Текст книги "The Serpent and the Wings of Night"

Автор книги: Carissa Broadbent

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“And what is that?” He said it like I’d just presented him with a fluffy pink dog.

The ground rumbled. We didn’t have time for this. “Go!” I didn’t stop moving long enough to answer. Raihn dropped the Bloodborn’s corpse on the slab, and we flew through the corridors.

Raihn had to be right that we were near the end of the maze. The next two doors were open, held there by the corpses of a human and Rishan, respectively. Telltale bloodstains adorned the walls—delicate sprays of red, too fine to be from wounds. Evidence of blood magic.

We encountered only two other contestants, and between the child and my injuries, I needed to rely on Raihn’s defense far more than I liked. At least he cut them down easily, just two more corpses left in the halls as we progressed.

“Raihn,” I hissed as we rounded another corner, pointing to the left with my bloody blade—to a gate marked with lit Nightfire torches. This one was bigger than the others, double doors of ornate metal, one of Alarus’s eyes peering from each.

The end? It could be. It had to be.

A single slab sat before us. Raihn and I looked at each other. Then looked at the child, who wept softly, barely conscious.

He’d move for me. I knew it. Me, or the child.

The minute he did, my arm swung.

My blade hit the solid leather-clad muscle of his shoulder. His jaw snapped shut, trembling. He glared at me.

“What,” he hissed, between clenched teeth, “the fuck was that for? I was going for that.”

He pointed his sword to a lifeless body at the far end of the hall, then muttered a string of curses and yanked my blade from his armor.

Oh.

I adjusted my hold around the child and mumbled something that somewhat resembled an apology, and Raihn told me to go fuck myself. I considered telling him how lucky he was that that blade had no poison left and decided he probably wouldn’t appreciate it.

He hoisted the corpse over his shoulder and was on his way back when the wave of pain hit me—acidic, all consuming, like I was being boiled from the inside out.

I had only a moment to recognize what was happening before Angelika hit me.

I barely managed to stave her off, my single free arm trembling with the strength it took to block her. Red suffused my vision. Each breath burned. The cuts over Angelika’s arms quivered as the mist thickened.

She smiled. “I told you I’d kill you in the ring.”

The child’s body went rigid with pain as she cringed against me. Could a human child survive this?

I heard Raihn’s approaching footsteps running for us. He had gone all the way down the hall. Seconds and he would be here. The smart thing would be to wait for him. I could withstand it—but the girl probably couldn’t.

So I left myself unguarded for one critical moment as I evaded.

The strike to my side was crippling.

I fell. I barely had enough awareness to push the child away from my falling weight before I hit the ground.

Angelika’s clawed hand was at my throat immediately. Squeezed. I found the gates, tall and glimmering with the promise of safety as everything else blurred. I reached for my magic, and it sputtered uselessly out of reach. Always gone when I needed it most.

I groped at my side. One touch to the dagger she had embedded there made me seize with agony. But it’s amazing what a body could endure to survive.

I yanked the blade out of my flesh and thrust it into Angelika’s.

She cursed and slammed my head against the floor.

Everything went white, then black.

I was only partially conscious when Raihn pulled Angelika away. I could not move my gaze from the ceiling. How much time passed? Seconds, minutes? The roar of the crowd swelled to a sudden crescendo. Everything spun.

Raihn leaned over me.

“It’s almost over, Oraya.” He looked like he was shouting but sounded so far away. “Get up. Come on. Quick. We don’t have time.”

I managed to turn my head. Angelika barely moved in a heap on the ground. My eyes fell to the little girl, unconscious, her leg twisted, dark hair falling over her face. So incredibly familiar. Like looking in a mirror.

I dragged myself to my hands and knees, pushing away Raihn’s hand.

“Lemme go,” I slurred.

“For fuck’s sake, princess, I’m not going to—”

“Lemme go!”

I crawled to the girl. Gathered her in my arms. Forced myself to my feet. My gaze settled on the gate ahead, though it tilted and smeared.

