Текст книги "The Serpent and the Wings of Night"

Автор книги: Carissa Broadbent

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

That night, for the first time in a long time, I dreamed of the moon absent from the sky.

The bed, rickety and cheap as it was, was still enormous compared to my tiny body. I nestled deep under the covers, pulling them up to my nose. Jona and Leesan were asleep, or pretending to be. Momma was whispering hurriedly—Get that lantern off right now, you knew they’d come, you knew—

I was scared, too. But I thought, I should never be afraid, and slipped from the covers. I walked very, very softly to the window. I was barely tall enough to reach the sill. I gripped the splintering wood and peered into the sky.

Once I saw a dead worm with so many ants all over it that it turned into one big wiggling mass of black. Now the sky looked like that. Just a pulsating blanket of darkness.

Except it wasn’t ants in the sky. It was wings.

Oraya!

My momma said my name in that way she did when she was frightened.

Oraya, get away from—!

The air hit my lungs too hard, like a gulp of salt water. But worse, because it seemed like it was eating me from the inside out.

The coughs seized my entire body. I had barely gained consciousness before I was on the verge of losing it again, rolling over onto all fours as I convulsed. My eyes were dripping, my stomach aching, my vision so blurry I heard, more than saw, the string of vomit fall to the ground. I blinked rapidly in a poor attempt to clear my vision.

I lifted my head.

No wonder I’d dreamed about that night, because this one looked just like it. Just writhing, indistinct movement in a spine-chilling mass of darkness.

Trees surrounded me—tall, sparse, and narrow, with only a few long needle-tipped branches near their tops. The ground beneath my palms was rough and sandy. Rocks piled everywhere. All of it—the dirt, the rocks, the trees—was black, moonlit outlines rendered onto shades of dark-ash gray. Plumes of smoke rose from the ground, hot and gritty. When a gust of wind rolled a puff of it over me, I gasped in pain and shrank away. It burned my skin like acid.

I grabbed my blades and had them at the ready. Movement punctured the forest—too distant for me to make out what I was seeing at first, but the sound was unmistakable. Wet, heavy breathing, and high-pitched shrieks, and the nauseating sound of flesh tearing open.

My mind was addled, maybe from the smoke or from whatever magic had brought us here, but I forced myself through the haze to put together what was happening.

This was the Crescent trial. It had to be. We weren’t in the colosseum—we weren’t even in Sivrinaj, at least not any part of it that I’d seen—but the timing lined up, and the Crescent trial was often the most unique.

But what was the objective?

Footsteps. I turned, and immediately, something slammed into me, knocking me back to the stones. I couldn’t make out the face of my assailant—not with everything so dark and blurry and the smoke pumping up from the ground, each puff bubbling my armor. I struck wildly with my blades, hitting flesh.

Normally, the poison would be enough to at least slow them, but my attacker seemed utterly unconcerned with pain. Bloodlust? Some of the worst I’d ever seen, if so, to be so disconnected from one’s own body.

I drove my blade hard into my attacker’s side, and that, finally, made him falter. He staggered, falling to the ground like his wounds had caught up to him simultaneously, and I pressed over him.

He wasn’t dead yet. And soon he would wake up. I stabbed him through the chest, barely avoiding the wild flail of his limbs as I finished the job. Like a starving wolf lashing out one last time. They really did become animals when things got this bad.

I yanked my blade from his corpse with a wet crunch, just as a wave of that toxic smoke rolled towards me. I had to lurch away, leaving his limp body to be consumed by it.

I needed to figure out where I was. I needed to—

Movement rustled the brush behind me. I spun around. My eyes groped in the darkness. I could only see silhouettes in the distance. Vampires, fighting. And something four-legged. Demons? I’d been so trained to expect the worst that my mind immediately went to threats. When I crept closer and realized that they weren’t predators, but prey—deer, thrashing against the shadowy figures of the vampires that pinned them—I was relieved.

Good. Deer were perfect. The ideal meal to distract the starving vampires. The starvation had gone on long enough that they wouldn’t have a choice but to leap on whatever blood they smelled. And I was glad that these ones had smelled the deer first.

