Page 175 of The Stars are Dying

“You can’t kill me. You’ll never find a way back,” the king spat.

“You’re wrong. I’ll admit I was a fool for believing I needed you. I let you dangle that over me for centuries. But I have a way now, and you…are no longer needed.”

Nyte stripped the king down from a dark and feared leader to a frightened soldier in mere seconds.

“You’ll erupt chaos with this. You have no idea what has been building in your absence. Let me help you, Rainyte.”

Nyte flinched at the name.

It repeated itself back to me with a foreign taste. I realized the face I’d spent so long with also had three names.

One of birth.

One of reputation.

One he chose.

Rainyte. Nightsdeath. Nyte.

All of them correlated to the one thing that couldn’t be denied. He was made of the night. He moved with shadows and stars, his aura always dark, but with a wandering soul.

“Don’t call me that,” he said, distant, cold. “You took me from the one who named me that.”

“Isavedyou.”

“A slave passed from one monster to another still wears shackles.”

“I never wanted you to be that. I wanted you to be everything.”

“You wanted a killer while you took the glory.”

“I did what I had to do,” the king seethed, turning vicious once more. “Forus. Your brother saw that.”

Nyte laughed bitterly. “You have no idea what you created out of both of us.”

“I couldn’t be the father you wanted, but you became so much stronger because of it.”

“You’re right.” Nyte turned to me unexpectedly. Our eyes met, and I didn’t know what I felt. Watching the exchange with his father had been crushing my chest slowly. Maybe no one else could hear the faint split in his voice that gave away he was hurting despite the cold loathing. Or maybe there was no one else who truly cared to hear it, and that almost collapsed my knees.

“Another truth for you, Astraea. I am the son of two of the most villainous, power-hungry beings to have ever existed across two fucking universes. I am notgood. I was not born to be, nor do I think this world deserves it.” His confession cut through me. “But you deserve it. And I wanted to begoodfor you though I can never be. Do you believe that?”

My heartbeats filled the silence. “Yes,” I breathed.

His pain…I felt it. Wanted to take it despite everything.

His gaze dropped like defeat—only for a second before he twisted back to his father.

“If we keep her alive they will remain weakened,” the king said, trying to reason with him, but it had the opposite effect. “I planned to protect her.”

“She is not the problem.Weare. I should have done this long ago.”

As Nyte stepped forward, bow strings groaned all around the room. My pulse spiked, triggering the key, which warmed in my palm. Nyte dared another step despite the lethal iron tips that tracked him. Zathrian’s singing blade was the only thing to cut the tense silence as he closed in behind me.

I didn’t have a second to react when just as the king’s gaze slipped from Nyte to me, so did the point of over a dozen arrowheads.

And they released.

All I could do was brace, clamping my eyes shut on instinct, but instead of crying out at anything piercing my flesh, I was engulfed by waves of pure, undilutedpower.The spectacle when my lids flew open to find the luminance was breathtaking. Wind tangled my hair with the wall of rippling dark starlight.

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