48. Nyte
48
N yte
The sun set on Star-Maiden Day and I watched it from a rooftop, imagining how exquisite Astraea would look for the ball across the veil.
“Pining doesn’t suit you,” Elliot commented.
The break of my peace wasn’t unwelcome; I needed the distraction from the next twelve hours or more that Astraea would be away from me.
Turning, Zeik wiggled a bottle of wine at me. Celestial wine, from the blue tint through the glass, and I didn’t want to know how they acquired it. They were all here. Sorleen even seemed relaxed and I wondered how much they’d had to drink before seeking me out.
I took the bottle, drinking it hard and fast to take the edge off my emotions.
“What are your plans for tonight?” I asked them.
“ Our plans are that we are getting the fuck out of this cold and that is merely a sample of what we’ll consume,” Zeik said.
“Not getting out of our company this year,” Kerrah said, pushing into my side.
For once, I didn’t harbor an inkling of ire toward the jesting. My mood was often sour in reception, I couldn’t help it, but they were never deterred and I couldn’t fathom why.
From the high of the four full nights I’d spent alone with Astraea in the tower, I had her to thank for this want to enjoy this day.
For Astraea, I would pretend today that I was nothing more than a fae, and that those around me… perhaps I could regard them in my chest as friends for tonight.
“Happy Winter Solstice,” Elliot cheered, clinking another bottle against mine. “Or should we be calling it Star-Maiden Day now too?”
As the generations cycled by and the star-maiden became a myth in the minds of men this side of the veil, they celebrated it here as the Winter Solstice for a long time. I knew it wouldn’t happen in a year, but I was looking forward to the world remembering her.
“Either way…” Zeik drawled as Kerrah squealed when he hooked an arm around her and pulled out a stem of mistletoe, holding it between them.
“Ugh,” Nadia said, swiping the bottle from me. “Will we be suffering their flirtations all night?”
We all looked away as they kissed. Usually I would spend today in solitude in the bell tower.
“Probably,” Elliot said, and I didn’t miss the glance he spared at Sorleen and the way it pulled a timid smile from her.
I was glad they were finding comfort in each other. In this world of war and after all they’d lost, they deserved to reach for their feelings unapologetically.
“There’s games of knife-throwing downstairs,” Nadia said to me. “Winner gets to drive a blade through Drystan’s chest?”
I cast her a warning look to which she merely shrugged.
“Worth a try,” she said, taking another long drink.
“We’re onto human wine and piss water now,” Zeik said, leading Kerrah inside the establishment.
From Nadia’s comment, I was stuck on the thought of my brother, wondering where he was and what he was doing. Was he alone?
“No pining and no sulking until dawn,” Zeik said, clapping a hand on my shoulder.
I didn’t know what gave them the brazenness to be so bold toward me. Part of me flared with the need to defend myself, make them fear me, until I wondered why. I’d spent so long under my father’s iron fist, then smothered by my own dark torment, that this kind of attitude around people was foreign, but I wanted to try find it comfortable. Natural.
So I decided to try tonight. To be… free.
Once, only Astraea had the ability to make me lose track of time under something other than misery. Yet tonight, I was in no hurry to be anywhere. I was enjoying myself like this was an old pastime. The only twinge that wouldn’t allow the past to leave me completely was reflecting that there was another time I’d felt like this: with my brother. When we would escape to plan travels we would never see in an empty abandoned hut, or gamble for fun.
Nadia cheered after her win at knife throwing against Zeik. She was beginning to ease in with them in a way that I felt familiar with as I studied her. Present for the most part, sometimes letting loose, but eventually the walls would come back up around her, and the armor against feeling would be put back on.
“The two champs are up,” Zeik grumbled, patting my shoulder as he sat down beside me.
Kerrah beat Sorleen, Elliot beat Kerrah, I beat Elliot, Nadia beat Zeik, so now it was Nadia against me to crown the overall champion.
“This is pointless,” I grumbled, finishing my drink.
“Scared to be humiliated in front of your little cadre?” Nadia taunted, flipping her knife.
I almost rolled my eyes. Pushing up, I swiped the five small knives from the table.
“You first, Nightmare,” she quipped.
“I didn’t know you’d become that fond of me to give me a term of endearment, little rogue.”
“Only seems fair.”
