Page 108 of The Stars are Dying

“Yet you didn’t gain another piece today.”

“I, uh…got distracted,” I admitted. “I ran into Drystan in the city.”

Nyte was silent for long enough to make me peel open an eye. His expression had locked firm, looking not at me butthroughme as he pondered something.

“Are you disregarding my warning on purpose?”

I huffed. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Then what are you trying to prove?” he asked, edging on a dark challenge as he stepped closer.

The knot in my gut tightened. “Nothing. I can make my own judgments and want to give him a chance.”

“For what?”

“For me to decide how I feel about his character, not what you want me to.”

We stared off. His molten gaze was electrifying, sparking over me more intensely with the water.

“Astraea.”

Something about the way he spoke my real name tightened over my skin. It felt like a warning, a dare, something I wanted to provoke further to see what he would do, and that was perhaps more deadly than any trial I could face out there.

“You warn me about the prince, yet I’m to trust you?”

“No. As I don’t trust you.”

I gave a humorless chuckle, but Nyte remained serious. “I didn’t ask you to.”

“You owe me a bargain.”

I decided topush.“I said I don’t need your help anymore.”

“After you have already accepted so much of it,” he growled. He stalked closer, right until he touched the edge of the tub, and then he lowered. “You don’t get to back out now, or let me tell you…unfulfilled debts will always become a penance.”

It felt like a threat. It was. Something I had provoked in him. Nyte was dangerous, dark, and perhaps capable of vicious things that had bound him in iron and sealed him behind an impenetrable veil. But that was only the surface of him. Every time I was around him he built my compulsion to discovermore.

“You’ll get your bargain,” I said, and that seemed to relax him.

“Good.”

I slipped under the water to my neck. “Do you know what the next trial will entail?” I might as well test how much he would offer.

“You’ve faced pride. Next you’ll be tested against greed and envy. When you’ve discovered the things you desire the most and managed to resist the temptation, how will you react when you watch someone else have it all?”

I thought over the concept, and even in my right mind my gut sank with want.

Jealousy.

That hideous, tormenting emotion I had felt trickles of before while watching the freedom of the dancers at the manor, how people had effortlessly enjoyed the night’s entertainment while I was an invisible tourist to the main attraction.

“How do people fail the trials…? What happens to them?”

“If you had continued the puzzle and not broken your pride to save the girl, it would have been reset, and you wouldn’t have remembered the last attempt. Every time you failed you would have forfeited a year of your life. Once you are in the game, you either win or you die.”

“The king didn’t tell us that,” I breathed.

“Why would he? There is only one he keeps at the end even if you all make it. If a player is killed in a trial, the game completes their key, and it will await them outside the temple for another player to try.”

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