Текст книги "The Serpent and the Wings of Night"

Автор книги: Carissa Broadbent

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

His fingers tightened around the fabric as I made another stitch.

“I told her it would happen. It hurt her every time she used that magic. And I told her, I fucking told her, that one day he would stop answering. That the God of the Sun wouldn’t keep allowing one of Nyaxia’s children”—he spat the term in disgust—“to draw upon his power. But she just…”

The burns on Mische’s arms. Years’ and years’ worth. Suddenly so much made sad, morbid sense.

“How was she ever able to do it?” I asked. “Wield that magic?”

“She was a priestess. Before. When she was human.”

My brows leapt. “A priestess of Atroxus?”

“Mhm. In Pachnai. Came here for some kind of missionary work. Isn’t that something?” A short laugh, cut off with a wince. “Missionaries coming to preach to fucking vampires. And that’s when it happened. Whoever Turned her just left her there to die. Probably figured he had a nice little eternal slave if she lived, and at least got a decent meal out of it if she didn’t. Decided she was too much trouble when she got sick and left. She didn’t even know what he was doing to her.”

I had long ago grown accustomed to the careless cruelty of the vampires. But it still sickened me to imagine what Mische, a foreigner barely older than a teenager, must have gone through.

I thought again of the Ministaer’s mouth on my skin, just hours ago. Thought of a kiss on my throat, and teeth, and pain—then jerked back to reality when Raihn cursed because I jabbed him a little too hard.

“Sorry.” I steadied my hand. “Who? Who was it?”

“I wish I fucking knew. I don’t even know what House she is. She won’t tell me. If I found out…”

He let out a low breath that made all sorts of wordless promises.

Fuck, I’d help.

“The thing that kills me,” Raihn said, “is that the bastard didn’t even know or care that he was taking literally everything from her. Didn’t even give enough of a shit to drag her to civilization before leaving her to die. And now…”

And now the final vestige of her humanity was gone.

“They don’t care,” I said softly. “They never care.”

“No. They never fucking care. And sometimes—” He tensed. Maybe because of the stitch. Maybe not. “Sometimes I’m ashamed to call myself one of them.”

I don’t want to watch you become one of them, Ilana had said to me.

And until now—until this exact moment—I hadn’t even thought about it as giving something up. Not until I heard the ache in Raihn’s voice that had nothing to do with the wounds on his back.

“What was it like?” I asked. “Turning?”

“Ix’s tits. Your bedside manner really is awful, princess.”

I could hear the expression on his face. My mouth tightened. Almost a smile.

I didn’t think he would answer, but he said, “It feels like death. I don’t remember most of it.”

“Who—?”

“Now that’s a question I can’t answer in a moment like this.” The cadence of a joke. The edge of a rebuke. Fair enough.

I finished the last two stitches, then admired my handiwork.

“How does it look?” he asked.

I answered honestly. “Fucking awful.”

He sighed. “Terrific.”

Blood still covered the rest of his back. I took the towel and gently wiped it away—from his shoulders, his sides, and finally, down the middle of his spine.

There, I paused, the cloth half raised. I had been right—the mark down the center of his back was a scar, a big one, far older than the marks from tonight. It carved a large triangle across his upper back, then trailed all the way down its center. A burn, maybe?

“How did you get this?”

“No, no, no. That isn’t how this works.” With a grunt of pain, he rose. “I don’t need to be distracted anymore, which means that I don’t have to answer your questions.”

I stood, too, wincing as I stretched the stiff fingers of my right hand. He turned to me, the corner of his mouth quirked, clearly about to say something insulting—but then he noticed me rubbing my bandaged wrist, and his face changed.

The smirk was gone.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing. A little cut.”

“What happened, Oraya?”

The intensity of his voice struck me in places I didn’t expect.

“Nothing happened,” I said, tucking my hand away. “It’s from the attack.”

