said, answering the sky through her mind.

“He will always be your downfall no matter how much you want to see it differently. Your heart can love another, if only you let him go.”

“I can’t.”

“This time, should you fall, it will be forever, and a reign of terror will rise. For only when falls Night shall the world drown in Starlight to usher back your Golden Era. Guard you heart, my child, for it has led you astray once and will attempt to do so again. You bargained with your memories for your return, so it may reset your way.”

“Wait—!” A scream left her throat at the vampire’s teeth tearing her collar as he was pulled away.

“Run north and don’t stop.”

She thought she recognized the male voice, but her urgency to escape had her rolling to her hands and knees without a glimpse, trying to get any distance she could from both of them. She didn’t get far as memories began to evaporate from her mind.

“Stop!” She cried hard. Her images of him were stolen one by one, turning to smoke in her mind that she couldn’t grasp to defy the cruel agreement. An agreement she had only made because she had been sure, determined, it wouldn’t matter; that she would replace him, and she would get it all back.

Still, the agony she could be wrong terrified her now it was happening.

“Please!”

The Goddess would not listen.

His voice…it became no more than a distant whisper carried on the wind.

His name…now a collection of letters she could not arrange in the right order.

His face…

She blinked at the sodden ground she crawled through. Black dirt was wedged under her broken fingernails, and she examined them, wondering why. She was so cold, pitifully dressed for the winter, and the forest was punishing her for it. But her neck throbbed as warmth spilled from it.

Snap. Shuffle. Thump.

The sounds rattled through her one by one. She didn’t know where she was. More frightening than not knowing what threat loomed behind her…

She didn’t know who she was.