Page 32 of The Stars are Dying

“Now I know you can’t be real.”

His chuckle turned my mind in contradiction to the delightful shiver that ran through my body.

“Nyte.” I said his name, enjoying the sound of it.

“Starlight.”

I had to touch him. My hand holding the dagger fell only for my other to rise. He inhaled deeply when I came so close to grazing his cheek before he caught my wrist again.

“You’re bleeding.”

I’d forgotten about the wound that didn’t hurt.

“It’s nothing.”

I thought his breath blew across my palm, but there was no warmth. My fingers met soft skin—lips—and I was too stunned by the electricity coursing through me to move.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

I wished I could see him. I wanted to feelmoreof him, and the dark gave me brazen confidence. It offered his company, though I didn’t know how it was possible.

I stepped closer as he guided my hand away from his mouth, letting it go, but when he cupped my cheek, something sparked to life in my chest and chased out every desolate thought of my surroundings, my situation, just for this fleeting moment.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Please don’t.”

Mint and sandalwood drifted over me until a tingling on my lips caught my breath. “Do not beg,” he whispered. “Certainly not for me.”

The flame burning within me snuffed out, and the smoke that remained threatened to choke me.

He was gone.

The echo of his touch lingered on my face, but his phantom presence was snatched cruelly by cold emptiness. I stood alone once again, bewildered by what I’d conjured.

“I’m not going insane,” I said to myself, beginning a short pace. “I’m not losing myself.” I bit at the raw tips of my fingers, but I couldn’t feel anything.

I had lost myself long ago. My strings had been tied the moment I accepted salvation from the first thing to offer it, and I’d been naïve to never question his love as control. His gifts were control. Hisprotectionwas fucking control.And I wanted to give it all back and keep running barefoot through that forest no matter what other arms might catch me instead.

My palms slapped against the brittle stone with a cry.

Then a faraway disruption pricked my senses—the first indication of people beyond the door since I’d been placed here. In my terror that Hektor might take the weapon from me again, I hastily stuffed it under the pillow. My pulse clawed up my throat when the commotion grew louder. There was shuffling, a few thumps that made my body jerk, and I braced myself for Hektor to barge in with an unhinged anger.

The door didn’t burst open. Whispers sounded as it was carefully unlocked, and when it opened, my eyes stung, and I winced against the light.

“Shit.”

I couldn’t see him, but the muttering of his rage filled my eyes, and I whimpered. “Zath?”

“That bastard,” he growled, storming over to the cell.

I cried. With twinges of shame at where he’d found me, and in world-caving relief as the jingle of keys became the melody of freedom.

“We’re getting you the hell out of here.”

The moment the door swung open my arms wrapped around him, needing desperately that solid reassurance he was real and warm. I couldn’t stop shivering from the cold. “He’ll kill you,” I sobbed, suddenly overwhelmed by what Zath’s intervention meant.

“Not if I kill him first.”

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