His eyes searched my face, unblinking. They looked redder than ever in the firelight, reflecting the orange of the lanterns behind me. He didn’t believe me, but he didn’t say so.

I reached into the medicine bag and pulled out a little glass bottle of tablets. I took his hand and placed the vial in it. “Here. They won’t heal you, but at least they’ll help the pain enough for you to sleep.”

I didn’t know why I didn’t remove my hand. Nor why I didn’t step back, even though he was so close—close enough his body heat surrounded me.

I swallowed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that he did this to you.”

“It isn’t your fault.”

Still. I felt it, even if I didn’t know why.

And I still didn’t move when he said, “One honest thing, Oraya. Do you want a different partner for the Halfmoon trial?”

I knew why he was asking. Because now it was just me and him. Because his back was destroyed. Because he couldn’t use his wings.

“You could find one,” he went on. “People died in the attack. They left partners behind. I would understand.”

It surprised me that the answer was so clear, so immediate.

“Too late for that. You’re stuck with me.”

I watched his lips curl. The smile looked real. Different than the smirks.

“The human and the cripple,” he murmured. “The others should be trembling in pure fucking terror.”

I surprised myself by returning it.

“They’d better.”

My hand still lay over Raihn’s calloused palm. His fingers curled around mine, as if in silent agreement.

One more day.

When the Halfmoon was over, we would be enemies. Maybe this felt something like intimacy, but soon, we would try to kill each other.

I never forgot that.

Tonight, though, my soul was heavy—with Raihn’s torture and Mische’s past, with Vincent’s lies and the dark memories stirred by the Ministaer’s mouth on my skin. Maybe I was weak. Maybe I was foolish.

But even though I knew I should pull away, I didn’t.

No, I drank up Raihn’s touch like one last gulp of wine. A secret, shameful vice.

Mische wanted to stay. Even in her half-conscious, delirious state, she protested as Raihn carried her from the Moon Palace. He had some friends, he told me, who would take her away from Sivrinaj and care for her until she recovered. I was secretly glad she was not only leaving the Kejari, but leaving Sivrinaj entirely. I couldn’t shake the feeling that things here would get far worse before they got better.

She was conscious when I said goodbye to her. She gave my hand a weak squeeze when I approached—and I let her, even though I didn’t like goodbyes.

“Take care of yourself,” I told her.

“You too. Keep feeding that shy magic.” Her weak smile softened. “And… keep an eye on him, alright?”

She didn’t need to specify who.

“He acts tough, but he needs someone. And he likes you.”

No, he doesn’t, I wanted to say. He shouldn’t. The worst possible thing he could do is like me.

But I just gave Mische my best attempt at a comforting smile and said, “Rest. Get better quickly.”

To which she gave me an equally weak, but much brighter, wave. “I’ll see you soon.”

We were summoned only hours later. Raihn and I didn’t speak to each other on the walk there—what was there to say? We only nodded at each other in grim acceptance of our task.

We all stood in awkward silence in the great room. The only sounds were the hushed whispers shared between teammates. I looked around the room, carefully memorizing who had paired with who. Three House of Blood contestants stood together. Beside them, Angelika and her partner, a slight blood magic user by the name of Ivan. Ibrihim had managed to find a partner, a Shadowborn man, who had also been badly injured in the last trial. Apparently no one else would have them. Neither looked pleased.

They weren’t the only ones who appeared to have paired up out of sheer necessity. Four other Rishan contestants now partnered with each other—presumably out of last-minute changes, dumped by their previous partners after Jesmine’s torture. I eyed them and tried not to show it, a knot in my stomach.

Their backs were sealed beneath layers of armor, but they moved stiffly, and I could imagine what they looked like. Still, they didn’t seem to be in as much pain as Raihn, who couldn’t even get into his own armor. I had to strap the leather over his back while he gripped the edge of the bureau and cursed through teeth so tight I was sure he’d crack them. He hid it now, though, and well, tucking every wince and slow movement away. This was not the time to show weakness.