What was that, ten steps? I could make it ten steps.

Raihn held my arm, perhaps in frustration, perhaps to steady me.

“What are you doing?” he hissed.

I couldn’t answer that even if I wanted to. It took all my energy to make it those final steps.

Still, I would not let him help me. Still, I would not let go of that child.

I crossed the threshold and fell to my knees.

The colosseum spread out before me, gold-gilded and magnificent. Thousands of spectators packed the stands, screaming for blood. And yet, even in that crowd, I found Vincent right away—right there in the front, watching me with abject horror, as if his own heart had been carved out and thrust into my hands.

It struck me, all at once, exactly how much Vincent loved me.

Was that how I had looked, I wondered, when I looked at this little girl? Just like that?

At the thought of her, sudden fear overwhelmed me. These were predators. All of them. And she was prey.

Her blood and mine ran together as I turned to Raihn.

“Don’t let them take her,” I choked out.

The world faded. I didn’t remember falling, but suddenly, I was looking at the sky, my fingernails digging into Raihn’s arm, the other hand desperately clutching the limp child to my chest. Nightborn soldiers encroached upon us.

“Don’t let them take her,” I begged again.

The edges of my vision grew dark.

And Raihn leaned very close to me—closer than I ever allowed anyone—as he murmured, solemn as a vow, “I won’t.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

My arms were empty when I awoke.

I stared at the ceiling for several long seconds. My stomach churned. The mural on the ceiling—a night sky—streaked as the world spun. I lifted my hand to my chest and felt only the slow rise and fall of my own breath.

No child.

The trial came to me in bits and pieces, assembled in a fractured mosaic. The end of it was just a blurry, poorly rendered suggestion.

The girl. I remembered how limp she had been. How hard we’d hit the ground together. Remembered the guards closing in on me—on her. She was just a small, helpless human.

My hand slid down my body. Yes, I had some nicks and cuts, but the worst of my injuries had been healed. I had survived the second trial.

And I felt nothing.

Raihn was nowhere to be found when I awoke, but Mische was excited to see me conscious. A little too excited, actually, her grin tinged with a manic hint of concern. I had been in rough shape, and unconscious for days.

“It was mostly the blood magic that got you,” she told me.

As a human, I was especially susceptible to it. My blood was weak, easy to manipulate, easy to turn against my mortal flesh. If a body withstood it, recovery could be quick, but the line between survival and death, especially for a human, was very thin.

I thought of that child. How tiny she was, nestled against my chest. Surely too tiny to survive what I barely had.

I listened, numb, as Mische told me of the end of the trial—that eleven contestants had died, leaving twenty-nine of us. Even Ibrihim, miraculously, had managed to drag himself through at the last possible moment.

I sipped the water Mische gave me, but my mouth was still too dry to bring myself to ask the only question I cared about. I let her talk for a full half hour before I scraped up the courage to choke out, “The girl?”

She looked confused. “The what?”

“There was a little girl.”

She gave me a weak smile and a pitying shake of her head. “I don’t know.”

I wanted to press, wanted to demand that we find out, but the words were thick in my throat.

Why did I care so much? I shouldn’t care so much. And yet I couldn’t ignore it. Couldn’t escape it. I swallowed down what I could of the food Mische gave me, but the minutes ticked by and I grew antsy, as if everything I was trying to suppress just roiled and thrashed beneath my skin.

Eventually, I rose. Every muscle ached, but at least I could move. I grabbed my jacket from the coat hook.

“Where are you going?” Mische asked, alarmed, as I threw it over my shoulders.

“Just need some air.”

“But you should—”

I threw open the door.

“—rest,” she finished as I slammed it behind me.

It had been a while since I’d done three in a single night. My body railed against me for it—and I deserved that, I suppose—but even tired, the fuckers weren’t difficult to kill. They were lazy, and there were too many of them. It had been weeks since I’d walked these streets. Enough time, apparently, to lull these fools into a false sense of security.