Flipping the first blade, I threw it in the same breath. We were all so competent at this that hitting the markers for points wouldn’t be a challenge. So instead our game leaned on luck. There were ten tankards across the two shelves that had different numbers in them, and the order was shuffled each play; the one with the highest score won.
My first tankard knocked sideward and I caught a glimpse of the thirteen underneath.
“Have you stopped wasting energy on your futile quest?” I asked casually.
Nadia threw her blade. “I’m still blood bonded to him, so no.”
“He’s up to something with the Elder Vampires. If you’re really a woman of loyalty instead of a pest that keeps appearing in my path, you could be a great spy for me.”
She regarded me curiously. “You made it perfectly clear you wouldn’t let me kill him.”
“I’ll help you find another way to break the bond.”
Nadia huffed. “Spare your breath.”
I shrugged, throwing my second knife and watching the tankard fall.
“If you got what you wanted—to be free from him—what would you do next?”
It wasn’t often I cared to know about people’s personal affairs, but I couldn’t deny my curiosity about the lone wanderer that had bravely, boldly, approached me and somehow made herself seem like she’d been one of the Guard all along.
“Are you saying I’m out of the Band of Nightmares?”
“Since you’ve officially named us, that would be a shame.”
Nadia threw her knife, then I followed, until we both had one left.
“Is there anything Astraea could do that you wouldn’t forgive her for?” Nadia asked.
I didn’t like the question. It turned my whole body still and my mind racing when it wasn’t something I’d ever considered truly. My instinct was to say no—but that was only because my trust wanted to believe she wasn’t capable of doing anything not worth forgiving.
“I don’t think so,” I answered.
Nadia threw her knife and eyed me carefully. “If she turned on you?”
“She should have a long time ago.”
“If she chose Auster?”
“A better choice, for all intents and purposes.”
“If she turned into your villain?”
I threw my blade, seeing the number inside; I’d won by three points.
Turning to Nadia, this stem of conversation was starting to crawl with the bitterness I was trying to keep subdued for the night.
My villain. Acting against me. I couldn’t fathom what would make her do that unless she finally saw sense and tried to kill me for real.
“I’ve long come to terms with that possibility,” I said. “Maybe I’m even still rooting for it.”
Nadia didn’t hold my stare; her thoughts traveled and I wanted to hear them. But one rule was absolute to me—I never used my invasive ability to reach into minds on any of the Guard. Once that trust was breached, it would never fully return.
“You said you had no one to go to. What happened to your family?” I asked.
“I never really had one,” she said coldly. Lifting her green eyes, I knew the mask all too well. The shield she raised against the hurt. “I mean it when I say vampirism has its perks. Perhaps the wicked were destined for such a fate. When I got out of the mountain, I tracked down my father and two brothers. I killed them.”
I didn’t flinch. It wasn’t surprise that flickered through me, but rage. Because whatever they’d done to earn death from their own blood had to be something of the worst evils. Nadia carried herself well, too well sometimes, so that anyone else might believe she didn’t need reason to kill. That she was like me, a merciless monster.
“Good,” I said.
Her expression relaxed. Then she huffed a laugh. “I haven’t told many people that, but you’re certainly the first to be pleased by it. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Killing is something of a sport to me.”
“Are all the heinous things they say about you true?”
“I couldn’t say. I don’t think I’ve heard half of them.”
We all drank for a while longer before we left the establishment.
“The night is still young!” Zeik exclaimed. By the way Kerrah had to aid his walking, I figured that wasn’t accurate for him, at least.
“I have to go somewhere,” I announced.
“Oh no you don’t. Astraea would have our asses if we let you—”
Zeik didn’t get to finish as I stepped through the void and came out atop a small mountain clearing surrounded by forest. I kept walking toward the abandoned cabin until I pushed the door open. The creaking hinges cut through the whistling wind and the floorboards groaned at every step I took within. It was far more neglected than the last time I’d been here.
Thoughts of Drystan from earlier had brought me here. I didn’t expect to find him, but I felt the presence of him in these decrepit walls regardless. Despite the decades he’d watched me waste away behind a veil, no matter what he could do to me now, he was still my brother.
Stopping in front of the mantle, I realized there was another reason I was compelled here from something Astraea had thought so loudly I couldn’t avoid hearing it. I reached for the wooden carving, not just a bird, but a phoenix.
She knew it was the constellation I wore. A mockery, really.
