38. Nyte—Past
38
N yte— P ast
Every year the nights stole more hours than the days. The winters stretched to freeze longer than the summers warmed. The quakes became more frequent—from once every quarter year to nearly every month.
Astraea was in tune with the stars, Nyte was too but she didn’t know that. Both of them could see the gaps between them were growing.
The stars were dying.
“I don’t know what else we can try,” Astraea said with exasperation, throwing herself down on the bed of the bell tower.
They met here frequently. To plan, or at least that was the expectation. Over time, they often forgot why they started meeting in the first place. They’d end up spending the days playing chess, or cards, or riddles as a particular favorite of hers.
Those pastimes were avoidance from the fact they were failing in their task. If they didn’t allow themselves those moments, they might have driven each other or themselves insane long ago.
“A game of checkers?” Nyte asked.
She tried to suppress her half smile under the glower of her eyes. Nyte knew she was tempted to say yes, but they’d been avoiding setting their minds back on a new strategy for too long.
Nyte reached for the compass on the dresser.
“Can’t believe we got hustled by those men for this,” he grumbled to himself.
It reminded him he had hunting to do for the scam. That could take his mind off the hopeless task for a while.
“I can,” Astraea countered.
Nyte opened the protective case of the compass. It was still, but occasionally it would flicker. They’d tried to pin it on a map and followed several directions toward temples, libraries, and other places they thought could hold the answer it was supposed to lead them toward.
They’d wondered if it was something that moved. Perhaps a creature in their realm that was never supposed to be.
Nyte tossed the compass to her and she caught it with a gasp that escaped from her unawares.
“Drystan hasn’t been able to stop thinking about dragons,” Nyte said.
It had been years since they’d discovered the egg and put the beaten down beast to a peaceful rest. His younger brother was less insistent to accompany him to meet with Astraea when he’d become engrossed in translating the ancient language and learning what he could about the dragons. It all seemed pointless to Nyte—the dragons were all gone now.
“Has he discovered how to hatch an egg?” Astraea inquired.
“Not that he’s told me. I think he’d have come to you to go get it back if he had.”
She placed it somewhere neither of them knew of for the utmost safekeeping, she’d said.
Astraea stood, examining the compass as she paced around the room.
“It’s like it’s mocking us.” She scowled at it. Nyte could hear the faint flicker of the needle hand. “Perhaps we should try one more mage.”
“We’ve tried three who all say it should be working.”
She rubbed her temple as she kept walking back and forth as if it would untangle the threads of her brilliant mind and reveal an answer.
He’d learned so much about the star-maiden it was unsettling. Not as many things about her personal life, which they both kept closely guarded even after all this time. Their enemy wall was only down for this impossible task.
But he’d discovered so many more insignificant things that held more value to him. How she would pace endlessly in thought and it was like he could see the cogs of her mind turning. How she always wore her stormstone dagger on her right thigh and it was a subconscious habit to trace the black-winged cross guard like she did right now. How she could look up from staring at the floor for so long and pass a whole internal conversation over her expression as she came close to figuring something out.
Astraea stopped walking. It was the sign she’d found an answer, even if pending confirmation. Yet Nyte didn’t receive the usual spark in his chest he usually did when she met his eyes ready to spill her theories, because from her wary expression, her thoughts weren’t positive.
Wordlessly, Astraea threw the compass back to him.
He caught it effortlessly, looking just in time to see the needle spin again.
Confused, he looked up in question but Astraea fixed her sight on the compass, her lips now parted and eyes slightly wider.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, stiffening with trepidation.
“Throw it back to me,” she said distantly.
He did.
Astraea swore.
Now he was concerned.
“No—that doesn’t make any sense. What the fuck does it mean?” she ranted, pacing again.
Nyte couldn’t stand it; appearing in her path, he took hold of her shoulders. His skin crawled at her ghostly look.
“What is it?” he demanded.
“ Look, Nyte,” she snapped, taking his hand and slapping the compass back in his upturned palm.
He was about to snap back at the prickly violence but he watched the needle move.
Pointing to Astraea now.
“What are you trying to say?” he asked, but dread was beginning to coil in him to prepare for denial.
Astraea held out her hand, taking the compass more gently. In her palm, the needle spun to him.
Nyte frowned. “So are you the problem or am I?”
She clenched her fist around the brass and went back to pacing. He was becoming so dizzy with her antics that he sat in one of the low open arches for air.
“We are. But how?” she whispered, calculating. Then she stopped abruptly, turning accusatory. “What are you?”
“This again?”
“You’ve never truly answered.”
