Chapter 15 Astraea—Past #2
Nyte’s hand tightened in hers. “You heard them, and they know change can’t be made in a night. But you gave them your time, and that’s a meaningful step toward starting to figure out how to make the world fair for them.”
The vampires had long been suppressed and used by the celestials.
The nightcrawlers hunted Nephilim for them.
The shadowless were used for their allurement.
When they drank from a person, it released an aphrodisiac, making it easy to uncover traitors and criminals or gain knowledge from adversaries spilling their confessions under its effects.
The soulless were used to consume the entire souls of such criminals and the worst of mankind.
Even though they were controlled by and worked for the celestials, they were treated like lowlifes and criminals themselves.
Astraea listened to many accounts that night, and her mind was buzzing with where to begin righting this power imbalance. She was the star-maiden, but the four High Celestials in Althenia were a strong governing body she could easily be overruled by.
“No blood spilled tonight, I’m afraid,” Astraea said absentmindedly.
She gasped as Nyte suddenly gripped her waist, twisted her, and pressed her into the nearest tree.
“The night isn’t over,” he said, fanning a warm breath down her neck suggestively. “Will you bleed for me, Starlight?”
Every instinct in her screamed yes, but more desirable than having him drink from her was the delicious tension she could incite from denying him.
“You want my blood? Earn it.”
His lips pressed to her throat, and Astraea’s eyes fluttered at the lustful caress. When his teeth dragged a little lower her hand slipped into his hair, but he didn’t bite.
“How might I do so?” he asked thickly.
“Don’t be a cheater; figure it out.”
“I have you all figured out, make no mistake.”
His teeth almost punctured, enough to emit a sharp pain, and she braced for the burst of pleasure that would follow if he sank them into her skin. He didn’t. His soft lips replaced the subsiding sting and her hand tightened in his hair with frustration.
“Was my good behavior tonight not enough to earn it?” he asked, enticing her to break and ask him to bite.
She wouldn’t. This was a frequent parry between them that lit a fire in her.
Astraea’s lust stirred as she recalled how authoritative and downright attractive he had looked at the meeting when he commanded a room of hundreds of vampires.
It was the first time she’d ever seen him use his notorious reputation in front of a crowd, but it was more than that.
The vampires of the resistance did fear him, that was clear, but they also regarded him with respect and some with awe.
Astraea embraced this night as a flicker of hope for their future, believing the possibility of ruling together would be likelier if they could sway the rest of the continent to look at him the same way she did and not just as a merciless monster.
“You were very well behaved tonight,” she purred in agreement, pulling his jacket to press their bodies tighter.
Her lips were just shy of pressing to his when he stiffened and she heard the crack of branches.
Nyte pulled away, turning and curving an arm back as if to shield her from whoever was approaching.
Astraea saw one form, a vampire she recognized from around the table at the meeting.
He wasn’t alone; her eyes darted to find another, then another, then she stopped taking count when they kept creeping out from behind the trees with a slow, predatory approach.
“I’ll warn you this once: I’m really not in the mood for problems tonight, Zender,” Nyte said calmly.
Astraea placed her hand on Nyte’s arm, and he didn’t protest as she stepped up beside him.
“We should be using her against them, not entertaining this farce of an alliance based on nothing more than your lustful cravings, Nightsdeath,” the blood vampire said bitterly.
“So you’ve come to capture her?” Nyte clarified.
“Give her up and this will be easy.”
Nyte slipped a look down at her. “What do you think?”
She suppressed her amusement, giving an overdramatic sigh instead. “I guess I am quite tired.”
Astraea stepped forward, holding out her hands to be bound.
The vampires eyed each other warily, not immediately accepting her surrender.
“Never come to a fight with hesitation,” Nyte said; then he was the first to attack.
Astraea didn’t see, only heard a crack and wail of agony behind her; she was moving the second he was.
Her light threw out, slamming into one vampire while she retrieved her key, twisted it in her other hand, which transformed it from a baton to a blade, and sank it into the gut of another.
She’d thought the meeting had gone well, but she’d let a moment of fool’s hope cloud her judgment.
Of course not everyone would be swayed toward an alliance with the person they blamed most for their misfortune.
Astraea blamed herself too, but she also tried to accept that she was one person with many opposing sides to consider.
By now she’d killed five, but they kept coming, and though they wanted to capture her, and she didn’t want to imagine their plans from there, she felt sorrow for every life she took.
Sometimes the only option was kill or be killed, but all of the people on this land were her people.
Whether they followed and believed in her or not.
Her fighting began to falter after the eighth. She didn’t want to keep killing when she’d come here to avoid this.
“Stop,” she demanded, still fighting but switching to completely defensive.
They kept coming, and she warded them off with shields of light and non-fatal strikes.
“I am not your enemy.” She tried again to reason.
The council member, Zender, stalked toward her after she fended off another three. There was no mercy to reach in his eyes of loathing. No compromise, no compassion. Killing him might collapse the fragile pillars of union they had tried to build today with the vampire resistance.
