Page 169 of The Stars are Dying

“Leave us.”

The guards scrambled from the room, unable to squeeze through the doors fast enough.

My eyes pricked. This was all my fault.

Nyte was before me, emerging from a shroud of smoke and stars, and my gasp was strangled. I backed up until I’d taken one step down the dais. It was the wrong thing to do; now he towered over me more dauntingly that ever.

His jaw flexed at my reaction. “Ironic, isn’t it, how much more monstrous I seem without the enclosure and chains?”

“You weren’t capable of so much then,” I said.

“I was capable of so much more, thanks to you.”

My blood. Even the first few drops had done something to him.

“Tell me you didn’t know about me—” Breathing became difficult, my heart so desperate to see the male who had helped me, saved me. This was not him. “Tell me you only realized at some point during the games. Not this whole time.”

He didn’t drop my stare of misery. Maybe for a split second he even matched it.

“I can’t.”

My head bowed in defeat.

“I knew exactly who you were long before you ever stepped into that room of the manor.”

I was slowly breaking. My existence had always been a fragile one, but nothing had been able to shatter me completely.

Except him.

I sharpened the edges of the pieces he’d made of me with my searing anger. “You’re a despicable liar.”

Nyte chuckled without humor. “I am many things, and yes, despicable might be one of them.” He stalked to me, and while I still feared what he could be capable of, I didn’t retreat. “But I never lied. You were not ready to hear it. You would have faced it with denial and been helpless in your own game. Though there were times I thought you would see it,feel it.Times where it was like you’d never left at all.”

Nyte’s betrayal bled through me. But hearing that stole my fight.

“What happened to me?” I breathed. I wanted to rage and scream and fight him. But Nyte could be the only person to hold answers I longed for.

His fingers grazed my chin, and something like sadness managed to crack through his cold exterior, making a warm honey flicker in his eyes. “Once upon a time, there was a war between stars.”

A riddle I’d known this whole time.

“Did you…?”

“I wouldneverharm you. Do you believe that?”

I wanted to say yes as my heart cried out to the memory of last night. How safe and warm he’d felt, and I would have locked myself away in that tower with him for years.

But I whispered, “No.”

His hand dropped, and I was glad to see the pain crack more of him. Piece by piece I thought I might be able to break him and not have to lift a weapon at all. Words would be enough.

Then he raised a barrier against me, and a slice of the past shocked through me. Nothing whole or clear, only a sense of war…and we stood on opposing sides.

Nyte said, “The king might rule as the face of the people. I never wanted that. But they feared him because of me, and since he locked me away his empire has been crumbling. The vampires have been rising against him to find a new leader. He might not care for the human lives at stake, but he has been letting slip the control he spent so long chasing. His hunger for power was always doomed to be insatiable.”

“Why did he lock you away?”

“You seem to be making fine judgments on that yourself.”

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