Page 194 of The Stars are Dying

“I placed it perfectly, in fact.”

Reaching for my dagger, my breath hitched when his hand curled around it first, and at the same time he reached down for the leg of my chair, turning me out effortlessly to face him.

I hoped he would turn to ash with my glare of ire.

I planted my foot on the seat between his legs, intending to push him away, but he caught my calf. With the electricity that surged through me I wanted to fight him. It raised a sadistic thrill. Because going to war with Nyte would be as exhilarating as it would devastating.

“We should go—”

“No need.” Nyte cut Zath off but didn’t break my stare.

Zath and Rose tried to occupy themselves with the food and wine.

“If you’d taken it with you after stabbing me, I would have arrived much sooner,” Nyte said. The intensity between us grew as his hand slipped over my knee, exposing my leg through the cut of my gown.

“I figured,” I said.

He gave a wicked side-smile, sliding the dagger into the empty sheath at my thigh. “If you’d aimed for the heart, I would have arrived much later.” His fingers lingered, anddamn himfor the reaction of heat my body craved with it.

From the clean dagger and his impeccable fresh clothing, I knew he hadn’t come straight from waking after my attack. I carried a pinch of guilt with me, but I would be damned if I let him know it.

With a deep breath he let me go, standing to right my chair before sitting beside me again. Nyte helped himself to the spread in front of us. “Dying makes me famished too,” he said casually.

I couldn’t believe his lax demeanor. I didn’t know what I expected: for him to have stormed in here with bloodied hands from killing someone else; for him to be outraged over what I’d done; or for him to have commanded the room to bow for him.

Anything but this jarringnormalcy.

“Why don’t you sit at the head of the table?” I ground out.

“Until I replace it to be wide enough to fit two there, I’ll remain here.”

It took me a moment and catching Zath’s nervous look to realize what he meant.

“I will never sit by you.”

Nyte chewed his food as he turned to me, bracing a hand on the back of my chair. His eyes sparkled. “What do you call this?”

Rose said, “I’m leaving—”

“Rosalind Kalisahn.” Nyte drawled her name, and the look she flashed him while bracing her hands on the table was nothing short of deadly. “I’ll admit I didn’t expect you to make it this far, but here we are.”

Her hazel gaze flashed to me, and something equally threatening shifted in Nyte. “How can you betray her like this?”

Those words struck me, each one a new dagger knowing who she meant.

“Careful,” Nyte warned, so chilling I might have shrunk if I could have focused on anything but what Rose implied.

“I haven’t—”

“She came here to killhim.”

“And it is not too late to killyou,” Nyte said.

That made Zathrian shift in his seat.

“Stop,” I said, cutting through the growing tension.

“You want to leave,” Nyte went on. “Where will you go? Do you want to tell them, or should I?”

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