Page 142 of The Stars are Dying

“Nothing but what he deserves for his interference. I knew he would find you. All this time, you thought yourselves cunning.”

“You’re a spineless coward,” I spat. It was a dangerous test, and one I paid for in blood when a guard stepped forward so fast I didn’t have a second to brace. With his immortal strength he only held back enough not to snap my neck from the force of his slap across my cheek. It exploded over my jaw, and my eyes swelled with hot tears as I clutched my face. It left behind a cut that bled on my cheekbone.

I had never felt such anger. Such a dark desire to fight back.

To do so, I had to kill the girl who’d spied from the rafters. The lost soul who’d chosen silence and compliance. She died with the movements I didn’t remember making until the guard who struck me choked, a small blade piercing his neck. A second was already in my hand, but it was only a temporary possession as it flew toward the next movement to my right.

“Stop,” Drystan ordered. Not to me. His guards halted their advance, but I was pinned by many sets of threatening eyes.

I mapped the ground. They were all shadowless. Blood vampires like Drystan.

“The king will be most livid when he discovers he had you in his reach and you toyed around him.” He took slow steps, a venomous snake priming to strike.

I thought to deny his accusation, but that was a coward’s response. So I tipped my chin high, owning what he thought I was capable of.

Drystan stopped only a few inches from me, and I stood firm. He lifted his hand to my face, twistedly tender until his thumb brushed over my cut, and I hissed. My chest rattled watching him examine the blood, and my teeth clamped hard when he brought it to his lips. His eyes closed briefly, and when they snapped back to me, I could have sworn they flashed a frighteningly brighter hue.

“So your father sends his prized hound for me,” I hissed.

Drystan’s mouth curled, the kind of leering smirk that made men tremble at the cruelty to come. “Precious thing,” he mused, tipping my chin, but I shrugged off his touch this time. “I don’t want the game to be over yet. My father doesn’t know. I, however, knew who you were the moment you stepped into the banquet hall. An excellent disguise, I must say.”

“Then how?”

This time, his grin widened to reveal his lethal pointed teeth. “We all have our secrets.” His hand curled around my waist, guiding me away from the library, and within, my soul cried at the wrong direction. I couldn’t fight them all, and even if I did, how would I free Nyte?

The game wasn’t over.

43

Icouldn’t become that frightened girl again. I couldn’t allow her to crawl from the fresh grave I’d laid her in.

That was all I chanted to myself as I equipped myself for the final day of the Libertatem. I hadn’t slept. My room was surrounded on the prince’s order, and I didn’t stop watching the building beyond the balcony.

I knew who you were from the moment you arrived.

I couldn’t shake the prince’s words. Not out of incredulity that he’d seen through my disguise. No—there was something deeper nagging at me. Since my library visit with Nyte, I hadn’t touched the book I’d been drawn to before reaching The Book of Bindings.

I flipped through the pages of the book I’d taken that day, lifted away on some otherworldly road as I read, absorbing words that should have shocked me, pummeled me with fear, but each page was like a story that already lived somewhere within. I squeezed my eyes to think of that day in the library, struggling with hard breaths to come to terms with what I was learning. Then my thoughts quickly became consumed by him.

I feared the worst.

No—Nyte couldn’t be gone.

I hadn’t realized how familiar I’d become with his presence, but I’d never felt so hollow in his silence. Even when he hadn’t spoken, he was always there in some echo.

I left the castle. Retrieving my map and overlay, I knew the final destination. A place called—

“The Maze of the Mad Serpent.”

I nearly crumpled the map at Drystan’s approaching voice. “Doesn’t sound pleasant,” I said flatly.

“Would you rather a slaughterhouse be called a rose boutique?”

I cast him a glare, but I must have done a poor job at hiding my fear beneath it because he chuckled lightly.

“Merely a point.”

“Are you following in case I decide to run instead?”

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