Chapter 25 Nyte #2
“You have another son,” I stated, watching my father’s every flicker of reaction. “One you left behind when you brought me here.”
There it was. Confirmation in the narrowing of his eyes that was neither confusion nor denial … it was surprised accusation.
I’d never felt this kind of beat in my chest. Nerves, I thought, clashing with disappointment. “Not with my mother but another woman before her. That son wasn’t powerful enough for you, was he? Do you want to know what became of him?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Father spat.
“Malin Ashfyre.”
Father recoiled as if it were a blade I’d thrown.
“What the fuck is going on?” Drystan hissed at me, glancing between us.
“Where did you hear that name?” Father asked, so cold and lethal.
“All that matters is that you’re a shit awful father, and we’re not the first to disappoint you.”
“That child died.”
“No. Your ruse was almost perfect. Your own brother was to be the next king, but you were nothing, a prince that wouldn’t amount to anything.
It drove you mad. Enough to fake your death in battle, to abandon your life and son and seek out the one with the greatest power in the land.
My mother. You saved her from a tragic fate only to turn on her the moment she gave you a son prophesied to have even greater power than she.
So you stole me away in the night, crossing realms with the idea that you and I would conquer another realm together.
Because mother would have always reminded you how powerless you truly were.
Always lesser, just like with your brother. ”
I didn’t expect the emotions that crashed into me as if I were a rock braced upon a shore of vicious waves. I’d always had Nightsdeath to rise me above before I could drown, turning pain to anger, and it’s how I knew to survive.
Now … I didn’t know what to do with these feelings that were so hideous I wanted to claw them from my chest. I didn’t want to feel betrayed or sad—so fucking sad.
I wanted to reach for the rage that had once been so easy to let take over, inflicting all I felt inside on the world outside before it risked killing me instead.
“How do you know all this?” Father asked; the vacancy in his voice told me everything I’d experienced had been real. Everything I had impossibly discovered during my curse was the truth.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said, my own voice reduced to a pitiful whisper.
In some ways I related to how Astraea felt as her lost memories were returning.
I harbored memories that lingered like threads of a dream—vivid but uncertain—from that month I was cursed into a deep slumber and my conscious mind projected across realms to protect itself. Or because of another meddling entity.
But it didn’t matter because I had no desire to ever walk through that mirror. Everything in me, every fiber of my being, belonged right here with my Starlight.
“What I learned is that blood does not mean loyalty,” my father said darkly.
“You’re right,” Drystan said, equally as resentful. “It’s not our blood but our actions that make us stand by each other.”
In those words, I thought the fraying bond between Drystan and me mended a few threads.
Our father looked at us like we were the biggest disappointment he’d faced.
He said, “It’s just about time. The twelfth hour of a full moon. I didn’t need you here, but I guess it is fitting you should bear witness to this world-changing event in our history.”
“Now would have been a good time for you to unleash that frightening side of you,” Drystan said to me.
Nightsdeath wasn’t a magickal ability and would have served well here.
“Too bad we’re stuck with just this frightening side of me,” I said.
Drystan skimmed his eyes over me. “Fine. Do the other thing then.”
“Not possible. It seems magick is warded off in here.”
“You’re too late to stop this.” That call came in the voice of my father but his lips didn’t move.
A flicker behind him drew my attention to his reflection in the mirror. To my horror, it moved, turning around slowly while he stayed exactly where he was, creating an eerie illusion that there were now two of him.
“As if one wasn’t insufferable enough to look at,” Drystan said, unsheathing his blade with an added curse.
“Nothing can stop me now. My prize for my work here is that I will become the King of the Gods.”
His arrogance had truly decended to new levels of utter stupidity.
“No crown you wear will ever transform the coward trembling beneath it,” I snarled.
For the first time, I regarded the two on their knees, sensing now that they weren’t humans, they were celestials. When the man lifted his head … I couldn’t sort my shock from my confusion over seeing Aquilo, the High Celestial of House Sera.
“He was captured after the battle,” Drystan informed me.
