Page 107 of The Stars are Dying

“With pity. I don’t need it.”

That wasn’t what I felt, but I only dropped my eyes. What grew inside me was something like anger crossed with heartbreak, so strong I didn’t know how I’d allowed myself to care this much. All we shared was a means to an end if I decided to agree to hispartnershipdeal.

“Hektor’s men who grabbed me…they died. You-you had to have killed them.”

“If I were there, they would have died the second they touched you.”

I snapped my gaze to him, not expecting such cool certainty, for him to have decided so surely he would have killed for me. His features remained cut like steel, no teasing or taunting. Nyte leaned against the doorframe. I couldn’t stop my gaze from following the hand he slipped into his pocket, remembering the heavy iron he wore.

“Does it hurt?”

His lips firmed, deliberating every word he shared with me. “When you’ve lived through the worst pain invisible to the world, that which can be inflicted on flesh becomes insignificant.”

The hurt in me this time touched upon something deeper. So much more frighteningly deeper. I wanted to know so much about him. Things that should be meaningless. What color attracted him most. What he enjoyed doing. What he liked to eat. Everything that felt like a dangerous venture to find out.

“The soulless who would have killed me too…” I trailed off with the sudden horror of my realization. “You killed him?” I dared to look, and his grim expression gave me my answer.

He wasn’t there.

“You killed him,” he confirmed.

I leaned a hand on the countertop, feeling my heart beating and seeing shades of black. Darker and darker. I met my refection only to realize I too was a walking lie with my fake black hair and deep blue irises intended to imitate my best friend…who was gone.

I didn’t look at myself in denial when the memory replayed and it was there, reconstructing itself from what I’dwantedto see in all its dark, bone-trembling reality. I flexed my fist with the phantom feel of the dagger, how I’d been so overcome with grief and rage that perhaps I’d blanked it from myself all this time, unwilling to remember that second and final plunge through the vampire’s heart. Wanting to believe in a savior instead.

Nyte lingered, not stepping closer, and I had to ask.

“If you were really here…would I see your reflection if you came closer?”

He contemplated. “Yes.”

It wasn’t a comfort because it confirmed he wasn’t a soul vampire. Rather, it was a relief. I thought he deserved that assurance of being a living person after having spent so long as a ghost in people’s minds.

I reached behind myself, my back arching as I strained to find the loose end of my corset ribbon.

“You are exquisite,” he said, his voice barely audible as if he hadn’t meant to speak.

I pulled the string and my emotions soothed to something tender that stroked me within. This reaction I gave to him I wanted to deny, but I enjoyed it too much. I needed anything to distract myself from all that was lost and lonely within me and had been for some time.

“You are more of a survivor than you know, Astraea. It does not make you a monster.”

“How can you say that?” My anger and disgust built, tasting like bile on my tongue and coursing hot over my skin. I saw his chains, and for a second they weighed on me instead. That was what I deserved. How could I pretend to be any better than him? My life was one step forward only to be knocked two steps back. Every thread of hopeful discovery came with frightening truths about myself that darkened the path too much for me to see anythinggood. I was nothing but volatile fragments of an existence desperate to find my whole.

I sniffed. I would not cry in front of him. Unraveling my corset, I held the loose material to my chest before looking at him expectantly.

He didn’t even give a teasing smirk as he turned around. I thought about casting him away, but I didn’t desire solitude.

The leather dropped to the ground, leaving me bare-chested, and I quickly unbuttoned my pants.

“Knowing you are naked right now is the most riling madness I’ve felt in a very long time.”

I trembled at the low, silvery gravel of his voice, easing over to the water and dipping my toes in first. I couldn’t bite back the soft sighs as more hot water caressed my skin.

“And those god-damnedsoundsyou make, Starlight.”

Nyte turned when I was submerged. My body relaxed under the hot water, bringing on a sleepy aura. I wasn’t shy to have him present, real or otherwise, while I bathed. The gaze we shared only added to the heat, sparking a tension I needed a distraction from.

“I found the location of the next key piece.” I tipped my head back, slipping my eyes closed in contentment. “All of them, actually. Turns out I don’t need you after all.”

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