I saw it anyway.

Vampires healed fast, but his wounds had improved only a little. I was disappointed, but not surprised. Nightborn soldiers wielded all kinds of tricks—poison, magic, whatever it took—to inflict as much pain as their task warranted. Raihn’s, apparently, had warranted it all.

As I watched the other Rishan, I couldn’t help but wonder if his had been worse. If he had been kept longer, tortured more, because of his connection to me.

He nudged my arm, snapping me from my thoughts. “We’re famous,” he muttered, motioning to the other side of the room, where several Hiaj contestants stared.

We did make one of the more… unusual pairs.

“They’re jealous,” I said flatly, and he chuckled.

“We’ll give them a show.”

Mother, I hoped so.

We all waited in silence—prepared to be spirited away at any moment. But instead, a string of Nyaxia’s acolytes filed into the room. Each bore a silver goblet. They stopped at each set of allies, offering them the cup.

They didn’t say a word—ours didn’t even lift his eyes—but the unspoken message was clear: drink.

Raihn took the goblet first, making a face of disgust as he swallowed. “Unpleasant, but not poison,” he said, after a moment, and passed it to me.

The liquid was dark red, nearly black, and thick. Faint smoke rolled from its surface. It smelled slightly musty. I couldn’t even begin to imagine its purpose. I’d studied every Kejari, and none included a start like this.

I drank. Ugh. Raihn was right. It was disgusting.

I glanced at him after handing the goblet back to the acolyte, and the corner of his mouth curled. “Good lu—”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Feathers.

Feathers everywhere. Black, smothering, so dark that all color curled up and died in them.

Everything was distant and numb. I could not get my mind to work well enough to process any of it.

The feathers shifted. Light seeped between them. Or… no, not light. Eyes. Gold eyes. Terrible, cruel gold eyes.

I blinked, and then the eyes became a face that glared down at me from above. A man, with severe features and a neat beard and long black hair that flew out behind him, mingling with the wings that unfolded around us both.

I had never seen this person before. And yet, the sight of him filled me with paralyzing terror.

I blinked again, and the winged man’s face was replaced with another one. This one, I did know. I knew every angle of it. I pretended I didn’t see it every time I closed my eyes.

My old lover leaned close to me, so close the familiar cool of his breath ghosted over my cheek. “Did you miss me?” he whispered.

I struggled but couldn’t move.

Blink. The two faces merged, changing back and forth with every pulse of my panicked heartbeat.

They grabbed my hand, pressed it to their chest—pressed it to the gaping wound there, right in the center. They leaned closer. Their lips touched my ear.

“Did you miss me?”

Their blood was hot on my hand, running all the way down my forearm, as I struggled, frantic, with nowhere to go.

My arm was warm and wet. My heartbeat was out of control. Sharp pain shot up my back. I was in pitch darkness, and yet, too many sensations surrounded me—like two different worlds were colliding, each feeding me conflicting senses.

Oraya.

This was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

Oraya! Calm down. Breathe.

But even my own thoughts were lost, like my mind had become a gaping, cavernous maze I no longer knew how to navigate. Something else was here, something was—

ORAYA. CALM THE FUCK DOWN.

So loud it shocked my thoughts into silence. Raihn’s voice. It was Raihn’s voice booming through the back of my skull.

But… in my mind. Not my ears.

Breathe, Oraya. Both of us. We need to—we need to calm down. Alright?

For a moment I questioned my sanity.

I felt a shiver of wry amusement up my spine—a wordless, soundless chuckle—and it was such a bizarre sensation it nearly sent me spiraling again.

You aren’t alone in that, princess.

I put my hands straight out in front of me. I could see nothing, but they lay flat against smooth, toothy stone. The cold unyielding firmness steadied me.