“Astraea removed his wings. I assume the other High Celestials had no choice but to outcast him as they do their own citizens. Honestly, I thought they might have been keeping him hidden and just kept up a pretense, but at least Nova wasn’t biased in favor of his own in his merciless ruling. ”
“He is the perfect vessel for Dusk,” Father said, glancing down at the High Celestial. Once so proud and mighty, now … he was nothing. As frightened and horrified as anyone would be in his situation.
I held no sympathy for him. In fact, I was twitching to claim his life right now, remembering his cruelty to Astraea.
He’d whipped her and laughed. The echoes of it trembled through me, and if I had my full power I might not have been able to stop myself from doing whatever it took to kill him before my father could use him.
I didn’t immediately recognize the woman. A beautiful blonde who hugged herself, casting pleading eyes at me as if I could save her. Her face was muddy and her hair tangled; she’d put up a good fight against being captured.
I wondered why she seemed familiar.
“Zephyr’s bonded. Katerina Luna.” Drystan filled in the patch of my memory.
Shit. Now I understood why a spark of tragic hope lay in her ocean blue eyes. Zephyr was an ally to Astraea, and Katerina was her friend too. She would beg me to try to save her.
This confrontation had just become so much fucking worse.
“How about you forget this foolish plan and I’ll let you live another day,” I said to my father as evenly as I could while I was studying everything. Trying to calculate every possible way to get out of here with Katerina alive at least.
More imminently, my father could not summon the gods to walk our realm.
To face Astraea’s creators … I wasn’t ready for the wrath that would take me over for all they’d done to her.
“I realize now I’ve trusted the wrong god all along.
Death made you powerful and promised you would conquer lands.
But Dusk and Dawn are far more cunning and have a vision for this world of power and prosperity in which I sit the throne of Vesitire.
Once I fulfill my bargain to them, Astraea’s power will be mine when they kill her. ”
“Even you can’t be this na?ve,” I spat. “They’re using you like the desperate puppet you’ve always been.”
“You’re a delusional fool,” Drystan muttered.
If he could kill us with his look alone, we’d be dust where we stood, but I delighted in his visceral reactions that gave full weight to his misguided beliefs.
I couldn’t reach my ability, but I felt the void, able to step through it and snap the neck of one vampire just as Drystan darted for another, clashing blades before plunging his through their gut.
There were only a half dozen vampires, and they were all dead in a minute. While we were distracted, taking them out, my father was given a brief moment to act.
Aquilo’s wail rang through the temple hall, and my attention swung to him as I released the heart of the final vampire I killed.
The High Celestial’s hand had been forcibly plunged through the mirror, which rippled around where his arm sank in to his elbow. I could only watch in horror as silver crawled up his skin, like the mirror had liquefied to engulf him.
I blinked through the void. Stepping out of shadow, I gripped my father by his clothing, charging forward with a yell of wrath until his back slammed into the nearest pillar.
“You can’t stop this now, Rainyte,” he choked in my vise grip.
“You’re a spineless, power-hungry bastard,” I seethed in his face.
I hadn’t been this close to him, staring so ferociously into his brown eyes, in so long that I trembled with fear as much as I did rage. I held the monster who plagued my entire existence, ready to snap his neck once and for all.
“You cannot kill me,” Father rasped, struggling for breath and clutching onto the fraying tethers of his consciousness. “Dusk and Dawn not only granted me the ability to use the maiden’s key, but they gave me immortality to make sure I lived to kill her with it.”
Fury consumed me.
I snapped his neck before another thought could cross my mind, letting his body slump in a heap while I gathered myself and sanity in deep, measured breaths.
“Nyte.” Drystan said my name so calmly it jarred me out of my rage-induced state.
I twisted my head to him but didn’t expect to find him in the compromised position he was in.
Nor could I have predicted who balanced his life between twin blades crossed over his neck from behind.
Nadia strained on her toes while Drystan bent back awkwardly. I could hardly see straight with my violence climbing to unhinged levels.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I said, so cold and dark it was like the remnants of Nightsdeath surfaced within me. Or perhaps that part of me had never truly died. It could resurrect, grow stronger and deadlier as it was fed betrayal, violence, and despair.
