Page 140 of The Stars are Dying

“Nyte,” I tried carefully.

His eyes closed and his jaw tensed like he was in pain. I stood, slipping my palms over his face, desperate for him to look at me and explain what was happening. He only gave a strangled sound as if trying to suppress it, and panic bubbled inside me.

“Is someone hurting you?” Adrenaline coursed hot through me. Then fear. Then rage.

Nyte fell to one knee, and I went with him. He clutched my arm, held my hand, but he could hardly move.

“What’s happening?” I tried, desperation seeping into my voice. I couldn’t help him here.

“You can’t go back,” he said at last, his voice so labored and pained my heart cracked. “To the castle. Promise me you won’t.”

“I have to.”

He gave another groan, and I held him tight, but it was hopeless. Not the comfort he deserved, and not the help he needed.

“I’m coming.”

I tried to straighten, but his hands tightened. Finally, he lifted his broken eyes to mine, and my body became weak with it.

“Astraea, they know. They know who you are, and he can’t have you.”

“H-how?” This couldn’t be right. I was so close. It couldn’t end here.

And I was not leaving without him.

“We have always been cursed from the start,” he said, brushing the loose tendril from my braids. “I need you to leave the Central, Astraea. You’ll find the key another way.”

“No—”

“Remember the monster you saw chained. There is a reason.”

Nyte didn’t feel so firm anymore. He was fading, content to leave me behind when I was not.

“You don’t get to decide what I see as a monster.”

“There is so much you don’t know. So much I’m sorry I never got the chance to explain to you. It wasn’t the right time.”

“Nothing is ever the right time. Except this. Us.”

“Stop.”

“You don’t get to push me away. Not now.”

Nyte appeared so tired my chest clenched, near suffocating, with thoughts of what they were doing to him. “I order you to leave the city.”

“No!”

I knew what he’d done seconds before my body reacted to the command through the bargain we’d made. “I will fight it,” I said, already straining against it. “I will fight you, Nyte. You can’t win this one.”

“Once you leave, the bargain will be broken. You won’t see me again, I promise you.”

Tears filled my eyes as I tried to hold onto something that was slipping from my grasp too fast. What was once whole and firm was now drifting like sand…until Nyte was gone and my palms flattened against the wood.

I sobbed. A tether running through me tugged with agony and heartache, and I couldn’t ignore it to leave. But the bargain was stretching another way. Far away from Nyte.

Fuck your promise.

Anger built within me, raging-hot, enough that I cried out with the force it took to defy his command. He would not get to order me away. He wouldn’t not suffer alone. Not anymore.

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