As I twisted the base of the carving, the wings splayed out and the body glowed golden. My heart pounded, waiting for the voice with a tightening grip that almost slammed it shut. Then it came, in whispering gentle notes I would never forget.
Nothing can betray you more than your own heart, my son. No matter what you do, you must never give it away, and never let the light go out of it completely.
I snapped the wings back together and my grip trembled against the impulse to crush the figurine.
It was my mother’s voice.
I’d failed both her warnings by giving my heart to my truest enemy long ago, and when Astraea died, only pure darkness resided in my chest.
I was trying to prove her wrong. Giving Astraea my heart wasn’t my weakness, it was my greatest strength.
Hearing the Guard outside, I supposed Elliot would have been the one to guess where I was. So I calmed, setting the figure back on the mantel for however many years it might still stand.
Heading out of the cabin, I intended to meet my friends —a term that would take time to get used to—and let them disperse the ever-hanging cloud of sorrow for a while longer.
The night had been… good.
Too good.
That I should have known—me of all fucking people should have seen that happiness was a trick into complacency.
When the ambush came, we weren’t prepared.
The first scream came from Nadia and my sight targeted her. To my relief it wasn’t pain but rather her battle cry as she had her legs hooked around a nightcrawler’s shoulders, snapping his neck before they both fell. She was moving again in a heartbeat and then so was I.
Nightcrawlers and the more savage of the transitioned vampire line flooded into the clearing.
“Kill every single one of them,” I said, my voice echoing with Nightsdeath, who pushed to the surface.
I didn’t wait to see the Guard act, I was lost in my own movements. The quickest way to incapacitate a nightcrawler was by the wings. I threw my dagger from my side into the spine of one before I grabbed another that had made the mistake of sprinting toward me. I tore his wing with my bare hands and tossed him aside to bleed out painfully.
Blinking through shadow, I pulled my blade free from the other nightcrawler’s back and it drowned in dark blood from his neck a heartbeat later.
When I fell into this state of numb, mindless killing, bodies fell faster than I could care to count and blood coated my hands.
I didn’t know how many I got through before I heard the first whistle of an arrow. Spinning, I caught it a second before it could plunge through my chest. Seething at the arrow tip, the dark pull was familiar.
I’d only encountered it one other time—crafted specifically to incapacitate fae.
My sight snapped up with livid fury, searching for wings of silver feathers instead of the leathery texture of nightcrawlers, but I found none. No celestials but this material I’d only seen in their possession. In my moment of distraction, searching for Auster in particular as the leading culprit I suspected, another of those arrows soared and I wasn’t fast enough this time. It struck my back.
My teeth gritted with the searing explosion of pain but Nightsdeath helped push through it. Sheer rage and adrenaline made me pull the arrow free and focus back on the threats I could chase on the ground while extending my senses for more arrows.
“Nyte!” Sorleen called. I’d never heard that panic in her quiet voice.
When I found her, the chaos became silent to me. So still and deadly silent.
They were all compromised. Elliot, Nadia, Zeik, Kerrah, and Sorleen. Held by nightcrawlers.
Who stood behind them…
“You finally came out of your cowardly hiding to face me, father?”
His face alone made me want to plummet the world into darkness to be rid of the sight. He wore a hood and merely smiled.
I tested the minds of the nightcrawlers on instinct but to my growing fury I couldn’t penetrate them so easily. It wasn’t beyond my capabilities but it was a huge gamble as to whether I could break through to shatter all their minds before they tore the hearts of the Guard from their chests.
“What do you want?” I asked, shaking with the restraint it took to not rip through anything that moved.
“Your surrender, Nightsdeath,” my father said.
I chuckled darkly. “I could kill you with a single thought.”
“Then they will die too.”
“You’re a fool to think I care that much for them.”
Father gave a cruel, mocking smile, stalking between the Guard littered through the clearing. Then all it took was a look from him.
Less than a second.
For the first nightcrawler to act, still clutching Sorleen’s heart as her body fell.
White rage flashed my vision and I had to close my eyes for a fucking breath before I turned this mountain to ash.
Kerrah whimpered and the beast inside me was pacing, ready for retribution to spill so much blood I might very well drown in it this time.
“Harm another one of them,” I said, my tone unrecognizable with the chilling echo of Nightsdeath. “You’ll be nothing but smoke and ash when I’m finished.”