I needed to get away from here, and fast. Then, when I was alone, I could figure out what my objective was, find Raihn, and—

I stopped myself, swallowing a sad pang. Raihn’s name had flitted through my head without my permission. But we had separated. The Halfmoon trial was over. I certainly wouldn’t go out of my way to fight him, but—

I wasn’t quite out of the clearing yet when a repulsive sound rang out behind me. It was something between a groan and a gurgle—an uncanny, unnatural blend between animal and vampire.

I quickly lowered into the underbrush and watched the creatures in the distance.

My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and the moon had reappeared from behind a misty cloud. The cold light illuminated the scene of bloody ruin behind me—the two vampires crouched between jagged rocks, the deer carcass now open before them. One of them was trying and failing to stand, their limbs spasming wildly. The other seemed to be trying to reach for their companion and failing, as if their muscles refused to cooperate.

The first, in strange, lurching movements, jumped on the other. Feral shrieks cut through the night.

I shrank back.

This… this wasn’t hunger. Bloodlust made vampires sloppy, but it didn’t turn them into mindless beasts. These people looked like they didn’t even have control over their own bodies anymore.

The two vampires wailed as they tore each other apart. Unhinged, senseless, animalistic. Fuck. They just went at each other, not like warriors, but like animals, the deer carcass forgotten at their—

The deer carcass.

Realization snapped into place. I looked around in horror. Looked around at this place that reeked of death, and yet held such a strangely abundant amount of soft, easy-to-catch prey.

Poisoned, trapped prey.

Nyaxia had starved them, and now she offered them tainted gifts they would be powerless to resist.

Raihn.

My head emptied save for his name. Everything I had told myself, every lie I’d hid my concern beneath, withered away.

I didn’t think anymore. I just ran.

It wasn’t hard to find the vampires. We had been scattered throughout the forest, but they were loud—bloodlust made them careless, and whatever poison was in these animals turned them into something even worse.

I found Raihn not far from the clearing. I recognized him immediately, even in the dark, even from such a distance. I’d learned the shape of him so well that every angle was a native language.

Yet, for all his familiarity, something was also foreign about him right now. The way he moved wasn’t the deliberate poise of the man who shared my home. It was feral, uncontrolled. Still graceful—that was the only thing that made me exhale in relief, because there was nothing of that toxic, lurching insanity—but the movement of a predator released from its cage.

His wings were out. A limp body slumped against an overturned tree trunk—a Shadowborn man, whom, apparently, Raihn had just finished killing. Now he soared through the trees and debris in hunt.

And then, a moment later, saw what he was chasing: the deer, crashing through the rocky brush.

No. I dove after him before I could talk myself out of it.

He moved impossibly fast, weaving through the trees like a leaf caught in a gust of wind. He was swifter than the deer, which darted through the sparse forest in a blind panic.

It was only the panic of the animal, which practically ran in circles, that saved us both. It came too close to an impassable pile of rocks and had to veer left. I tracked the movement to cut it off, putting myself right in Raihn’s path.

I heard Vincent’s voice in my head: You’re about to get yourself killed, you stupid child, throwing yourself in front of a vampire in bloodlust.

But I moved anyway.

“Raihn!” I shrieked as I leapt in front of him, hoisting myself up on one of the rocks, arms spread. “STOP!”

It was a stupid plan for so many reasons. First of all, any other vampire would have gladly replaced the deer with me. And secondly, he had wings—he could have just soared over me, whether I was standing on top of a stupid rock or not.

But Raihn did neither of those things. Instead, his gaze fell to me, and he faltered. Just for a second. And for that moment, I thought I glimpsed my friend there.

But otherwise, he looked so different. His stare was hard and glassy. A streak of harsh moonlight fell across one side of his face, and his eyes were even redder than usual, the pupil narrowed to a slit.

The hairs stood on my arms. Every instinct screamed at me to run, run, run.

Because Raihn in bloodlust was terrifying. The kind of terrifying that made every living thing in a ten-mile radius cower.

Instead, I ran at him.

Throwing myself against Raihn was like hurling a pebble against a brick wall and expecting it to crumble. Still, I hit him with enough force to knock him off balance. We tangled in a mass of flailing limbs. He let out a wordless snarl and fought against me. Pain snaked across my cheek as I was slightly too slow dodging one of his strikes, but I slipped every other. I knew how Raihn fought, and those reflexes still remained, even when he was half out of his mind.