She looked at him now like she didn’t know who he was at all anymore. That disturbed him.
“I did. You just never took me seriously. I was born fae, but I was made vampire and the wings are just an added gift.” He said the last word with bitter sarcasm.
“Made,” she repeated. Recalling that he’d told her that. “How?”
What he hadn’t told her before… was that he wasn’t from this realm. Her realm. He didn’t need her to think of him as more of an invasive pest on her land than she already did.
“Tell me,” she pressed, softer now, like she sensed his guard rising.
He’d never cared about what people thought of him before. His methods, his motives, his existence. Yet right now he stared in the face of vulnerability with her, and he wasn’t used to this feeling.
Nyte stood, turning to brace a hand on the stone and look out over the capital city.
“I wasn’t born here,” he said.
“In Vesitire?”
“In this world, Starlight.”
He needed her reaction, but his body tensed to brace for it as he turned around. She studied him, waiting for the lie.
“What are you talking about?”
“My father brought me here when I could barely walk. Through some kind of portal like a mirror.”
Astraea was slammed in shock, eyes darting around as she tried to fathom how it was possible.
“So you’re the reason things are falling apart here?” she said, rising with rage and accusation, and he could feel her energy growing dangerously. “All this time you knew, and you said nothing?”
“How was I to know that could be the cause?”
“Because you’ve never belonged here. It’s so fucking obvious.”
He didn’t expect that comment to strike him. Words never did. Yet somehow she’d gained the ability to turn hers to knives that bled him.
Nyte knew he didn’t belong. Maybe for some reason… he still had a kernel of hope that was a wicked lie of his mind and he could still find somewhere he belonged someday. Through travels with Drystan, perhaps. If they ever got to escape their father’s shackles.
“When did you first notice the quakes?” she demanded.
“I’ve never known a time without them.”
“Shit.”
The air charged and he could hardly stand her distress.
“Why does it point to me when you hold it?” she asked, mostly to herself, reeling with troubles.
Nyte focused his mind on her conclusions too. He watched her. Every movement of her leg exposed her thigh from the high cut of her gown. She liked light wears and putting her beautiful silver marked skin on display…
“Fuck,” he muttered. He didn’t know if it meant anything, but he had to show her.
“What?” she said, spinning to him.
She’d never seen his skin. Not enough to see the resemblance of his gold markings to hers.
Nyte reached for the fastenings of his jacket, and Astraea’s body turned rigid as he began to undress; debating if she should turn around or flee. When he peeled out of that, he spared only a glance, delighting in the warmth spreading over her cheeks, but the curious thing didn’t look away. He reached for the hem of his shirt and pulled it off.
Her uncertainty washed away under a wave of shock that parted her lips.
“Your tattoos…” she trailed off in a breath.
Nyte couldn’t stop assessing her every flicker of emotion under the scru tiny that prickled over his skin. Static grew between them as she came closer carefully, never taking her eyes off his arms, chest, and shoulders like she was studying in a map.
His teeth clenched tightly when she was close enough to touch. He wanted to touch her. So fucking badly it disgusted him. He shouldn’t—couldn’t—want that from his enemy.
Astraea’s hand lifted, and the moment she brushed his bare skin his magick awakened to her. His soul stirred with her near and it wound him in torture and bliss.
She traced along his bicep, circling around him. Over his shoulder blades. Nyte’s eyes closed for a second to enjoy the slow trail of her fingers he didn’t want to crave.
“They kind of look like mine,” she said quietly.
Her anger was gone, stolen by wonder, and the space between them somehow became delicate.
When she faced him again, her light blue irises flicked up to him.
“What are you, Rainyte?” she asked, not expecting an answer.
I’m yours, he wanted to say. Two words that were as dangerous as a declaration of war, but they were true, even if he didn’t want them to be.
“My mother was a goddess,” he admitted. “Of stars.”
Astraea backed away a single step with her shallow gasp.
“Like me?”
“Perhaps. I don’t think there was a maiden in that realm. Not like here. There are different laws of magick, different gods and spirits and monsters in many places.”
“Do you think that’s why solar magick is failing? Because you are a son of a star goddess and I a daughter?”
“You’re the Daughter of Dusk and Dawn, technically,” he said. “But perhaps. Or maybe the gift I received of Nightsdeath has something to do with it.”
Astraea was burdened by something else then. Sorrow.
“So we’re back to the start, then,” she said. “For one of us has to kill the other.”
That couldn’t be the only way. Nyte was hit hard by a refusal to believe it. There was a time he’d wanted her dead. For all intents and purposes, he still should. Even if it was still a goal of hers he’d let go of the fight for it to be his.