And yet, even though my palms were now pressed firmly against the wall, I felt something else, too—felt them wrapped around the hilt of a sword. Felt the way my muscles strained to lift it, and a shock of pain up my back as I did.

My hands were here.

My hands were there.

“That’s you,” I gasped. “I’m feeling you.”

My physical voice felt dull and flat compared to the one in my head.

Yes, Raihn answered.

A mind bonding. The potion. It must have been a spell. It would take rare, powerful magic to forge a temporary bond like this—but I supposed Nyaxia’s church had all the resources to make the impossible possible.

Ix’s fucking tits.

Another uncanny vibration up my spine. I shuddered.

Don’t do that.

What? Laugh?

It feels strange.

The laughter is what feels strange? That’s what goes too far for you? How fitting.

Strange was an understatement. Every single part of me railed against the unwelcome presence in my thoughts—each nerve and muscle screamed at the additional weight of another set of senses thrust upon them.

Fuck, Oraya, do you feel this tense all the time?

I was too embarrassed to admit that too often, I did.

Special circumstances, I replied instead. You’re just as bad.

The truth. His anxiety was just as strong as mine. Different—a rolling undercurrent rather than staggering waves—but every bit as powerful.

If it was this overwhelming in just a dark box, what was this going to be like when we were actually in battle? It almost made me sick just to think about it. I felt the echoing pang of Raihn’s concern, too.

Well, we’d have to make it work. Half of the contestants would die today. We needed to get out of here.

I ran my hands along the wall, and felt Raihn doing the same, wherever he was. Smooth stone here, smooth stone there.

Cells. They were cells.

That made sense. Nyaxia and Alarus had been imprisoned by the gods of the White Pantheon as punishment for their unlawful relationship. Nyaxia might have been a lesser goddess then, and Alarus weakened to a fraction of his former power, but it still proved to be an unwise decision. The two of them fought their way out of captivity, slaughtering exactly half of the keepers of Extryn, the legendary prison of the Pantheon.

This must be our Extryn.

We’ll probably have to fight through whatever’s out there together, when we get out, I told Raihn as we both felt around the walls of our enclosures. Let’s get these open.

Once we found each other, we would be nearly unstoppable. I was certain of that.

I’m touched that you think so, Raihn replied, sensing that thought. I wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that he actually was, and I felt it.

Here. Look.

My fingertip hit a little patch of metal, high up in the corner of my cell. I pressed down, and stone shifted. Click.

The door swung open, letting in a flood of cool light—from the stars, the moon, and the hundreds of torches floating above the colosseum. It was night, but compared to the darkness of the cell, it blinded me.

I blinked into it for half a second. And when my eyes adjusted, I almost let out a laugh, just because what the fuck else was I supposed to do.

Before me was carnage. Just utter carnage. Most of the contestants hadn’t even made it out of their cells yet, and the sand was already soaked with blood. Monsters tore each other apart in the arena—every kind of beast one could possibly imagine. Demons like the ones from the first trial, this time with knobby, milky-white wings. Massive cats, black with gray spots and bright red eyes—creatures I’d only ever seen in storybooks, from the House of Shadow. Hellhounds—enormous, hunched wolves with pure white fur, darkness rolling from their skin. They roamed the dunes of the House of Night in packs and have been known to slaughter entire settlements.

Far beyond all of that—past all that certain death—was a wall made of piled white stone, cutting across the center of the colosseum. A rocky path led up to its peak. Two golden doorways stood at the top, tall and narrow, pulsing with silver smoke. The stands were packed, a sea of shrieking faces surrounding the arena, thrilled by the most dramatic of the Kejari trials.

Another vision collided with this one as Raihn’s door swung open and he took in a mirror image of this sight—from, I realized, the other side of the wall.

Fuck, he murmured.

Fuck was right.

Iron boxes like the one I had just stumbled out of lined the outskirts of the sand pit. The one right beside me was still closed, and the muffled sound of wordless screaming came from within. Another door opened and one of the Shadowborn contestants stumbled from their cell, clutching their head, only to wander straight into the jaws of a hellhound.