Just as I knew how powerful a fighter he was, I also knew his openings. I knew his left side was a little weaker. And just as he faltered between blows, I hit him right where I knew he would struggle most to counter, right to that knee, forcing him to the ground.

I climbed over him, pinning his body down with mine.

“Raihn! Get a fucking hold of yourself!”

Mother, he was going to kill me. I was sure of it when his hands gripped my shoulders hard enough to leave bruises. That horrible glazed-over look in his eyes hadn’t faded.

Come back to me, Raihn. Come back.

“I will fucking stab you again, and you know I will!” I roared. “Snap out of it!”

He blinked.

His fingers loosened. His nose twitched—a movement, however small, that made me tense—but then he closed his eyes and drew in a deep inhale, and when he opened them again…

It was him. It was him.

“Oraya.”

He said my name like it was the answer to a crucial question. His voice was thin and hoarse.

I could have wept for it.

But no time for pleasantries. Certainly no time to show him how grateful I was that I had found him. I spoke in quick, clipped sentences. “Welcome back. We’re in a trial. The animals are poisoned. I don’t know what the objective is. Everyone who drinks is going insane. We have to get the fuck out of here. Let’s go.”

I started to push myself up, but he still held my arms—gently, now. A wrinkle deepened between his brows as he touched my cheek. The scratch.

“Did I do this?”

“It doesn’t matter, Raihn. We have to go.”

His expression said it did matter, but I didn’t want to think about that right now, either.

“If I get off of you,” I said, “will you go run after a squirrel?”

I was grateful to see that familiar, long-suffering annoyance. “Oh, fuck you, princess.”

It was a bit of a relief to hear him curse at me again.

I decided I accepted that answer and pushed myself up. Raihn got to his feet right after. He moved slowly now, jerking as his left leg threatened to collapse under him. In movement, I hadn’t noticed the blood all over him.

My heart stopped. The Shadowborn he’d been fighting before had, apparently, gotten a few hits in.

“You’re hurt.”

“Seems that way.”

I looked to the sky. Dark, but ever-so-faintly rosy. Dawn wasn’t far off.

“Let’s find somewhere to rest,” I said as we began to walk. “Then we’ll figure out what’s next.”

Raihn made a wordless grunt of agreement. But after three steps, it became obvious that he was struggling to move. I backtracked and tucked myself under his arm.

“I’m fine,” he grumbled.

“You’re clearly not fine.”

His jaw clenched, like he wanted to argue this and knew he couldn’t.

And it wasn’t just the leg, I knew. I could hear it in the weakness of his voice. He was injured—and still starving.

No, Raihn was very, very much not fine. But he accepted my help without complaint.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

We found shelter in a cave created by some of the collapsed stones. It certainly wasn’t the opulence of the Moon Palace, but it was dark and deep, with plenty of places to hide and only one entrance to guard. I wondered how many of the contestants already fell victim to the poisoned prey. We didn’t pass another living soul on our way to the cave—only one convulsing rabbit.

I brought us deep enough into the cave that no light reached us from the outside. We reached shelter just in time. The sky was now faintly pink with dawn. The cave was so dark that Raihn had to mutter guidance to me as we went, because I could see nothing. By then he was leaning heavily on me. When we found our place to stop, he practically collapsed against the wall.

“Give us some fire. Good thing you’ve been doing all that practicing.”

I could hear the smirk in his voice. Could also hear the exhaustion.

Practice or no, I’d been struggling to use my magic consistently. But when I thought about the way I felt when confronted with Raihn’s obvious weakness, the Nightfire came to my fingertips easily. Raihn’s face, hollowed and drawn, bloomed from the darkness.

I looked away and focused very hard on sculpting my little orbs of light.

“Didn’t think I’d see you again,” he said.

“Mm.”

I didn’t even know how to explain to myself why I went after him, never mind explain it to him.

It was a stupid decision, Vincent said in the back of my mind, and frankly, I agreed with him.

I didn’t regret it, though.

“Thank you,” he said.

I shifted uncomfortably and was grateful I had something to do with my hands. What was I going to say? You’re welcome?

“I would have been…” He swallowed thickly. I made another little ball of Nightfire, so it was now light enough for me to see every movement of his expression.

And to see every sign of weakness.

