Page 42 of The Stars are Dying

“Can I help you, ma’am?” The man behind the counter came closer, eyeing the space beside me warily. He didn’t react with the terror I expected, and I wondered if vampires walked more casually around the humans than I thought.

Remembering the box I held, I said, “This song is beautiful.”

When he saw what had grabbed my interest his furrowed brow eased to a bright eagerness. “Ah, she’s one of my best compositions. I call her ‘Ballad of the Soul Gods,’inspired by the Faelestial War.”

“Soul gods?”

“You do not know the tales, child?”

I had the urge to correct him, but my lack of knowledge of our history shrank me to the young and inexperienced persona despite my twenty-three years.

“A tragically poetic story,” Nyte mused.

The man didn’t react at all.

I asked, “The celestials are real?”

“Of course.”

The more people who confirmed this to me, the more my mind soared free to picture them.

“Ask him what happened to thesoul gods.”

I flashed Nyte a look as his tone dropped darkly. “Why don’t you ask?”

He only gave an amused half-smile.

I scowled. “What happened at the end of the war?”

“The gods battled, and they say they nearly destroyed each other and the world in their wake. Unfortunately for us, the vampires won, and the celestials hid themselves to avoid annihilation beyond the veil.”

“The king…he is a god?”

The man’s shrug revealed his next words would be guesswork. “Perhaps not him, but the one the people feared for a long time until he turned silent. The king lacks influence without the one they calledNightsdeath, and if you ask me, it is why the vampires are getting out of control without their fear of him.”

I wasn’t sure why I slid Nyte a look; all it did was drop the temperature further when I noticed his expression of wrath and sin. This man’s tale aligned with Cassia’s, and something about Nyte’s reaction told me it was important.

“Darkness is growing,” the man continued. He glanced skyward, to the stars, and I was compelled to follow. My pulse skipped. “And people seem to forget the hope that comes to see it again.”

“You believe the stars are dying…” I trailed off, speaking more to myself as I tracked the growing expanse between that which sparkled. It was something I had thought before, so to have someone else see it was the first flicker of confirmation I was right.

“I do. And it is a terrifying thing, what must come for our salvation if the star-maiden has indeed returned.”

I’d never had my interest seized so wholly. No—it didn’t feel as simple as that. What unsettled me made my hands tremble and nudged at something in my mind that only grew frustrated to be rattled and not opened. Potentially a memory. I needed to hear more.

“When falls Night, the world will drown in Starlight,” Nyte said so quietly I had to look to be sure he’d spoken.

“What do you know of it?” I asked him.

When our eyes met, something pulled within me. The firmness of his face was broken only by the note of sorrow that turned his irises a shining amber.

“My dear, who are you speaking to?” The man snapped my attention back.

Brow furrowed, I was about to state the obvious when Cassia became the second person to startle me, near knocking the beautiful box from my grip again. As much as I wanted to hold onto it, Cassia had already spent far more coin than I could ever repay. Before she could offer to purchase the box, I set it down, letting my longing gaze linger on the twin moon phases.

“We’ll have to get rest in the carriage to keep to schedule,” Cassia said. Her arm looped through mine, and I whirled to Nyte. He was gone, of course. But as I smiled at the stallkeeper, I couldn’t rest my confusion at his last words.

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