Текст книги "The Serpent and the Wings of Night"

Автор книги: Carissa Broadbent

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

CHAPTER THIRTY

Vincent had always warned me about what it would be like to be caught in a frenzy. “They will not wait until you are dead,” he said. “There is no sense. There is no thought. There is only hunger.”

I had thought about those words a lot in the days after Ilana’s death. What I had heard that first night in the Moon Palace sounded just as Vincent had described. She had been devoured alive, and she had been powerless to do anything about it. Her final moments haunted me.

Now, as my body flung me into a mass of starving animals, my muscles beyond my reach for pivotal seconds, only one thought stuck in my mind:

Was this how she felt when she died?

Ivan’s magic paralyzed me. I couldn’t move, but I was conscious as those beasts descended upon me.

The animals had been provoked into a delirium by the violence and starvation. They had formed tightly packed groups, all twitching muscles and foaming mouths, as if perhaps some part of them knew that it was their only chance at survival.

For a split second, it struck me as deeply sad. They were just animals, after all. Killers reduced to prey for entertainment. Just like all of us, really.

I felt it when the first one, a demon, grabbed ahold of my leg. Immediately, I was surrounded by so many that they completely shadowed the sky. All I saw was teeth and claws.

I couldn’t even scream.

Oraya!

Raihn’s panic flooded me. It was just as intense as my own.

I didn’t know what to make of that.

But something about that panic jolted through me, the burst of it sharp enough to cut through the remnants of Ivan’s magic. My hands flew out, stabbing wildly.

It wasn’t enough.

There were so many of them. I was bleeding too much. Blood was bad. Blood was dangerous. I lashed out with my blades, but it was futile panic in an endless sea of flesh and skin and fur and feathers.

I was going to die. Mother, I was going to die. My heartbeat was wild. Every pump of blood brought them closer.

I’m coming for you, Oraya.

I didn’t like that. How scared Raihn sounded. He had managed to slip Angelika, and he was running, running, running, pushing through the crowd on his side of the wall.

He wouldn’t be fast enough.

Use your magic, he urged. I saw flashes of his vision as he ran—sprinting up the unsteady stone of his path.

You aren’t even far from the end. Use it right now.

I couldn’t. I couldn’t grip my own power—even when I could, I produced little more than wisps of light. I fought and thrashed and struggled to calm myself, and—

I told myself, Fear is a collection of—

Fear is the fucking KEY to it, Oraya! Raihn’s voice, booming with fear of his own, filled both of our minds. USE IT. Pretend that you’re throwing me out the fucking window. Pretend that you’re dragging Mische out of that burning apartment.

Shameful tears pricked my eyes.

I didn’t know how. Didn’t know how to let go of that wall within myself. I’d built it for so long, cemented over every crack. Now I clung to it. Terrified of what would happen if I let myself fall.

I’m with you, Oraya. Right now. You don’t have time. We’ll go together. Alright? I’m with you.

That should have terrified me.

The beasts overwhelmed me. My back hit the sand. A demon crawled over me, its face inches from mine. It went for my throat—right there on the side, right where I had a scar that reminded me of the boy I tried not to think about every night.

Now, I let myself. Let myself think of him for the first time in so many years.

Let myself think of my parents, crushed in a broken building in a war that had nothing to do with them.

Let myself think of a little lost girl with dark hair hunted in a maze. A little girl with dark hair left alone in a ruined city.

Let myself think of a lifetime spent here, trapped by my own fear, trapped by these fucking predators, these monsters, these things that didn’t see me as anything other than livestock—

And then I realized. I realized that fear, when embraced, hardens and sharpens.

That it becomes rage.

That it becomes power.

I would not die here.

I let my fury explode.

I let it spill out through my mouth and my eyes and my fingers and the tips of my hair. I let it erupt all the way to the sky—past the stars, the moon, reaching for Nyaxia herself.

And I felt her reach back.

The Nightfire roared through me, surrounding me in a blanket of light and heat and power. It consumed everything—the demons, the hellhounds, the vampires. Consumed my skin, my eyes. Consumed, above all, my anger.

I WOULD NOT DIE HERE.

I gripped my blades but did not need to wield them as I rose. I barely remembered moving. Barely remembered stepping through a sea of white flames over Nightfire-eaten corpses that might have been animal, might have been vampire, on my way up the path, climbing and climbing.