He gave me a pained smile. “You were right, princess.”

“We don’t have to do this.” I said it more sharply than I meant to.

“We do. I do. I just… I owe you that, don’t I?”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“Ix’s tits, Oraya. Let me fucking talk.”

“You can barely talk as it is.”

“Never stopped me before.”

I managed a laugh despite myself. It sounded more like a gasp of pain. Felt like it, too.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

My hands froze mid-movement, hovering around that sphere of light.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “You were right to tell me to leave.”

The apology hit me like a strike. So blunt and direct. No battle of wills or egos.

“I didn’t want you to see me that way,” he went on. “So I pretended that version of myself didn’t exist. It does. And I’m—I don’t like people to see it. I didn’t want you to see it.”

I’m not a fucking animal, he had spat at me yesterday. And suddenly the anger in his voice then sounded so similar to the shame in it now.

I didn’t like feeling things. Emotions were ever-shifting and devoid of logic, and they gave me no way to sink my blade into them. But I felt too many of them now, bubbling up under the surface of my steel exterior.

I didn’t say anything. The Nightfire glowed a little brighter in erratic spurts.

“We need to do something about your injuries,” I said.

He was more than hurt. He was starving. Vampires could heal extremely quickly, but he wouldn’t be able to if he didn’t get blood.

I glanced at him. His eyes had slipped off to the distance. I could see little in the darkness, but his superior sight was probably looking to the path leading out of the cave.

“I need to go back out there.”

I scoffed. “Don’t be a fucking idiot.”

Healthy, he might be able to survive an hour in sunlight—perhaps more if there was cloud cover, though it would be painful. In this state, though? There was no way.

“Then… I might need to ask you to hunt for me.” He said this as if it physically pained him to do so.

“Those animals are poisoned. You saw what they did to the others.”

“Then maybe it’s better to die here,” he said, “than to die out there, out of my mind.”

A beat of silence. And in that silence, my mind ran through our situation, tracing the paths between our options. The decision snapped into place, a new immovable truth.

I stood and faced the wall of the cave. Unbuttoned the top button of my leathers. Then the second.

I made it halfway down by the time Raihn noticed what I was doing.

“No. No, absolutely not.”

“You said it yourself. You don’t have a choice.”

My voice sounded like it was coming from a stranger. Like I was watching myself from the outside. I couldn’t believe I was doing this. My hands were clammy—my heart a beat too fast.

And yet I had no doubts about it. None at all.

I unfastened the rest of my leathers. Cool air rushed against my flesh, chilling the sweaty camisole beneath.

I turned to him. His throat bobbed, eyes darkening.

I knew that look, too. A different kind of hunger. It passed quickly, but I still felt it linger on my skin—making me suddenly self-conscious of the amount of my body that was now exposed.

He rasped, “I can’t do that, Oraya.”

“What are your alternatives? You die in the sun. You die a mindless beast from poisoned blood. Or you die before the sun sets here, doing nothing. And I’m not going to just sit next to you while you die, Raihn. I’m just—I’m just not.”

Neither of us acknowledged the slight crack to my voice.

I approached him. I felt every step—every increase in our proximity. He leaned against the wall. I kneeled before him, so our gazes aligned, and his eyes searched my face.

“You think I don’t know?” he choked. “You think I don’t know what this means for you? I can’t.”

Maybe I should have been surprised that Raihn understood what I’d never told him—that he’d pieced together a portrait of my past from every moment of anger or fear I let slip through my walls.

Maybe I should have been surprised when his fingertip gently caressed my throat, not in hunger, but in sadness—at the scar there, those two little jagged white lines.

Maybe I should have been surprised that he knew me more than I wanted him to.

But I wasn’t.

Words were too weak to convey what I wanted to tell him now.

Perhaps he thought that I would think less of him after seeing him in bloodlust. But I didn’t. He had been terrifying then, yes. But now I understood exactly how hard he had been trying. It would have been so easy for him to succumb to it in the Moon Palace, take the easy solution. After the Halfmoon, I was nothing but a liability to him. No one would have blamed him for doing what he had to. And yet, he’d rather have remained in that apartment, winding himself tighter and tighter, rather than leave me or hurt me. It must have been agonizing.

Offering myself to a starving vampire was more than dangerous. Practically suicide.