What the hell was wrong with him?

Many can’t exactly handle the weight of multiple minds, Raihn answered. Not like this.

Through Raihn’s eyes, I watched another man fall to his knees and struggle to rise. Maybe we were lucky that Mische wasn’t here, after all. I couldn’t imagine trying to support both of them.

I looked back to the wall and the doorways at its peak. Our goal, clearly. Or… one of them was. Extryn was a place of cruel chance, after all. No doubt one would lead to freedom, and one would lead to damnation.

But between us and that threat were so many more. I steeled myself as I looked out into the sea of teeth and claws and blood before me. Across the colosseum, Raihn did the same.

You ready? I asked him.

He was already lifting his sword. Always.

We threw ourselves into the onslaught.

At first, it was a struggle. The weight of Raihn’s mind weighed heavily on my own. I lost precious seconds to separating his senses from mine. I kept myself alive—barely—as I fought across the first stretch of the arena, but I was clumsy, allowing too many close calls.

Stop resisting it, Raihn snapped at me. Lean into it. That’s the only way we make it through.

It went against every single instinct I had. But he was right—I couldn’t fight him inside my mind and still focus on keeping myself alive.

We’d trained for this, I reminded myself. Not knowingly, but… we’d learned to accommodate each other, to anticipate and understand each other’s unspoken cues. Our partnership had never been about brute strength. It had always been about compromise.

This? This was just a matter of giving ourselves over to it.

And once we did that, we became a source of strength to each other, another well to draw upon. We might have been separated, but it was like we were back fighting side-by-side in the slums. I felt every strike he made, and he felt every one of mine.

Still, even as we found our rhythm, every step grew more treacherous. The beasts—clearly starved—were more numerous and agitated closer to the barrier. Worse, by now, all the other contestants were out of their cells. And we all understood acutely that our primary competition wasn’t the hellhounds or the demons—it was each other.

Only half of us would remain after this. We fought like it.

We were all forced together into the sands. Early in the trial, a Hiaj contestant tried to fly up above the carnage, only to immediately fall to the ground, wings shredded. A barrier. Wings or no, there was no avoiding the pit of death.

I was barely halfway across the arena, and already, I had to strike down someone every step. And perhaps Raihn’s presence in my mind fueled me, but it would have been a hell of a lot more helpful if he was actually beside me.

I don’t understand, I thought, frustrated. What is the point of this? We can’t actually fight together this way.

But before he could respond, pain sliced across my arm. I stumbled, losing precious ground to the Shadowborn woman who had come after me. I glanced down to see smooth unbroken leather armor on my own arm, but Raihn saw a trail of blood over his.

He paid for that moment of distraction as his attacker lunged for him again, again, again. I gritted my teeth and struggled to push back my own, at last shoving her into the grip of a nearby demon. But across the arena, I felt Raihn’s fight continue. He wasn’t faring as well. I flinched with every blow.

The memory of the demons from the first trial hit me, and with it came sudden realization.

Just now, Raihn had been hurt… and I had stumbled.

Who is that? I asked him. His vision came in broken flashes. I couldn’t see a face.

What?

Who is that you’re fighting right now? Look at his face!

I felt Raihn’s confusion, but he obeyed. As he countered the next blow, he showed me his attacker—a Hiaj Nightborn man with fair hair.

I knew him. Nikolai. I racked my memory. Who had he been paired with?

Ravinthe. He has a bad right knee, Vincent had told me at the feast.

I scanned the crowd. We were lucky. Ravinthe wasn’t far from me, just a few strides across the pit. I dove for him. Didn’t give him time to react—my weapon went for his right knee, a direct hit. His leg folded up beneath him, blood spurting. I plunged my blade into his chest before he had time to rise.

