Page 168 of The Stars are Dying

They were weapons. Tricks. Somehow I was always tripping over them.

Nightsdeath.

His shoulder blades tensed as if he knew what I was thinking. I tracked the way Nyte moved, so confident and different, nothing compared to the casual, lax way with which he carried himself below. Now he was a dark force to be reckoned with.

“Good. You remember.”

I shook at the cold tone of a stranger.

“So why do you not bow?” He raised his hand, and when his fingers stretched and poised like a master puppeteer, strangled chokes echoed through the room.

My blood ran cold.

All at once, over two dozen guards were forced to their knees by some invisible force.

Nyte.

Stars above.

He let them all go, and no longer did any of them seem like monochrome statues. For the first time, they shed real emotion. True terror. As did I upon witnessing the scale of what Nyte was capable of. And I’d been the one to unleash the deadly monster.

As Nyte strolled over to one guard, he shuffled to his feet.

“Bring me the one who fired the arrow that hit her. If I have to go looking for them myself, many more of you will die in my path.”

The guard nodded. “Yes, lord.”

I couldn’t believe the title, the way everyone in the room reacted to Nyte, and I had been so clueless all along, so content to believe my visions of him were the only reality. Not this cruel depiction.

Nyte stalked around the room as though looking for his next victim while they all tried to avoid his eye, on their knees. My throat turned bone-dry, but I wanted to speak, to ask him to take me away so we could erase this nightmare.

“I want Hektor Goldfell,” Nyte commanded to the next vampire he stood before.

I trembled, suddenly not wanting to be here at all. Not near him when I was about to witness something so dark and bloodthirsty.

When that guard scrambled off, he stopped again. “I want Calix Salvier.”

“Not him,” I said without thinking. My heart leaped up my throat as I realized I’d interrupted this being I couldn’t recognize right now.

He didn’t even pretend to hear me, allowing the one he’d tasked with Calix’s delivery to scurry away like the previous two.

Nyte drew a deep breath, casting his eyes through the glass roof as he walked to the center of the hall. He turned and took the few steps up the dais toward the purple velvet throne. Nyte passed me, but he didn’t spare a glance down, and my heart ached, wondering how I could have been fooled so deeply.

He traced a hand over the back of the seat—an unlawful act and a mockery to the royal bloodline coming from someone who wasn’t a part of it.

But Nyte was.

I swayed with the realization that hit me too late.

A prince. One who had been captured, held, and tortured by his own father.

Against the cage of my chest my heart was a furious beast. Could Nyte really have the power to overthrow him now? Nyte was undeniably powerful, but Nightsdeath had once been an ally to the king, and I couldn’t piece together what had gone wrong to see him chained and bound behind a magick veil.

Had he tried to overthrow him before?

“No,” Nyte said coldly.

I shuddered at the answer he gave to my flailing thoughts. I couldn’t bear to look at him, riddled with the same submission and fear that had kept every guard down after he’d forced their bow. I didn’t believe him. Not when his freedom thus far could only be explained by his thirst for power.

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