I wasn’t surprised.

They were entitled. Selfish, gluttonous, entitled pieces of shit, who saw the people who lived here as nothing more than livestock. I hated them so much that watching them die—watching them watch me, a human, kill them—did nothing to ease my rage. It just made it feel like more of an injustice.

Over the years, I had learned to stitch up that wound, tuck it carefully away with all my other human weaknesses. Now, the bandage I so carefully maintained had been torn off, grasped in the little fingers of an innocent dead child.

I didn’t know how to make it stop. I had been taught young that bleeding was dangerous. And though my wounds had closed, the one deep in my chest bled more than ever. It made me just as vulnerable.

When I left the Moon Palace, I thought I was going to meet Vincent. I was sure that he would be waiting for me. I’d seen the way he looked at me in there. I needed to talk to him, to ask him about my magic, ask him about the humans—where had they come from? How did they get humans that should have been protected? Why children?

He’d have answers.

And yet, maybe that was exactly why I found myself walking in the opposite direction, to the human districts.

Words were complicated. Questions were difficult. And that wound inside of me was bleeding so much that I knew Vincent would smell it. The blood would seep out between my fingers if he ripped it open with an answer I didn’t like.

This was easier. More satisfying. At least it was fucking doing something.

My third victim looked at me like I was Nyaxia herself as the light left his eyes. I pinned him against the wall, here in the shit-stinking, piss-coated alleyway where he had been stalking young women in the pub across the street. I wasn’t the young woman he wanted, but I was certainly the one he deserved.

He opened his mouth, a waft of his rotting breath floating over my face as he slackened.

I yanked my blade free and let him slump to the ground.

Animal. Fucking rot there with the shit and the piss and the trash, just like all the other rat carcasses.

He had opened a cut on my wrist with his fingernails. I stopped and watched the blood bubble to the surface, and with it came another unbearable wave of rage.

My skin, human skin, was so delicate and easily torn. In this moment, I hated it just as much as I hated the vampire I’d just killed. More, even. Maybe that fragility was responsible for just as much death.

“And here I was thinking that you were visiting with our great and powerful Nightborn King when you ran away in the early hours.”

I spun around, blade out, to see a familiar winged form standing on the rooftop. At the sight, my heart clenched—I didn’t like when they flew above me. I may be the serpent, but even snakes run for cover when hawks soared overhead.

Raihn, I’m sure, would not take kindly to me killing vampires. No vampire would. They would kill each other any day, but none of them liked it when a human did it.

Not that I was in the mood to give a damn, now.

“Go away.”

“That’s an uncharacteristically boring retort.”

It was. Almost embarrassing.

I ignored him and wiped the blood from my blade.

Raihn’s smirk faltered slightly.

“I saw you kill two more in the last hour,” he said, his voice a touch softer than I would have expected. “You’re doing this when you were just on the edge of death? Not a wise use of your time, some might say.”

That wound in my heart bled and bled. His words salted it, and I lashed out at him like an animal.

“Not a good use of my time?” I snarled, jabbing my weapon at him. “Four humans would be dead if I didn’t do this today. But of course, you don’t think their lives are worth an hour and a half of my time.”

His smirk disappeared. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Fuck you.”

I hoped he couldn’t see my face. It probably revealed too much.

Be careful with those colorful expressions of yours, little serpent, Vincent whispered.

Fuck you, too, I thought, then, moments later, uttered a silent apology in my head.

Behind me, I heard Raihn land on the ground—surprisingly lightly for someone of his size.

“Get out.” I didn’t turn. “These pricks don’t need you defending their honor.”

He scoffed in disgust. “I’m doing no such thing. As far as I’m concerned, you’re doing an important public service.”

My hand stopped mid-movement.

I didn’t turn, didn’t reveal my face, but he chuckled. “What?”

What did he mean, what? Like he didn’t know what. Like he wasn’t perfectly fucking aware exactly how any vampire—even ones who looked down upon these rats, even ones who disagreed with their actions—would take a human taking it upon herself to kill them. An insult on principle alone.