I stopped only when I reached the top—when I looked up at the sky and saw the moon.

Suddenly I felt so, so small again. Awareness plunged back into my injured mortal body. Nausea churned in my stomach. My legs almost gave out, and I thrust my hand out to steady myself.

The flames fell away. My eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness in the wake of such blinding light.

I was at the top of the wall, in the center of the colosseum. My hand braced against the frame of the one remaining gate, the other now nothing but charred, twisted metal. I felt strange and unsteady and empty. Behind me, a tableau of devastation trailed from the sands of the arena up the crumbling wall of rock—scorched stones and piles of clean white bones.

The audience watched in silence, thousands of eyes upon me. Their faces all blended together. Vincent was out there, somewhere. I was going to look for him, but instead my gaze drifted down, just several paces away, to where the path from the other side of the arena crested the top of the wall.

Raihn.

He was on his knees, staring up at me. And that—the way he looked at me—was the first thing that felt real.

Real, and raw, and… and confusing.

Because he looked at me in sheer awe—like I was the most incredible thing he had ever seen. Like I was a fucking goddess.

I blinked and tears streamed down my cheeks. Whatever I had cracked open inside myself to access that power bled like an open wound.

Raihn rose slowly at first.

And then so fast that I didn’t have time to react when he closed the space between us in several long strides—and then he was all around me at once in a firm embrace, and my feet were off the ground, and my arms were around his neck, and I was allowing him to hold me. Allowing myself to cling to him. Allowing myself to bury my tear-streaked face in the warm space between his chin and throat.

And suddenly not a single thing—not the audience, or the arena, or the arch, or the Nightfire, or Nyaxia herself—existed except for this.

“You worried me for a minute there,” he murmured against my hair, his voice rough. “I should’ve known better.”

He lowered me until my feet touched the ground again, then released me. Swaying and dizzy, I looked out over the stands.

Vincent was right in the front, halfway across the ring. He was half standing, his eyes wide and unblinking. One hand clung to the rail. The other clutched his chest—as if trying to hold in his own heart.

I must have been weak with blood loss. Because I even thought that perhaps I saw a silver streak down his cheek.

“Let’s go,” Raihn said softly, his hand on my back.

I turned to the door, and the ghostly silence of the Moon Palace welcomed us with open arms.

INTERLUDE

The young woman thought she was in love, or something like it. To be young and in love is an incredible thing. It teaches one so much.

She had never had a friend her own age, and so she learned how to share little pieces of herself with another.

She had never known a romantic partner before, so she learned how to kiss and touch.

She knew her father would not approve, so she learned how to hide things from him.

Her dark world was a little brighter; cold rooms a little warmer. Her young man was shy and sweet, and he seemed to be enamored with her. She would spend long days retracing his every word.

Perhaps in another world, these two people would not have found much in common. But in this world, in which they had so little else, they became everything to each other.

They fell hard and fast, and the young woman loved the rush of it. She wanted more. They pried themselves away from each of their meetings panting and breathless and forever greedy for more of each other’s skin.

The young woman had never experienced sex before.

But oh, she wanted to.

She knew that night what she wanted from him. What she wanted to give back to him in return.

They met in his room. Their kisses were messy and frantic, punctuated with gasps and moans as lips grazed sensitive flesh. Their desire for each other fell over them in a drunken haze, more potent with every layer of cloth they ripped away.

She was faintly nervous as he pressed her to the bed and climbed over her. Nervous as he opened her thighs and prepared to push into her. But she was nervous as all young people were when losing their virginity. And that nervousness was nothing compared to her desire.

The pain was brief and quick. She buried it in the sensation of his shaking breath against her skin, their flesh as close as it could ever be, his mouth pressed to hers.

He was gentle. At first.

When he first began to move, swells of pleasure mingled with the remnants of the pain. With each stroke, slow and deep, it built.

The young woman turned herself over to it and thought to herself that she would never—never—feel anything this good ever again.

When did the first spark of fear come? When did that little voice in the back of her head whisper, Wait, something is not right?

Perhaps it was when his thrusts got too fast, too hard, the pleasure-to-pain balance disrupted despite her muffled words of hesitation.

Perhaps it was when she tried to sit up, seize control, but he forced her back down, the sharp edge of his fingernails opening little bloody wounds on her flesh.

