Page 50 of The Stars are Dying

Yet she remained so quiet while her voice replayed in my head, and suddenly my years skipped on without her while she froze at twenty-five. What if I forgot the notes of her laugh? What if the deep blue of her eyes started to fade and I forgot the smile that never failed to light up a room?

“You were all I had,” I whispered. My arms loosened, and Calix didn’t miss a second as his sword left me and he dropped down to take my place.

I stumbled to my feet, so beyond freezing I was numb.

“Get out of here,” Calix muttered low.

I bent for my dagger lodged in the vampire’s back, but I couldn’t peel my eyes from Calix. The way he rocked the body of the first person to have ever seen me.

I was nothing without Cassia.

A ghost.

A forgotten existence.

“I don’t care what happens to you. And I can’t promise I won’t kill you myself if you don’tleave,”he seethed. A beat of desolate silence passed before his head snapped around, rattling me with his loathing stare through red eyes that glittered with misery.“Leave!”

I tripped a few steps back. I didn’t remember swiping up my satchel, but it was slung around my body, and occasionally my hand would reach for the walls that closed in as I tried to make it out.

Outside, the nip of the night wind didn’t register. Nothing did. I walked and walked. Gravity didn’t weigh me down, so maybe I had died with Cassia and become a breathing ghost.

No destination.

No belongings.

Nobody.

14

Time became incomprehensible. Irrelevant. My thoughts left me empty-minded, but I didn’t stop moving. I knew it had been daylight, but now darkness was falling again. I didn’t care if it cloaked me. Smothered me. I knew the moment any real feeling came back I was sure to want it.

The final darkness.

I only noticed the rain when walking became heavier. When loose strands of my hair clung to my face and I was shivering violently.

Eventually I stopped moving. I looked down at my dagger. The dark blood had mostly been washed off with the rain, but the flecks that remained made the scene replay in my head with punishing clarity. Flashes that stole my vision, my breath. I leaned over on my knees, sheathing the blade and trying to find the ground when it began to drift away.

“You didn’t deserve that.”

Only when I heard Nyte’s voice did I remember my heart still held a beat. He eased out from the trees like a shadow.

“Me?” I breathed incredulously. “You’re right. I deserve to be the one without this miserable life instead.”

What surged inside me was the instinct I’d allowed to be suppressed by his enchantment. Fear. Fresh in the wake of Cassia’s death. But he… Surely he wasn’t a blood vampire when I’d watched his shadow follow him. Though I couldn’t rule out the possibility he was a soul vampire with no reflection to check. Or perhaps he was a fae who also answered to the king.

It didn’t matter what he was.

A seething anger rose within me. All I could replay was the kiss of death one of his kind had bestowed on Cassia. All I could see was this creature before me who was capable of it too.

Nyte edged toward me, and while my mind screamed to run, I tried to rally even a fraction of the bravery Cassia would have felt.

Nothing to lose. I hadnothingleft to lose.

He took another step, and this time my fear shook over the anger.

“Stay back.”

“Astraea.”

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