I didn’t bother saying this to him. We both knew.

Instead, a question swelled in my throat. It was exactly the kind of question I’d come here to avoid, the kind with an ugly answer I didn’t want to hear.

I resumed cleaning my blade.

“The girl?” I choked out.

My voice came out higher and weaker than I’d intended.

A long, long silence passed. With each second, my chest tightened.

I heard footsteps approach, but I didn’t move until his hand touched my shoulder. I twitched away, ready to snap at him, but something about the look on his face—oddly gentle—made me pause.

“Come with me,” he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Raihn brought me across the city. It took us nearly a half an hour to travel there on foot—he offered to fly us, but I refused so vehemently that he put his hands up in an apparent plea of mercy—and we walked in silence. I still needed to keep my teeth gritted against everything that might escape if I opened my mouth.

This end of the district was more spread out, patches of dirt and even a few gardens spacing out the clay buildings. There was no part of the human district that didn’t reek of poverty, but this area, at least, felt a bit more like people were trying to build lives here. Poor, yes. Run-down, of course. But… full of warmth, in some strange way.

Bittersweet grief twinged in my chest. I’d never noticed before that maybe something existed here that did not exist in the inner city. Things that lived and moved and reminded me so much of Ilana.

It was night, which meant it was quiet here, residents remaining dutifully indoors. Still, Raihn and I were careful to cling to the shadows, traveling in alleyways rather than the main streets. He peered around the corner between two buildings, then spread his wings and leapt up to the flat roof. He offered me his hand, but I ignored it and climbed up on my own, earning a light scoff and a shake of the head.

He led me to the edge of the roof, then sat, swinging his legs over and spiriting his wings away. “Look.”

I didn’t know what he was trying to show me. Before us were buildings that looked like all the other buildings we’d passed, and deserted streets that looked just like all the other streets we’d walked.

“What?”

“Sit. Get lower.”

I crouched down. Even with my legs under me, I was still shorter than Raihn was seated. He pointed, and I craned my head to follow his gesture.

“Through that window. Over there.”

The next building over had large glass windows split into many reinforced panes. Lanterns had been lit within, drenching the interior in soft, warm light. Moving bodies cast shadows across the interior—there were many people in that room, at least six that I could see through the window, most of them children.

“Right in the middle,” Raihn said softly.

A little girl with dark hair. She sat on the floor, alone, ignoring the other children. Her head was bowed, and even if it wasn’t, she was too far away for me to see her face, anyway.

But it was her. It was her.

A shaky breath escaped me without my permission. The wave of sheer relief left me dizzy. I pressed my hands to the clay roof just so I wouldn’t topple over the edge.

“How?” I choked out.

“I have my ways.” I could hear the smirk in Raihn’s voice. “Very dangerous, very clever, very impressive ways.”

I wasn’t about to validate his preening, but… it was impressive. I couldn’t even fathom how he had managed to pull it off. Just getting the child out of the colosseum alive was practically a miracle.

“Who—who are these people? Where is this?”

“A home for children who don’t have anyone else. Took me a while to find the right place. I couldn’t locate her family. I thought maybe they could.”

I swallowed thickly. They would not find this girl’s family. She didn’t have a family anymore.

“That’s a fairytale,” I said.

He let out a sour, humorless chuckle. “You really just… don’t ever let up, do you? You never accept a win?”

Did he think I didn’t want it to be a win? Did he think I didn’t want to believe that it could happen?

But before I could speak, he added gently, “Maybe you’re right. But she’s alive. That’s something.”

And I was grateful for that—I truly was. If I tried to tell him so, I would reveal too much. Yet, I wanted it to feel more like a victory. I wanted her life to be worth more than it was. Instead, she would grow up here, in a place where she would be constantly hunted, alone.

I wished saving her was as simple as keeping her heart beating. Mother, I wanted that. But would she remember that someone tried? That someone thought her life should be worth something more?

