Zath looked up over my head and toward the sky. I turned, locking onto the blood-red moon that dominated the sky. A brilliant, full sphere.
Then my breath caught, realizing…
I whirled back, but Zath’s expression sank my quick surge of hope. Then the single shake of his head dropped the weight of the world onto me.
Eltanin was of age to choose his rider, and either the dragon bond hadn’t worked to wake Nyte, or Eltanin hadn’t chosen him.
Maybe there’s still time. It could still work and Nyte would come for me.My desperate hope clawed against my despair.
My knees almost gave out to prevent me from following after Zath and Rose as they were quickly swept out of my sight in the frantically retreating crowds. It was my time to escape as well, hand in hand with the most unfeeling creature in the realm.
“Are you ready to go, my star? Or would you like me to keep tearing through your enemies?”
I looked up, finding no color of flesh in his form, only darkness imitating the shape of Nyte’s face with twin suns wild and blazing against the darkness. He was so hauntingly mesmerizing.
For now, this was the only piece of Nyte I had, as terrifying and unpredictable as he was. But as my fingers slipped against his made of swirling shadows, a piece of my soul felthome.
PARTTWO
YouWereMyBestFriend
15Astraea—Past
Astraea walked by Nyte’s side, about to announce their alliance to the most unlikely of groups first. His hand grazed hers, and her stomach fluttered when he took an assuring hold of her.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, voice low—everything echoed in this dark cave they ventured through.
“Like I’m about to walk into a lair of vampires that want me dead.”
She could feel his smile in the dark, accompanied by the promising stroke of his thumb.
“We’re hoping to change that. But one move against you will be the last they ever make.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re hoping for that?”
“It’s been a while.”
“Always restless for violence.”
“Speak for yourself. At least you’ve been party to some action recently.”
Her unease started to grow when voices echoed ahead.
“How can you be sure there aren’t some here who might go to your father?”
“I can’t be. I’m just willing to deal with that should he hear of this news. But these are vampires who don’t follow him, nor agree with his methods. This is an army of its own, led by elder vampires who want nothing but peace and equality.”
He’d been through this with her already, and she trusted Nyte unconditionally. Yet she still struggled to believe such a force of vampires existed when all she’d been told by the High Celestials so far was that they’d all chosen to ally with Nyte’s father to overthrow the celestials, and her, for power over Solanis.
“They agreed to see me?”
Nyte’s pause before answering snapped her sight up to him with a new wave of caution.
“I might not have told them,” he admitted.
She would have voiced her incredulity, but they’d come to the end of the passage and already she spied many bodies through the opening. Nyte merely interlocked their fingers fully, a declaration of their unity as he pulled her unfaltering through the masses of vampires that parted for him the second they laid eyes on him.
Astraea’s whole body tensed when she saw so many faces drop into scowls as their eyes fell on her. Her heartbeat jumped erratically at the hisses and murmurs of disdain, which tightened a white-knuckled grip on Nyte’s hand. She had her key shorted to a baton strapped to her hip, but this hall was teeming with so many vampires she was far outnumbered.
