The Stars are Dying : (Nytefall: Book 1)
The Stars are Dying: Chapter 45

The moment the key piece slipped into my palm I was taken from the maze entirely. Maybe I’d traveled far away from the realm I knew, pulled through a dark void of starlight and wonder. I thought I’d been here before as my body moved with no time or direction. Only for a few beautiful, fleeting seconds before everything stilled.

The shadows dispersed, and the first thing to greet me was a wickedly smirking prince leaning sideways against magnificent twin doors that eclipsed him.

“Took you long enough,” Drystan said, straightening.

The black stone was carved with ancient intricate swirls and decoration behind him, so tall I would never glimpse the beauty of the top. A long, iridescent dark flight of stairs led up to them, and I took them slowly, savoring my surroundings in a place that radiated unearthly, exquisite power. But it was only an echo of what lay beyond those doors. Not the darkness of evil or ominous beings; this was the kind of power and cosmic beauty.

The pieces of my key floated from my palm, and I watched in a trance as they fixed themselves together. My skin tingled as I reached for it. Until I had possession of all five keys.

It was about to be over.

“Bravo. I almost thought you would kill him in there, you know.”

I cut him with a look of hate. “What do you want from this?”

“Believe it or not, I have no interest in getting beyond those doors. I only need to ensure my father never does.”

“Then you should have wanted me to fail.”

“Oh, no, for the key is a very powerful tool I would very much like to have possession of.” He stalked to me with slow attention. “It can make gods bow.”

I shook my head. “Power. That’s all this is in aid of. It will corrupt you.”

“I am flattered you consider me not to be already.”

I shouldn’t have been so naïve, yet I couldn’t let go of the confliction in his words. It lived like a kernel of belief inside me so I couldn’t believe the warnings against him—not fully.

“And if it’s just like every other time…? What if none of these are it?”

Drystan paused, searching my face, and I tried to read the emotion in his, but he put up his guard quickly. “Then I have no further use for you.”

I wasn’t that foolish to think his threat was empty. “Let’s get this over with then,” I said, dipping into my leathers for the other keys.

I tried them one by one, my heart thundering, my palms slicking, my grip trembling. Four of them didn’t work, and I held my breath as I slotted the last one into place…

Nothing.

Dread sank me. I tried them all again, cursing and chanting and praying.

Nothing moved.

My anchor lowered me to my knees.

Drystan growled in annoyance. “Think, Astraea. There must be some other way to try them.”

I shook my head. I was just another failure. “I never told you my name,” I whispered. My racing pulse had nothing to do with the lost hope of the keys anymore. I feared lifting my head as I remained vulnerable to him.

Drystan crouched, but still my fear stopped me from looking at him. “What a tragedy you have become,” he said as if it were a sad, slipped observation.

Whatever he thought I could do differently with the keys, he was wrong.

I breathed out in disbelief. I’d thought for a moment it would work.

The keys slipped from my grasp in defeat, chiming to the floor as dull, scattered pieces of metal. The Libertatem was nothing more than a cat-and-mouse game, a complete ridicule of collecting meaningless trinkets while the king fooled the land to be at his mercy.

I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

Drystan’s thinning patience was audible as he stood abruptly. I scanned each key over and over with growing rage and frustration at what they represented.

It had all been for nothing.

The keys were whole, but each one kept their serrated breaking points, ready to split again and be cast out for the next Libertatem. A never-ending cycle of puzzles and trials.

The king was right. There would always only be one winner.

Him.

I picked up one key, shaking with the desire to throw it while I frantically tried to reassess how to end him. And Drystan. It had to end with Nightsdeath.

As I calculated how to fight or escape Drystan, my fingers flexed over the key. My eyes traced it carefully, over and over, until it became soothing…hypnotic. But every now and then the trance would stumble…because something about the intricate design wasn’t right.

It didn’t perfectly match.

Grazing the piece with extra detail on its design, I blinked at the shimmer. My first instinct was to conclude it was my own desperate conjuring for something, but against my skin it gave off the faintest tingle that crawled up my arm and awakened my mind.

“Puzzles,” I breathed. Glancing down at the other keys, I let go of an incredulous laugh.

“I’ve never been fond of them myself,” Drystan drawled.

I laughed again, a sound to mock him. Them. Everyone. I didn’t hesitate with the theory that erupted in my mind. Drawing my arm up, I smashed the key to the ground, wincing at the loud crack that vibrated like power colliding through the space.

“What are you—?”

The next key plummeted from my hand to the ground, then the next, over and over, until all five keys were fragments around me. I stood smiling with adrenaline as I scanned them all like a scattered jigsaw.

“You had it from the start,” I said wickedly. I wanted to laugh with irony in the king’s face. “Every time you had it.”

There was never a sixth key. There had always only been one.

One hidden between five.

I found the single piece from each key I was looking for, and this time when they snapped together, they fused with a metallic glowing silver.

Piece by piece.

Five of them.

Until the final one slipped into place, and I had to shield my eyes from the blast of power. When it didn’t stop, I opened my eyes to watch the brilliant flare expelling from the new key as it became whole. My hair whipped around me, and only then did I notice the glittering silver strands. The Starlight Matter that changed my appearance must have counteracted with whatever energy was coursing through me now. My blood roared to life, skin torching, and I marveled that I was glowing. Light peeked out from the cuts in my leathers and the cuffs of my sleeves. It was as if my markings were flaring in answer to the key I held.

It grew, becoming like a small, decorative metal staff. Each end was weaved with metal filigree, and a purple stone was protected in a beautiful cage. Holding it horizontally, I marveled at the length as if it balanced two halves of a beating heart. Yet somehow I knew that while this was the true form of the star-maiden’s key, it was not the only weapon—or tool—it could become.

The power in the air sucked back into itself all at once, and I remembered I was still breathing. I knew the key would open the grand doors if I could will its transformation, but I didn’t head for it. I met eyes with the prince, who stared at me for the first time in awe, like he’d forgotten everything before this moment and was gawking not just at the key, but me.

Time began to tick in my ears. I had a choice. I could discover so much by visiting the God of Dusk and the Goddess of Dawn, everything I had been searching—longing—for my whole life. But my destination was set. My mind was already made up.

“Astraea, you can’t go to him.”

“Did you order the harm on him?” I asked, surprised by my own lethal calm.

He didn’t respond.

My palm heated around the key.

“You don’t know how to use that. It could kill you as easily as it could me right now. Let me help you.”

“You have given me no reason to trust you.”

“Have I not? I’ve known who you are this whole time and kept your secret.”

“Why?”

“Because you deserve far better than the misery he will always cause you.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Nyte? Why is he locked down there?”

“The same reason any beast needs to be contained.”

Maybe it made me a fool to deny the prince’s claim. As he slid a step toward me, I cast out my hand on instinct at seeing the glint of a blade.

In an instant power surged for him, and all I could do was brace against the key—against what I seemed to command. The flare of purple light hit Drystan, and with the impact of his body slamming against the wall I lurched with regret.

He fell, and I winced with a thundering heart as he lay unmoving.

The beat of a countdown was drumming. The king could arrive at any moment from Hektor’s alert, or maybe he would have felt the awakening of the key, which hummed with an energy through the air.

I had to make a choice, not knowing if I’d fatally harmed the prince. Though it wasn’t without a new seed of guilt that I turned…

And ran.

I chose Nyte.