Without thinking, I rubbed the ring on my little finger.

“She should never have been there,” I muttered.

“No,” Raihn agreed.

The sheer hatred in his voice caught me off guard, unexpected enough to jerk me from my thoughts.

My gaze snapped to him. “Why were you following me?”

He raised his hands. “Easy, viper.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“You were coming into the districts as I was leaving. I was curious. Maybe even a bit concerned, if you won’t take too much offense to my saying that.” His voice turned more serious. “But I’m glad I did. I’m pleasantly surprised by this turn of events, actually. I—” He shook his head. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Why? Because I’m Vincent’s princess?”

He winced but didn’t disagree.

I stared at him for a long moment, eyes narrowed. “I don’t understand.”

“What?”

“Pleasantly surprised. You said you were pleasantly surprised.”

“And I meant it.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“Why? Because I’m Rishan trash?”

If he expected me to wince like he had, I didn’t. I just stared, unblinking, unapologetic.

He sighed. “The ones you’re killing? They deserve it. They’ll never stop otherwise.”

“But they’re vampires.”

“Yes.”

“And these are humans.”

“I can see that.”

A pause as I tried and failed to articulate my disbelief.

He sighed again, as if this discussion was exhausting him. “Is that so incomprehensible?”

Yes. Incomprehensible. It just… defied a certain world order in the House of Night. Hell, in all of Obitraes.

“Of course it is,” I said.

This response seemed to irritate him. “It’s that unbelievable that I have respect for human life?” he snapped. “I used to fucking be one of them.”

My mouth had been half-open with some snippy retort that I immediately forgot. I closed it, stunned into silence.

Raihn’s rust-red eyes crinkled with amusement. “It’s satisfying to shock you, princess.”

“You’re Turned.”

“I am.”

Turned vampires were very rare, especially in Sivrinaj. The few that managed to survive the process usually didn’t adjust well to their new existence. And the vampires of the House of Night—notoriously territorial—were never all that inclined to turn their food into their peers to begin with.

It had never even occurred to me that Raihn could be Turned. And yet, so much now made sense. The unusual ragged edge to his appearance. His decidedly un-vampiric sense of humor. And the performances—the constant performances, like he had something to prove. Like he’d had to learn how to wear different faces.

That little amused smile faded, leaving behind something rawer and more rueful. “Centuries, and it never gets any less repulsive. Never fucking fades.”

I wanted to say, Good.

I hoped I still found it repulsive when I became like them. That I never abandoned that piece of myself. And yet, so many times I’d thought it seemed like a small price to pay, to shed my humanity like the discarded skin of a snake.

Even if here and now, the idea sickened me.

I was quiet. I would never give voice to any of those thoughts.

“How long have you been doing this?” Raihn asked, at last.

“I don’t know,” I lied. “A few years.”

Six years, two months, and fourteen days.

“And I have to assume our great Nightborn savior doesn’t know.”

I shot him a warning glance.

He laughed just enough to reveal a glimpse of pointed teeth.

“You know, part of the reason why I wanted to ally with you was because of that look. That fucking face. It’s just so… so…” He clamped his lips shut, and his features twitched as if he was getting ready to mimic me and then—wisely—thought better of it. “Forget it.”

I could have let it lie there. Yet, I found myself replying, curtly, “No. Vincent doesn’t know.”

Why did I say that? Did I want to prove something to him? Prove that I was more than Vincent’s obedient pet?

“It would cause political problems,” I went on. “It’s better for everyone this way.”

Absolutely true. Vincent couldn’t condone, even tacitly, my activities here. Just like he couldn’t condone any official action in Rishan territory on my behalf. I would be free to act on my own when I was strong enough to do so without being killed.

I refrained from adding that Vincent would also probably lock me up in my room indefinitely if he had known about my little hobbies.

“Right.” Raihn sounded unconvinced.