“You two are such an idiotic pair,” she said, as if angry with us about that opinion.
“Let him go before I make you, little rogue,” I warned.
“You welcomed me so easily,” she went on.
I understood what was happening, and she was right: I was a damned fool not to have seen this coming.
“That’s debatable,” I said calmly, though inside I was simmering with wrath.
“You accepted my story about how I found out about the bond. Me, the only fucking person to know,” she hissed, more to Drystan now. My brother’s face lined with anger but he didn’t try to free himself, and I knew he had to feel just as betrayed as I did. Perhaps more so.
Her tone turned so hushed. “I was livid when your father told me about it. He offered me my full freedom from that cave, a place by his side when he would rule. I’ve never had a place or purpose, so I was lured in by that prospect.
I had nothing to lose after having what little shred of myself I had in this world ripped apart and forged into this bloodthirsty monster.
He found out all the transitioned vampires were compelled to obey Drystan, and he predicted you would run back to your brother’s side eventually.
He couldn’t allow you to have those kinds of numbers as an army against him that would have no choice but to side with you.
It was my mission to sever your power over the transitioned vampires, and you all made it too. Fucking. Easy.”
It all made sense. Our father once again being cunning enough to rally the alliances he needed. He was smart, elusive, and so fucking dead.
“Bravo,” Drystan said at last, but there was something broken in that word. Defeated. “You almost had me.”
I realized then … despite their bickering and violence, Drystan had begun to fall for her.
“Why do you think he chose me?” she said resentfully. “For how easy males fall to pretty things.”
Drystan’s laugh was more like a bitter breath. “Trust I would have killed you despite your pretty face long ago if I’d had my way. You have my brother to thank that you made it this far.”
Since Nadia had breached my trust, I had no guilt shattering hers. I wanted to see her betrayal for myself; I just needed to get her out of this damned temple to break into her mind.
“It’s not too late to choose again,” I reasoned with her. I was unfamiliar with this method of negotiation, which would usually be a lot bloodier by now.
“As if you would ever let me live after this,” she accused.
“You’re right; I’ll kill you the moment I get a chance, but I’ll make it painless.”
“Kind of you.”
We were pulled from our standoff by choking sounds from Aquilo. The metallic essence had consumed him, and he knelt there like a statue of solid armor. It reached his mouth, spilling down his throat now, and it was horrifying, even for me, to watch.
Katerina still knelt beside him, trembling and wide-eyed. She’d gone into shock, unable to move.
I took one step toward her …
A silver hand lashed out of the mirror, gripping Katerina’s throat.
“No—!”
“You can’t save her,” Drystan yelled to stop me from getting any closer. “The gods’ ascension is too far along to stop now.”
To both our surprise, Nadia’s blades dropped and she pushed Drystan away. He spun around as she held the point of the blade to his heart.
“Idiots. Fucking run, will you?” she hissed.
We both stalled in our conflict. I still wanted to rip out her throat, but Drystan backed away from her, closer to me.
“Best we can do is report back and prepare for what this could mean,” Drystan said, not taking his eyes off Nadia.
“We’re just letting her go?” I said, not in the least pleased with that mercy, given her long betrayal.
“For now. She’s nothing more than a desperate rogue.”
I felt the hurt behind his words as much as he meant them. Drystan had come to care for Nadia, and the fact that she’d lured him in just made me want to extract vengeance on her all the more.
Aquilo and Katerina became still statues while the liquid silver rippled over their bodies. I hoped they would retain their faces so I knew who to hunt for, and who to hide from.
I hated the thought of hiding at all, but there was no predicting what powers the gods might harness in their mortal forms.
Astraea would be devastated to learn of her friend’s fate, and I left that temple with my anger subdued under the weight of my failure to stop my father, for if what he said was true, he would awaken from a broken neck, and my failure to save Katerina Luna.
I wouldn’t know liberation until I killed my father, somehow, once and for all.
Auster Nova was dead. Our war was with the gods now.