Chapter 9 Astraea #2
I could practically feel Auster’s outrage, but he became irrelevant to me in this room with Nightsdeath here.
Even though I knew this wasn’t my Nyte, not the parts that loved me, it was becoming hard to keep believing this creature was only cruel and merciless and would have killed me by now if I served no purpose.
“We can’t waste time,” Auster argued.
“What did you plan to do? Strike her until she gave up Rainyte’s location? Whip her? I think you forget who you’re dealing with, to string her up here for such petty torture. So now that you’ve had your moment to fantasize about it, she’s mine.”
Auster audibly spluttered. I didn’t think he’d ever been so insultingly overpowered, but he wasn’t a fool who’d contend with the pure manifestation of death itself.
I caught Zephyr’s look of pained concern and gave a nod of assurance while the other two were occupied in their silent power battle. He and Auster left moments later, but I didn’t relax a fraction. Instead my skin pricked with more anticipation in the lone presence of this shadowy mirror of Nyte.
“Make no mistake, my star. You might very well wish for Auster’s methods of getting you to talk when you sample mine.”
I began to shiver stiffly. Then without warning, he sent a precise slice of darkness toward me.
The chain suspending me broke, and I didn’t have a second to catch myself.
I sobbed when my shoulder took the impact against the hard ground, in so much pain I could hardly stand to be conscious, yet the torture hadn’t even begun.
I will not break. I will not break. I will not break.
If it meant keeping Nyte safe, I could withstand whatever they could do to me.
I couldn’t get up and surrendered to lying there against the icy stone, hands hugged to my chest with my wrists still in thick manacles and bound with a shorter chain between.
The nebulora within my system numbed my ability to reach for my magick.
If I really focused, I’d be able to overpower its nullifying effects from my torturous practices to conquer the cosmic plant in my past life.
Right now, I had no mental strength to want to fight.
Shadows flooded all around me as Nightsdeath crouched. He tenderly brushed the hair over my forehead.
“Such a fragile and breakable thing you appear to be, yet it is your spirit I need to break, and I feel how strong it is.”
I’d never been afraid of him. Even when he pushed to the surface of Nyte and threatened my life, I would always reach for his darkness.
“I feel you within me, you know,” he said, brushing his knuckles along my bruised cheek.
His thumb collected the blood from Auster’s slap at the corner of my mouth and his lips parted, tasting it.
His eyes closed briefly with a soft sigh, and I shivered at his pleasure.
“Our bond. It lingers in me even without the weaker half of me.”
“You’re nothing more than a parasite he didn’t ask to be burdened with. One that delighted and fed on all the pain he never deserved.”
“Yet suffer he did, for many centuries, and here I am. He used my power and enjoyed it. Don’t fool yourself into believing he is better than what you see in me. I gave him the means; he carried out the actions.”
“He had no choice.”
“Choice, oh there is always a choice. It’s what made every transgression he indulged in that much sweeter. It’s human nature to blame the lack of choice in any wrongdoings to subdue their guilty conscience and avoid full ownership of the unsavory outcome. It’s sickening.”
I bit my lip with a whimper when he slipped his hands around me, pulling me up, and I couldn’t fight it.
Not because of the pain shooting through my body with every carful maneuver until he sat there, cradling me to him, but because of the ache in my soul that yearned for Rainyte so terribly that I caved to the illusion of comfort right now.
Shadows swirled around us, and that was what kept me knowing this wasn’t my Nyte.
His touch, his appearance, was whispers of shadows.
“I could save you,” he said, so deceptively tender while he stroked tangled hair out of my face.
Tears began to blur my vision. “Look how much you’re hurting, physically and by the emotions you let plague you.
If you give over to Lightsdeath, like when Nyte gave over to me, you’ll be free of such weaknesses. ”
“I thought you would be repelled by an entity of power that is your opposite.”
“The dark cannot exist without the light, and light cannot exist without the dark. Acceptance is everything.”
“You want to end this world.”
“I want to make it stronger. It may take sacrifice, yes. But it is necessary.”
“Killing. It would take killing.”
“Yes. But death is inevitable, and we are its servants.”
I started to fear my understanding of his words. Nightsdeath would eradicate entire species if he saw fit, and not feel a shred of remorse or guilt if the cause justified the means. That’s what he was, all he would ever be.
With light fingers under my chin, he guided my head around to peer up at him. Even as death incarnate, I thought him so beautiful it ached in me. So I reached up my joined hands, grazing my fingers over his scar.
“You don’t feel me at all? Physically?” I whispered.
“No.”
There was a strain in that single word, and maybe I was a desperate fool for any part of Nyte when I clung to it as a piece of the real him. Every flicker of emotion Nightsdeath showed had to be a kernel of the person I loved with all my heart.
Boldly, I leaned up and pressed my lips to his. It was a chaste kiss, and Nightsdeath didn’t really react, unmoving as if he didn’t know how to. Yet his brow twitched, a note of confusion over what I’d done and perhaps recalling what it should feel like.
Then his jaw tightened. “Whatever you think you see or feel, it’s only echoes of him. His weak parts I have annoyingly imitated, but I will eradicate them piece by piece.”
My heart skipped a beat.
“I won’t let you kill every good piece of him.”
That removed any flicker of feeling to return the cold, emotionless expression that braced me for his cruelty.
Instead, he stood with me to head out of this underground cell together.
“Where are you taking me?” I said, hating the panic rising in my chest.
“Don’t worry, Maiden. I haven’t even begun with you yet.”