And yet… I trusted him absolutely.

I didn’t know how to say any of that. So I settled on, “I’m not afraid of you, Raihn.”

And I saw in his eyes how much those words meant to him. Like he had been given something he had been waiting his entire life for.

I swallowed. “So. What’s—what’s the best way to do this?”

He would need my throat. Sometimes wrists or arms or—I shivered at the thought—inner thighs worked well, too, but he needed a lot of blood fast, and the throat would be the best way to do it.

I thought he might still protest. But after a moment, he said, “Come here. Lean over me.”

I inched closer, then swung my legs over his thighs and around his hips, straddling him.

I tried not to think about the fact that he felt beneath me exactly how I’d imagined he would. Tried not to think about how good, how right, it felt to feel the warmth of his body pressed against mine, my inner thighs, my stomach.

And I tried not to notice that he clearly noticed all these things, too. That the muscles of his throat, so close now, flexed with a swallow. That his hands fell to my waist immediately, like they had already been waiting for me.

“Like this?” I asked.

“That’s perfect.”

It wasn’t quite perfect, actually. I was so much shorter than Raihn that even with the extra height of his lap, I needed to push myself up a bit, and he would have to crane his neck to reach mine.

His fingertips brushed the angle of my jaw, and for one terrifying moment I thought that he was going to kiss me—it would be so easy, barely a tilt of his head. But instead, his fingers moved down, grazing my shoulder, then my waist, then reaching for my dagger at my belt. He unsheathed it and wrapped my fingers around the hilt, then angled the blade so it pointed to his chest.

“You are in control of this,” he murmured. “Alright?”

Now I understood. He wanted me here, in this position, because I could pull away if I wanted to.

I nodded. My grip around that dagger was sweaty. I wondered if he could hear my heartbeat.

That was a stupid thought. Of course he could hear it. Smell it.

“You can still say no,” he said softly.

“Stop telling me that,” I barked.

He let out a weak laugh. “There she is.”

And as if he took that as his cue, he pulled me closer—his arms sliding over my back, tugging me forward until our bodies were pressed together, save for the dagger that I still gripped between us.

I’d thought I was prepared for this, but I wasn’t prepared for how gentle the movement was. Like he was cradling something precious.

I tilted my head back, staring hard at the darkness of the stone. Harder still, as I felt his breath against the sensitive skin of my throat.

“It won’t hurt much. But you might feel… ah…”

“I know,” I said, too sharply.

Horny. That was what he was trying to explain to me.

Vampire venom had an overwhelming effect on human prey. The biological intent was to make them soft and pliable. Sometimes that presented as a muddled, intoxicated haze, as it had with the Ministaer’s bite—given his age, the location of the bite, and my distaste for him. But more commonly, it manifested as intense arousal.

And especially if one already felt…

I didn’t finish the rest of that thought.

“Just do it,” I snapped.

He chuckled. “As you wish, princess.”

And then his lips were on my throat.

Every muscle tensed. I braced myself for pain. Instead, though, I felt only a caress. Just the soft touch of his mouth against my flesh, the faintest brush of his tongue, as if asking permission to enter.

My cringe melted into a shiver.

“You’re safe,” he whispered against my skin.

And then he bit.

He was quick and forceful, his fangs striking deep once and hitting their mark immediately.

He let out an involuntary groan that vibrated through my entire body.

The venom could not possibly have worked that fast. Yet, my eyelashes fluttered. Everything—every remaining doubt—withered away beneath the warm touch of his mouth, the press of his body against mine. My breasts, suddenly sensitive, peaked beneath the too-thin fabric of my camisole—so tight against his chest that I could feel every inhale, ragged and quickening. His tongue rolled against my skin as he took his first swallow, one languid, slow movement.

I imagined that this is what he would feel like inside me, too. This deep and all-consuming.

Unmistakable hardness formed beneath me.

My palm pressed flat against the wall behind his shoulder, the one last holdout in keeping me propped up against him. And I still clutched that dagger, though I’d let it slacken, no longer braced so tightly against his chest.

My hips rolled—I couldn’t help it, not with the rigid length of his desire right there—and Raihn let out a serrated hiss against my throat.