All personal feelings had to leave me now. I couldn’t look at Sorleen’s body and allow the distraction of how she’d finally looked like she was learning to live again tonight. Now she never would again. I couldn’t feel anything watching Zeik reach for Kerrah’s hand, like that small comfort with each other braced them in the face of death. Nor could I feel for the devastation of Elliot’s struggle as if he thought he could reach Sorleen’s lifeless form that painted the snow crimson and fit her heart back where it belonged.
“I only came to have this first leg of victory myself before the rest unfolds. You thought yourself cunning, dangerous. You’ve never been anything more than a weak, useless talent the Dark God never should have blessed.”
That word was like a lashing. Blessing, until I stared my father in his cold eyes and realized he was right… for what lurked beneath my skin will be the thing to eradicate the poison he was once and for all.
“Behind you, Nyte!” Nadia yelled.
I pivoted to catch the arrow flying for my back and redirected it to pierce through the eye of the male holding Nadia. I caught another and once again became distracted by the sickening wrongness radiating from the material Auster had armed himself with and gloated about possessing at the guardian temple.
My sight of lethal rage flicked from the arrow tip to my father. A fae. So why would he have such a thing to incapacitate his kind?
There wasn’t time to calculate that.
Where was that fucking archer?
Another arrow whistled and I narrowly missed the strike. Catching it, I sent the two I held hurtling for my father with the same velocity as a bow.
They… struck.
Right into his neck, and it had been too easy.
Too fucking easy.
I blinked through the void, catching him by the folds of his coat before he could fall. The hood came down, and that’s when the glamor released. Some kind of magick that shifted the brown eyes I knew too well into a darker shade. The aged wrinkles of his skin smoothed out with youth.
He hadn’t been here at all.
The mockery blinded me but all I could do was let the body in my grasp fall. With that diversion of my attention… it cost me.
Somehow, I knew to meet eyes with Zeik, and the haunted goodbye in them would linger in me until the darkness finally claimed me for good. Hand clasped with Kerrah’s, they both fell. Hearts torn from their chests.
And then… Nightsdeath .
Darkness rolled out of me in a way I’d only lost control of once before. When I’d held Astraea’s lifeless form and it settled that she wasn’t coming back. This magick didn’t know friend from foe. It was pure, undiluted death.
In this moment I was the villain the world whispered I was. Unapologetic. Merciless. Not who I wanted to be but what I needed to be.
The only thing that reached me in this place of unending darkness was the last thread of humanity that lived within me. Her. Thoughts of her. Feelings of her. Everything I wanted to be for her. Astraea was the only reason I managed to keep anchor to the world before I tore it apart in my anguish.
The power that was blasting out of me started to ease. I knelt in the snow quickly melting and flurrying away as the world reformed around me. It resumed in a sight of wreckage and chaos. Many broken and shattered trees in the blast radius and the cabin… it ceased to exist and that only weighed on my despair.
There were only three bodies left beside me when everyone else had turned to ash and bone. The one at my feet that had impersonated my father, and I didn’t know how I’d done it, nor been aware, but the protective sphere around Nadia and Elliot blew away on the next gust of winter wind.
I couldn’t move. Could only stare at them somewhat stunned they were still alive. Nadia held Elliot’s head in her lap, and when he coughed, spitting blood, I moved.
He’d been seconds from having his heart torn out too.
“The little rogue saved me,” he rasped.
“Never speak of it,” she whispered.
I’d never seen Nadia so ghostly. In shock.
“Get him somewhere warm. Find a healer,” I said.
I couldn’t feel much. All I knew was that I was still vibrating with rage and my vengeance wasn’t sated. It was only just awakened.
I’d tried.
To be good. To be better.
I’d tried for her but now… now I could see it was all wasted breath.
I am the villain my father made me. That the world condemned me to be. I am Auster’s enemy, and he’d called for me. I couldn’t stop thinking about the arrows and even if he had nothing to do with this, I knew where to find him faster than I could find my father.
“Once you are gone,” the male choked on the arrows in his throat. Still. Fucking. Alive. “She will be next.”
The next blood-gurgling breath he took was his last, then I stood, gripping him with shadows that flooded in every entrance to his body and set him on fire from the inside out.
His parting words felt like a countdown had been struck, and I wouldn’t be too late to save her again.
“Where are you going?” Nadia called.
I didn’t answer. She was nothing to me. They were nothing to me. If Nadia and Elliot had any sense of self-preservation they would stay the fuck away from me.