Page 181 of The Stars are Dying

It didn’t make sense, but right now it was a relief.

“I want to go back.”

“I can’t take you anywhere yet.”

My struggle began to rise, and I pushed away from him. This time he let me go. I seethed at him as though he could turn to ash from my stare alone.

“You’re a fucking hypocrite.”

Nyte’s frown turned dark. Daring.

“You killed Hektor, but you are no better than him.”

That made something lethally frightening cloud his face. But I was beyond caring about his damn feelings.

“It is because of him I have to do this,” he said as cold as death. “If I could kill him again I would. Even now, I’m tormented that he’s dead but also glad for it. Soon you won’t be able to speak his name because it will no longer exist to anyone.”

“You can’t erase a name from the minds of everyone in the realm,” I spat.

Nyte smiled. A slow, villainous curl I couldn’t believe I’d missed before.

“You underestimate me. Though I have never underestimated you, and it is why this measure is so necessary.” Nyte dipped a hand into his pocket, and what he drew forth made my mouth water. I took a step toward him, but in a blink of starry shadow he appeared on the opposite side of the bars.

“I need them,” I said in a panic, reaching for the bars to curl my trembling hands around them. A desperatepaingrew in me now my pills were within reach. My head throbbed wildly.

“He’s been suppressing everything you are since the moment he found you,” Nyte said, controlled wrath filling his tone that stopped my frantic thoughts to listen. Taking a capsule from the bottle, he looked at it as if it were an enemy he could kill. “Drugging you with these, so it will now be a very difficult two weeks while they leave your system.” He crushed the pills between his fingers, spilling a silver liquid. I knew what it was, except this was darker than any I’d seen before. “Starlight Matter. Enhanced with such a powerful, forbidden suppression spell that your body has become dependent on it. It won’t kill you to stop it, though you may very well feel close to death at times.”

I shook my head, dizzy with the thought, because I couldn’t hear much while my mind drummed with want for what he was denying me.

“Give them to me,” I said. I didn’t care about power or anything. I didn’t care about what I was or could be. “Give me the damn pills, Nyte!”

Pain turned to agony in his eyes, but I gave a breathy laugh. A sound that didn’t wholly belong to me. Something volatile overtook my outward reactions, and at the same time I cowered into a helpless heap in my own mind.

“You don’t have to pretend you care. I’ll leave; you’ll never see me again. Just give them to me.”

It was all my blood roared for, slicking my skin.

“You’re already at your limit without them. I’m hoping the worst of it will pass sooner than I think. I am sorry this happened to you. Sorry I didn’t see it sooner. I knew he had to be doing something to keep your power locked. There are other ways, but this was his method of keeping you weak enough to think you needed him and that he was helping you.”

I turned around, unable to keep looking at him with my murderous thoughts. I leaned my back to the bars.

“There is only one master deceiver in all this,” I said. With my world collapsing anyway, the realization couldn’t harm me any more than it already was. “You—Nightsdeath.”

“It was humorous to watch you conclude it to be my spineless brother.”

I gave a bitter laugh. “You’re the realm’s worst nightmare. They speak your name as if you exist in every shadow. Yet it seems even the darkness can be captured.”

He advanced to me slowly, stopping so close behind me I closed my eyes with the faint warmth, knowing he could draw me to him if it weren’t for the cage he’d put me in. “There is no being on this earth that exists without a weakness,” he said, the words traveling like a lover’s caress over my collar.

I turned, curling my hands around the bars just below his. “You are every part the monster they speak of.”

His jaw worked with the flinch of his eyes. There it was: a split-second glimpse of his vulnerability. My depraved side had found a weapon.

“There is a monster in all of us,” he said, hiding any emotion from me as though he knew my wickedness at the forefront would use it. “Those who pretend they don’t harbor one are the ones who end up slipping. At some point or another it comes out. And the longer it is denied, the harder it will be unleashed all at once.”

“You lied to me.”

“No, Starlight. I have always been right here.”

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