Perhaps it was when his nostrils flared at those little drops of blood—maybe the blood on his hands, or the blood between her legs—and his kisses to her cheek, her jaw, her throat grew deeper.

Grew harder.

Grew sharper.

His lips were loving at first. Then passionate.

And then it hurt.

It hurt, it hurt it hurt it—

The young woman cried out. She told him to stop. Perhaps he did not hear; perhaps he did not care.

Bloodlust, understand, is a terrible thing.

Fear seized her. His teeth were deep into her throat as she thrashed. He was stronger than her. Her powerlessness was a noose, ready to strangle her.

The young woman came so close to death that day.

But she grabbed the silver candelabra from the bedside table and smashed it over her lover’s head. It was not enough to kill him, but she was not trying to kill her lover that day. She had never killed before.

She was shaking, her heart beating frantically. As she pushed him off of her, she caught just one glimpse of his face—dazed confusion, and then horror, as if he had not even realized what he had done.

Tears streaked her cheeks.

She thought she was in love. She had not learned yet how deadly such a thing could be.

She hid her tears, grabbed her clothing, and ran. She did not look back when he called for her. Her broken dream and her broken heart tore her flesh to pieces.

She was bleeding. She was frightened. She did not intentionally choose to run to her father’s room. But where else could she go, in a home where everything was dangerous?

The king opened his door and let his weeping daughter inside. She was a reserved young woman. He had taught her how to keep her emotions carefully tethered. But tonight, she was distraught. Her lover and his betrayal had shattered her defenses.

The king wrapped his daughter in a blanket, listened to her choke out her story, and was silent as he wiped the blood from her throat.

He made a decision in that moment.

The young woman did not know it. Not yet.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Eleven of us remained.

Ivan was there when we arrived, and Angelika followed not long after Raihn and I did. The last, to everyone’s shock, was Ibrihim, who dragged himself through covered in gore, his sword bloodied, eyes faraway and empty. He had killed his partner right before stepping through the arch. Half was an odd number this year. Only one of them could live.

Ibrihim didn’t seem all that broken up about it.

How many people did I kill today? I wondered, numbly.

Everyone was staring at me. Not in the same way they usually did, either. Not with amused hunger, but wary curiosity.

I couldn’t decide if I liked the change.

Unlike the other trials, the Ministaer and his acolytes waited in the Moon Palace to greet us as we returned. After Ibrihim, the gate—which stood of its own accord in the center of the room—simply faded away, leaving whoever still remained beyond it to their bloody fates.

The silence was deafening. The Ministaer regarded us with a placid stare, an expression that only vaguely resembled a smile twisting his mouth.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You are finalists of the Kejari. You have made it into the final two trials. Our Dark Mother is very pleased with you.”

No one looked pleased with themselves. Only grimly determined.

“To celebrate your victory,” the Ministaer continued, “a ceremonial feast has been held at Nyaxia’s pleasure, in honor of your gift to the Mother of the Ravenous Dark. The blood that has been spilled, and for the blood you have yet to give her.”

His smile broadened, as if this was the only thing that brought him genuine pleasure.

Sometimes, I thought Nyaxia was a bit depraved.

“Go,” he said. “Heal yourselves. Rest. The Moon Palace, by Nyaxia’s generosity, has offered you all you need. Return to the church at sundown.”

The apartment was too quiet without Mische. Raihn and I didn’t talk as we returned, and I was infinitely conscious of the silence.

He spoke first, only once the door was shut firmly behind him. “Six whole hours of rest after we nearly died for the entertainment of our benevolent goddess.” He gave me a half-smile. “How generous of them.”

I rasped a forced chuckle, and his brow flattened.

“What?”

“Hm?”

“That sounded like a dying cat, but what concerns me even more is that you actually faked a laugh at a joke that wasn’t even funny.”

That, I almost would have laughed at. But my head was foggy and my body exhausted. Now that the shock of the trial was starting to wear off, what I had done—and the fact that I understood so little of it—had begun to set in.

“Hey,” Raihn said softly.

I looked at him.

And out of everything that had just happened today, this moment might have been the most frightening.

Because right now, two truths careened into me at the same time:

One, that he looked at me like my well-being was actually important to him. That he must actually care, because I’d felt the way he cared. I’d felt his panic when I was in danger, and that meant he’d felt mine when I thought Angelika would kill him.

