Page 193 of The Stars are Dying

I huffed as I sat back down, too dizzy to do anything else. “Is there anyone else I should be aware of?” I grumbled.

Zath shrugged. “Not that I know of,” he said, reaching for an apple. He was so at ease here, not at all like the cold soldier he had been around Hektor, and no longer stiff with caution like he was when the king was in power. He had Nyte’s protection now.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I didn’t want to distract you,” Davina said timidly.

“Just…how?”

It was impossible to be mad at someone so gentle. As Davina took up the seat next to me, her expression dropped.

“I’m fae,” she admitted. “And a shapeshifter.”

My eyes immediately targeted her rounded ears, exposed from her braided coronet. Until my face relaxed with horror and my heart withered with a memory.

“You cropped your ears,” I said vacantly, recalling the tale of Lilith’s father.

Davina poured herself some wine as if to avoid meeting anyone’s judgment. “It was necessary,” she said sadly. “To be here, even before I knew about you. Many fae have done so in an attempt to elude the king and help others to hide and escape. Nyte found me when my parents were taken two centuries ago. He helped me to remain hidden, but that wasn’t the existence I wanted. I needed to fight back in whatever way I could. I knew he was Nightsdeath, but he also helped save as many of my kind as he could. He gave us hope.”

I reached over for her hand, squeezing, and she finally met my eye. “You’re amazing,” I said. It wasn’t enough. I was in awe but aching with resentment for what she’d been through.

She smiled, accepting but not entirely believing my words. “It doesn’t end with the king being overthrown. There are still those who were rising up against him anyway, and if we fall to a vampire reign…it could be worse.”

I shivered with foreboding.

“I lost my sister and parents to a nightcrawler gang attack two years before I met you,” Zath interjected. “If we’re exchanging tragic pasts.”

Just like that, my resentment dissipated to heartbreak for him. “I didn’t know—”

“I lost my job as a trade scout. Became a drunk and barely had any care for my existence. I lived here in the Central, and one night I heard a calling. It was him. I found the same hatch you did because he led me there, and when I found him, trust I was afraid and certain I’d leave that place and never look back. But he was the first company I’d had that didn’t look to me like a sorry lost cause. He was patient and truthful of the exact reason he’d coaxed me down there. He told me about the star-maiden, what she meant to him—to the world—and all he wanted me to do was go to you. Find out exactly how you were feeling. He was limited through other minds from so far away. He told me if you were truly happy and safe then he would make sure you never accompanied Cassia. But if there was ever a moment of doubt, I was to help you escape.”

I was transfixed by his story, disbelieving of it.

“I only got through the borders to Alisus thanks to him. I joined Hektor’s group and worked my way up. As it turns out, I have a talent for picking up things I shouldn’t, and I impressed him, becoming his most favored spy. And while I despised him, I gave him my unquestionable loyalty, and that wasn’t gained without doing things I will regret for the rest of my days. But you were worth it. The moment I met you, I knew you were worth it.”

My lips pinched tightly to keep from the waves of emotion that slammed into me.

“You were so quiet, but only because everything you were was bottled up. The more you eased to me, the more I saw what Nyte had tried to explain. Your passion and spirit, even in small glimpses, because H—” Zath’s mouth tried to spill a word. He tried again, but when no sound came and confusion passed for a second…

Soon you won’t be able to speak his name because it will no longer exist to anyone.

Could Nyte really have done it?

“—that bastard hardly allowed you to express yourself,” Zath continued without it. My blood chilled. “I knew almost immediately I was going to be helping you get here, to the Central. That the only way for you to break out was to do so physically. I wasn’t thinking about the world or what you could do, only that there was this one chance to help you as aperson, and I was going to do whatever it took no matter where you wanted to run off to beyond that manor.”

“Zath…” I had no words, only barrels of sentiment I didn’t expect from hearing his truth.

He only smiled, and though we had some mending to do before I could trust him again, maybe I didn’t want to resent him anymore. “He’s not a hero, Astraea. Not even close. But he has never pretended to be.”

“I can’t do this,” Rose said, standing abruptly.

Zath stood too, but before she could even get a step away a shadowy touch caressed my neck. That of a lover made of sin. The room chilled with it, and everyone’s attention landed on the doorway to find Nyte strolling through it.

“Stay, Rosalind,” he said. A command that took minimal effort, yet it demanded submission.

Both Zath and Rose eased back down, and I followed her powerful glare toward the source of the shadow coming to life in the corners of the room. He strolled in with a confidence that was too natural to be arrogance. Even though the room was an expanse of glittering black marble floors, broken only by white pillars and shards of color from the window scenes, his presence seemed to turn down the surrounding brightness wherever he went, drawing out a soothing but deadly kind of darkness that could ignite desire as quickly as it could kill.

I continued eating, trying not to give him the satisfaction of knowing his being here did anything to me. He came around behind me, leaning in close, but I didn’t get a second to react to his bold proximity when a thump speared the table next to my plate.

“You misplaced this,” he said, his voice low and twistedly seductive. Nyte sat sideways in the seat I’d deliberately left vacant, one away from the head of the table.

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