There was only one problem…
“I can’t be killed,” he told her softly.
Her brow pulled together. “All beings can be killed by something.”
“A mortal god, like you or I, can only be killed by something we’re made of.”
His eyes dipped to her hip where the key was a short baton strapped there. Astraea angled her body like he might lunge for the only weapon that could kill her.
On the contrary. He looked at the key now with the most terror to ever rise in his chest.
“We can’t tell anyone about this,” he said, showing his fear made her relax, trusting he wasn’t about to turn on her.
“Agreed. Until we figure out how the hell to fix it.”
That helped him breathe a little easier. There had to be another way to solve their clashing existence.
“You should, um, get dressed,” she said, swiping up his shirt and holding it out to him.
Nyte wanted to trace the pink coloring her cheeks. The compulsion caused him to grip her wrist instead of taking the shirt and her lips parted with the fright. His chest was pounding in a rhythm it never had before.
Reckless, taunting thoughts circled his mind. When it came to killing or crime, or apparently being in close proximity to the star-maiden, he had fucking poor resistance.
“We’ve damned the world anyway,” he said, pulling her to him and claiming her mouth.
Astraea was stiff against him and he was bracing for her to pull away and likely slap him. Or take her dagger to his chest.
She didn’t. Her body softened to him like clay piece by piece. She molded around him and they fit together too perfectly. She kissed him back and that was a mistake for her because now he couldn’t stop.
An addiction took over him in an instant. Absolutely feral because she kissed back this time from nothing but desire for him. Not to prove something to herself and bind a bargain.
Her hands slipped over his side, around his back. He didn’t know this kind of igniting of skin against skin existed and fuck, the thought of both of them stripped and bare to bask in the full heat of it was a glorious temptation. Nyte swept his tongue over her lips and when she opened for him to deepen the kiss he groaned as her nails dragged over his skin.
This was what madness felt like. A slow obsession that had always been climbing and all it took was this final push.
The taste of her exploded in him. Right now, his whole existence before the day he met her became questionable. His purpose, his gravity, it all became forces revolving around her.
“Nyte.” She sighed his name, and his cock twitched to it.
With his strong arm hooking around her waist, Astraea lifted herself into his arms so gently it was undeniable their magnetism worked for each other. His tongue traced over the vein in her neck that pulsed for him to claim but he wouldn’t. Not yet.
He risked losing his restraint; pressing her against the wall next to the archway he kissed her deeply again. Greedy for so much more of her.
“We can’t,” she rasped with a hand on his chest.
It took everything in him to stop, leaning his forehead to hers and gathering measures of sanity back in every breath.
“Why?” His voice was thick with lust and her legs tightened around him.
Nyte groaned, squeezing her thigh and pressing himself to her core to make her feel what she was doing to him by denying them both.
“Because if you take me in that bed… it’ll start something that can’t end well for either of us.”
“And if I drop you and take you hands braced to the wall right here?”
“Nyte,” she breathed his name and it was only another strain on his faltering control.
“I want to do the worst things to you. Things you never could have thought of but would crawl back to me for again.”
“I’d never crawl for you.”
Nyte moved to add friction between them, dragging his aching cock over her core, but it was as tormenting for him as it was for her.
“We’ll see, Maiden,” he said, then he couldn’t stop the impulse to open his mouth on her neck, dragging his sharp teeth just shy of piercing her soft flesh.
Astraea gasped, her magick hummed to life, and his body tensed to the current she shocked through him like lightning. His hold slackened and her feet met the ground. Astraea pushed against his chest and slipped away from the cage of his body against the wall.
Her cool eyes met his with a warning, but Nyte couldn’t suppress the small smile that found great delight in her resistance. Until he remembered she would be heading back to her other Bonded. What if she decided to forge it with him and he would be helpless to stop it?
“Do you love him?” The question slipped out of him.
She knew who he meant of course. Nyte’s fist clenched in anticipation of hearing something he wouldn’t like.
“In some ways, yes.”
“What ways?”
He was desperate to know even though it might be crossing a line.
“He’s my bonded. I grew up with him and he’s been a loyal and dear friend most of my life. I’ll always love him.”
“Does he think you’re more?”
“No. But he hasn’t given up hope we could be.”
If Auster was right in front of him, Nyte couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t break to kill him without logical thought. It would incite a war but he didn’t care.
She was worth waging war for whether here or between the stars.
Astraea threw all logic and consequence from his mind.
“Our quest isn’t finished,” he said.
“No,” she whispered. “I think it just got a lot more complicated.”