Two, that the Halfmoon Trial was over. We no longer needed an alliance. And that meant that either he would kill me, or I would kill him.

These two undeniable facts collided so violently that I found myself leaning back against the wall.

“Well,” I said, “we did it.”

My voice was hoarse.

“We sure fucking did.”

He took a step closer, his eyes never leaving mine.

I should have tensed. I should have reached for my blade.

I didn’t.

“You were fucking magnificent, Oraya,” he murmured. “I hope you know that.”

I lifted my chin and said, with as much conviction as I could muster, “I know.”

He laughed. His eyes crinkled when he smiled. Had I noticed before how much I liked that?

“Get a little rest if you can,” he said, “before the feast. I’ll leave you alone. Get ready in a different apartment.”

He spoke so casually, but I knew what he really meant. Was this how he acknowledged what had changed between us? Was this his way of saying, Neither of us have to make any moves yet?

Either way, I was grateful for it. Grateful that I didn’t have to spend these next few hours talking myself into killing him. Whatever the Oraya of tomorrow had to do… that could be her problem. The Oraya of tonight could just watch him for a little longer.

I refused to let even a hint of any of this into my voice as I replied, “Fine.”

He lowered his chin, went to the door, and opened it. Just before he slipped through, I said, a little too quickly, “Raihn.”

He glanced back.

“I’ll admit that you were a good ally,” I said.

He winked at me. “You knew it from the start,” he said, and closed the door behind him.

I hadn’t been sure exactly what the Ministaer meant when he’d said that “the Moon Palace will provide,” but it turned out he meant it very literally.

The Moon Palace gave me healing potions and dressings. It gave me a hot bath with seventeen ridiculous scents of soaps. It gave me a set of hairbrushes that I had no idea what to do with.

And it gave me a gown.

When I returned to the bedchamber after my bath to see it laid out neatly over the bedspread, as if placed there by a silent, invisible servant, I actually laughed aloud.

“This must be a fucking joke,” I said, to no one in particular.

Obviously, I couldn’t wear this.

But I had no other options. As if the Moon Palace had predicted my displeasure, it had taken away any alternatives. The drawers and closets were empty. Even my bloody armor was gone. So, after wandering around the room naked for a few minutes in fruitless search for something else, I put on the damned dress.

I barely recognized myself in the mirror.

The fabric was smooth and silky and a dark, rich violet—a strangely familiar shade I couldn’t place. The front fell into a deep V, the top structured enough to define the curve of my breasts. It was held up by black metal chain straps, and that same glistening ebony metal encircled the bodice, adorning my ribcage in a manner reminiscent of armor. The back was low and open, the long chains crossing over my back. The skirt pooled lightly around my feet, which donned delicate silver sandals.

Though the dress clung to my body, it wasn’t restrictive. I nearly felt naked in the light, airy fabric, and it easily moved with me, the violet rippling like water through shades of black and purple. I left my hair free and straight. It dried smooth, falling down my back like tendrils of shadow.

I stared at myself for a long, long time.

I quite literally could not remember the last time I had seen myself in clothing created to be beautiful. I never, ever wore anything designed to attract attention. And this dress… well, it would definitely attract attention. It highlighted all the things I normally tried to hide: my skin, my shape, and the very, very exposed column of my throat.

“I can’t wear this,” I muttered to myself, again, but this time I sounded less convinced.

Because the truth was… I liked it. It was the kind of thing I’d dreamed of wearing when I was too young to understand that doing so would be a poor survival choice.

Still, I went back to my pack one last time in a final futile attempt to find something else to wear. When I opened it, I saw why this dress looked so familiar.

That purple. Bunched up right there at the top of my belongings. I would never let anyone know how many times I pulled it out, just to hold it.

I returned to the mirror, Ilana’s scarf in my hands. I let it fall open. The fabric was battered and stained. But its color and texture were exactly the same as the gown’s. The two could have been cut from the same stretch of cloth.

My eyes stung.

I could practically smell the cigar smoke, hear her craggy voice in my ear: You’d better wear that dress. You’d better show those cunts.

Fine. I would. With one addition.

I tied Ilana’s scarf around my throat—a band of bloodstained purple silk tight around my neck, leaving two fluttering, slightly-scorched trails to dangle over my shoulder.

If I was going to let myself be a spectacle, at least I’d be one that fucking meant something.

…And I’d still find somewhere to put my daggers.