And just as I suspected, across the arena, Raihn’s opponent fell.

Shit, he whispered, a spark of pleasure spearing us both as he seized the opportunity to finish Nikolai. You’re good.

We were separated, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t still help each other. With this knowledge, we cut across the battlefield. Yes, we needed to get to those gates as quickly as possible, but each of us sacrificed small gains in speed to help the other, and that give-and-take meant that as a team, we moved swiftly.

But the contestants who still remained were strong, too. The Bloodborn, in particular, knew how to compete together. One of them was the first to broach the wall of stone, fighting her way up the winding path to the top. She had nearly made it by the time I reached the wall. It looked more like a mountain up close, a looming pile of stacked rock. The path to its crest was steep and precarious. Two others were ahead of me, chopping through stray hellhounds and demons that had made their way up.

Three coming up on this side, I told Raihn.

Two over here.

You’d better get here quick.

Only half of us would make it. Eleven.

Almost there.

I could see the path through his eyes, just a few strides ahead. We were both so, so close.

But I made it only a few steps up the path when excruciating pain tore through my back, then my shoulder. My knees hit the ground, a gasp ripping through me.

It took a few seconds to realize it wasn’t my body being slashed open, but Raihn’s. His sight was just a smear of clattering weapons—a cloud of red smoke—a flash of white hair.

Angelika.

I tried to pull myself up, braced against the rocks.

Go, Raihn told me. Keep going. I can handle her.

No. He couldn’t lie, not with our minds locked together. Not when I could feel each wound she opened on his body and how hard he struggled to keep up.

Healthy, Angelika and Raihn were almost evenly matched. But Raihn had just endured hours of torture.

Today, they were not evenly matched.

I didn’t even think about the decision. I turned back.

I have this, Oraya. Go!

I ignored him.

It took me a few minutes to find Angelika’s partner, Ivan, in the escalating chaos. I had to double back far—all the way down the wall. I found him in the thick of the fighting in the sands, dealing a weak finishing blow to a jaguar. He was injured, each step slow and limping.

This would be easy. It would just take me a few minutes to pick him off, and with him, Angelika.

Ivan saw me coming barely in time to react. A wave of acidic agony hit me as the red mist of his magic surrounded us. The wounds on his arms quivered with exertion—with the blood he had to use to fuel it.

I didn’t even let it slow me. I hit his arm, the poison eating at his skin immediately.

In Raihn’s battle, Angelika faltered. He took that opening, levied a strike—

Just as Ivan pulled back, his magic swelling. It nearly crippled me, unbearable paired with Raihn’s wounds. But I pushed through it, rolled, lunged. My blade sliced Ivan’s good leg to the bone.

It collapsed beneath him.

The two of us landed in a tangle on the ground. My battle with Ivan and Raihn’s with Angelika blended together, each reduced to wild flashes of burning muscles and blood and steel and magic.

I rolled on top of Ivan, pinning him.

Pain slithered across my ribs.

Not mine—Raihn’s. Running out of time.

I looked right into Ivan’s eyes as I raised my blade, holding him still between my knees, his back pressed to the stone of the wall.

And I was looking so intently at him that I almost didn’t notice the movement out of the corner of my vision.

Raihn looked over Angelika’s shoulder—looked up, at the gates of victory. The Bloodborn woman had reached the top. She paused between the two doors, clearly hesitant. A Shadowborn man was not far behind her. He ran, not slowing, as he crested the top.

And he didn’t hesitate as he shoved her through one of the arches, forcing her to test the decision.

I seized up as the ground shook beneath me. I looked up just in time to see the flash of light from the gate consume everything.

Just in time to hear, in the mind that we shared, Raihn scream my name.

Just in time to feel a wave of pain as Ivan buried his dagger in my side.

And I had no time to react as his magic seized hold of my blood, my muscles. Forced them to move without my permission.

And hurled me into the thick of the bloodthirsty beasts.