“What can I do or say that would make you believe my dedication to your cause as much as everyone else does?” Astraea kept retreating slowly, gathering her breath back.
Until she met the edge of a cliff and there was nowhere to go but down.
“The best thing you can do for any of us is to die.”
Zender lunged for her, but before his hand lifted fully, a horizontal stroke of darkness cut right through his neck. His eyes glassed over, wide on her, before his body fell and revealed the haunting sight of Nyte.
No … Nightsdeath.
She’d never seen this part of him fully.
He’d shown her glimpses, just enough for her to know what changed about his appearance, but he was always fully in his right mind.
Her mouth turned dry when he just stood there, staring at her with bright gold eyes, hands clamped and near trembling by his sides. Restraining himself.
Then she understood with a slow lick of horror up her spine. He’d warned her before how he hoped to never have cause for Nightsdeath to surface fully when she was around. Because her brightness repelled the dark.
“You need to run,” he said, as if on the verge of losing his battle with the monster that wanted to kill her.
“I’m not leaving you,” she said, her voice weak and giving away her fear.
His head jerked to the side, face scrunching in pain. “You’re too … too bright, Astraea.”
“Yes, this is what I am,” she said as calmly as she could, closing the distance with slow steps.
“Stop.” That word broke from him and still he didn’t look at her again.
“You need me as much as I need you. I’m not afraid of this side of you.”
His eyes snapped to hers then, and there was nothing kind in those blazing suns.
“I don’t need you.” His voice didn’t sound like his own when a low baritone wrapped each cold word.
Astraea’s next inhale choked when he ate up the distance between them in a heartbeat and his hand lashed around her throat.
She was forced back until her heels slipped off the edge, and all that kept her from falling was her hands gripping his on her neck.
He trembled stiffly, refraining from crushing her windpipe.
“It’s okay. You’re okay,” she said, reeling back her panic.
He was terrifying yet absolutely beautiful with the tip of his ears looking like they were dipped in charcoal.
Lines of black climbed his neck, beginning to reach over his jaw as if a quill had pierced his skin and ink now flooded his veins.
And those eyes … she had never been so entranced than in this moment, watching them swirl like liquid gold metal.
Nyte reached for the key strapped at her waist, and only when it answered him, transforming into a glowing dagger without harming him, did she realize the gravity of Bonding to someone with a side of pure darkness. It gave him the ability to harness the one weapon that could truly kill her.
The hum of magick from the weapon as he pressed it between her ribs sent shockwaves that felt so wrong throughout her body.
Until now there had never been a true piece of her that believed him capable of killing her.
Despite all his warnings, how fearful he became when he spoke of Nightsdeath and how hard he had fought against letting him surface fully before.
Yet now, with the touch of death one plunge away, she couldn’t deny the real danger of him.
“It’s okay,” she repeated, refusing to let this be something that could break them. “I love you, and I trust you.”
“How can you say that,” he said, his voice splitting between a snarl and a crack of misery. “Your love for me is deadly.”
“We’ll work through it. The darkness can learn to love the light.” Her lips parted, but she smothered the whimper in her throat when the key dagger broke through her leathers, touching her skin now. “Stay with me, Rainyte.”
Astraea let the blade cut her flesh as she pushed up and pressed her lips to his. Even the shallow wound was enough to erupt a line like fire, scattering through her whole chest and abdomen.
Then it was gone. The key was sent into the void by Nyte, who cupped her face in both hands now, kissing her back with abandon. Kissing her as if she would die in his arms any second. Kissing her to claim her last breath if she did.
He pulled back, panting and distraught, resting his forehead to hers. Astraea’s hands on his chest reached fractions higher to where the black veins retreated past his collar.
“Don’t ever stand in the path of me when I’m like that again, do you hear me?” he said, his voice so raw and thick with emotion. She didn’t respond, still in a daze over what had happened. The magick from her key started to diffuse from her body but lingered with a pulsing warning within her.
Nyte pulled back, holding her eyes fiercely. “If I tell you to run from me, you fucking run. You don’t falter; you don’t look back. That part of me isn’t merciful, least of all to someone as bright and powerful as you. And if I ever—gods, if I ever managed to—”
Her hands tightened on his jacket. Nyte couldn’t finish, but she knew the grim reality of what could have happened. She’d been reckless, so completely fooled by her love for him that she’d put herself right in the path of death.
Yet she knew she would do it again.
“My heart is yours anyway,” she said, looking up to find his beautiful eyes their usual subdued amber shade.
“I’m always running with you, never away.
We’ll figure this out together. Perhaps the more you expose that side of you in tamer doses, the more control you’ll have around me.
This continent might break with war soon, and I plan to fight by your side. As Nightsdeath if you must be.”
Her words seemed to stir conflict in him, like he yearned to be able to fight with her and not lose control of Nightsdeath to turn on her instead, but he also didn’t believe it to be possible when he’d never had reason to build restraint with the dark power inside him.
She reached a palm over his cheek. “One day at a time.”
Nyte gave a barely there nod. “My infinite days are yours.”