The breeze captured loose strands of both of our hair—mine raven-black, his dark red. It was welcome in this heat. I lifted my chin to it, relishing the cooling sweat on my cheeks as I gazed out to the horizon—the crumbling bland blocks of the human district, static and angular in contrast to the rolling dunes. The Nightborn castle dwarfed all of it. From this spot, three different worlds collided: prey, predator, and the gods.

“It is admirable, Oraya,” Raihn said, after a long silence. “What you did in the ring. What you do here.”

I blinked in surprise. I didn’t look at him, didn’t respond—waited for him to add a correction, or a diminishment. But he didn’t. He just made the straightforward compliment, and let it stand.

It felt strange.

“And I’m sorry for my behavior before the trial,” he went on. “It was… I was thinking of things that had nothing to do with you. I was having a bad day.”

This stunned me even more than the compliment. Even if I could practically hear Mische feeding him the words.

Again, I waited for a but, a diminishment, but it did not come. I allowed myself to look at him, and silence stretched out between us.

Finally, I said, “Do you want me to say I’m sorry now? Because I’m not.”

He laughed. Not a chuckle or a scoff—a laugh, full and deep and shockingly loud. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had heard someone laugh like that. Myself included. Not since… not since Ilana.

“That fucking face,” he said, shaking his head. “No, I was not waiting for you to apologize. I’d be disappointed if you did.”

“I have no regrets. I’d throw you out that window again.”

“Oh, I know, princess. I know.”

He pushed the wayward strands of his hair away from his face, the smile still clinging to his lips and moonlight outlining the angles of his profile. The sudden, overwhelming realization hit me that he was actually very handsome. I was always surrounded by beautiful people—and learned long ago, the hard way, how important it was to numb myself to that—but in this moment, just for a split second, Raihn’s beauty struck me like a blow, so unexpected and staggering my breath caught in my throat. His wasn’t the refined elegance of vampires, perfect cheekbones and perfect lips and perfect, glittering eyes. No, it was rougher, more lived-in. More alive.

Suddenly all those features that had seemed like so much—that carried the marks of a life, unlike vampire perfection that sanded them away—were magnificently captivating.

I looked away fast, shoving this observation away.

“I have an idea,” he said. “Fuck training in that apartment. Let’s train here.”

My brow furrowed. “Here?”

“Here. Doing this. I already learned more about your style in the last two hours than I have in the last ten days, just by watching you work tonight.”

I bristled at that, every instinct rebelling against being observed. But I begrudgingly had to admit he was right. If we were going to work together, we needed to understand each other.

“Think about it,” he said. “We can learn how to fight together and actually do something fucking useful. And…” The corner of his mouth curled. “It’ll be more fun, don’t you think?”

Every part of me wanted to say no, like a child desperate to protect her secret hideaway. But I had only barely survived two trials, and my ability to make it through the third hinged on working with Raihn.

And my ability to kill him afterwards hinged on my understanding of him, too.

My gaze drifted back to that window. The lights had mostly gone out, save for a single lantern that now dimly outlined the little girl’s sleeping form, now tucked into bed, barely visible.

This district had been crawling with vampires tonight. One month away from my project, and so much effort undone. How many humans had died in the last month because I wasn’t here? How many more could live if I had help?

“Alright,” I said. “Fine. We’ll do it.”

I almost took it back just because Raihn looked so smugly pleased with himself.

He leaned closer, a curious look glinting in his eye. “Do you remember when you asked me for one honest thing?”

I nodded.

“One honest thing, Oraya. We have three weeks until the Halfmoon trial. Are we really going to work together?”

I understood what he was really asking me. Whether I would cooperate with him. Whether I would allow us to work together.

What have you done to earn my trust? I had spat at him.

Trust was still a precious and dangerous thing. Whatever I was giving him now wasn’t quite that. But…

I looked down to that sleeping girl. Then to Raihn. I noticed for the first time that we were sitting quite close to each other, less than an arm’s length apart.

I noticed this, and I did not move.

“Yes,” I said. “I think so.”