Page 179 of The Stars are Dying

“It’s not okay. Not even close.” He panted, exerted after everything it had taken out of him. “It’s been so long since I gave over like that. I didn’t mean to because I knew the target you could become to that…thingI am. But the moment that blade touched your neck I couldn’t stop it…”

I pushed up, tangling a hand into his hair to kiss him, and while I wanted to erupt in the void we created, Nyte pulled away far too soon. Light penetrated our cloak of darkness, and my anxiety spiked to banish it again, but Nyte pulled me to standing.

“I’m in control,” he assured me, but there was something distant, broken, about his tone. He let me go, and I couldn’t stop watching the luminance flood his features when he wouldn’t look at me. Nothing about him glowed anymore as the throne room expanded around us again, and I couldn’t shake myself out of my stupor.

“Thank fuck,” Zathrian said, but I was barely aware of his touch as he took my arms to scan me over.

“What did you do to her?” Rose snarled, blade angled, and she braced against him.

My chest tugged for her fierce protection. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve it. Even against her greatest enemy.

Nyte didn’t respond. He watched her with steel features, but he didn’t move.

I surveyed the destruction. So much death. The dark marble floors were glistening around the torn bodies of the fallen. A winter breeze wrapped around me, and I shuddered, casting a glance at the shattered rows of windows from the blast.

It all came back to me, and after confirming the safety of Zath, Rose, and Davina I looked for the key.

The purple glow had winked out peacefully, and it lay as a still, solid staff. I thought to retrieve it, but a hand reached out to it, and I gasped.

“She will be your ruination,” the king hissed.

“No—!”

Light flared to life from the key, so bright I had to shield my eyes from the waves of power too. It lessened when a form twisted in front of me, and the hand touching my waist I knew to be Nyte’s.

When the air no longer hummed I pushed his chest gently.

The king was gone.

He’d taken the key.

“Well, shit,” Zath said, his labored voice drawing my attention to him. He clutched his abdomen, bracing a hand on his knee, and only then did I see the crimson staining his tanned skin.

“You’re hurt,” I said, casting out the horror of what had just happened to head for him.

“Just a scratch.” He waved it off.

“Hardly,” Rose muttered. Her hand around his arm was an unnecessary aid, and though her face remained firm with ire for him, it was laced with concern.

“It’ll heal,” Zath countered.

“You need stitches.”

“Your thorns might do the trick.”

Rose glowered as she let him go, and they continued their bickering as my attention slipped from them. I was compelled to find the source of something cracking slowly within me. A silent kind of suffering.

I found Nyte.

He didn’t take his gaze away from the exact place his father had lain. I expected him to be angry at the loss, perhaps even fearful of what it meant now the king had the one thing he needed for the most terrifying of deeds.

Yet all he was locked still with waspain.

For a moment he was a child. One who had not only never known the love of a parent, but who had been hurt so truly by the two people who were supposed to shield him, protect and care for him, most in the world.

For a second, Nyte might not have known how closely I watched him, wanting toseehim, to witness something he’d been holding onto within…finally break.

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