This time I echoed it, the moan escaping me in a choked exhale. We were aligned so perfectly that when I shifted my hips, I pressed against the full, thick length of him, even through the heavy fabric of his pants. And even that stroke, with so much between us, sent sparks up my spine. Sent every nerve begging, pleading, demanding, More.

It wasn’t enough.

The venom ate away the final dregs of my self-control, unleashing a wave of desire that utterly ravaged me and left nothing behind.

I wanted every layer between us torn away. I wanted to run my hands, my lips, my tongue over every inch of his skin, taste every scar. I wanted to offer every expanse of my flesh to him, let him do this—this, this fucking amazing thing—to every part of me. I wanted his magnificent length inside of me, taking me so deep I couldn’t remember my own name, and I wanted him to remind me of it when he came. I wanted to watch him go.

His arms gripped me tight, pulling me closer in one desperate lurch, like he’d been trying to hold himself back and failing. My camisole was gripped in a fist in one of his hands, like that was all he could do not to tear it off of me. He drank deeper, his tongue moving against my skin like he was making love to me.

I didn’t know what I was doing anymore. I rolled my hips again, and now, there was nothing hidden about my moan.

And this time, he moved with me.

I let the dagger fall to the ground with a deafening clatter I didn’t hear. I pressed my hand instead straight to his chest, because even through the leather of his armor I wanted to touch more of him, sense his heartbeat quickening in time with mine.

I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to give all of myself to him.

And the most frightening part of all—the part that would have scared me away, if my logical mind had been at all functional in this moment—was that it wasn’t the venom. No, all of this had already been there, simmering. This was only what made it bubble over.

I abandoned my hold on the wall for his shoulder, gripping him tighter.

I moved against him again—I couldn’t help it anymore. My body was nothing but nerves and raw want, exposed and tender and desperate—desperate—for him.

The low growl in his throat echoed through all of me. And I knew I should be afraid of him, of how much I knew he wanted me. Just as much as I did. He wanted more than I was giving him now.

But I wasn’t afraid.

You’re safe, Oraya, he had whispered to me, and I believed him.

And even now, he didn’t touch me more, not even in all the places I blindly wanted him to. I could feel him tensing like a drawn bowstring. Could feel the urgency building in the way his tongue moved against my throat.

I wanted it. I spread my thighs wider, opened the sensitive passage between us more.

I didn’t mean to say his name. Didn’t mean to throw myself against him, starving for as much of his body as I could get, selfishly taking every inch of that hard length between us against my core.

Stars exploded over my vision. His name fell from my lips in a gasp. Every muscle coiled, and then released.

Nothing existed but him.

Him and everything that I still wanted.

The first thing I became aware of when the sparks of my climax faded—oh, Mother, I had actually just done that—was his muscles trembling. His hands were drawn into fists against my back, gripping my camisole so tightly that I was certain it had ripped, but not pulling me closer.

He was being careful, I realized. Careful not to pull me so close I couldn’t get away.

He was no longer drinking. Instead, his lips ghosted over my skin, over the wound he had opened there, in tiny, gentle kisses. Kisses over the fresh scar I had asked for. Kisses over the old one I had not.

I felt dizzy, boneless, my mind coated in a blur of want. My orgasm hadn’t sated me. If anything, it reminded me of everything I still wanted. I wanted his skin. I wanted him inside me. I wanted—

He pulled away. His chest was rising and falling heavily beneath the press of my palm. When he met my eyes, the sight of him cut through the haze of my desire.

He looked like a man undone. Destroyed.

A trickle of red fell at the corner of his mouth. I wanted to taste it. Taste myself on him.

His lips parted, and I kissed him before words could come out.

My blood tasted like warm iron. But that was nothing compared to the way he tasted. He smelled like the sky—he tasted like falling. His lips met mine like he’d been waiting his entire life for this kiss and had known exactly what he would do when he got it. We kissed like we fought together, responding to each touch, each movement. We understood each other by now.

But he jerked back abruptly after too-few seconds. I barely recognized my own voice when a frustrated whimper left my throat.

“No.” He panted the word. “No, that’s enough.”

That was insulting. It wasn’t enough. Not for either of us. The way his cock strained beneath me was evidence of that.

I saw no reason now not to take what we wanted.

“You aren’t yourself,” he said.

“Don’t pretend you don’t want to.”

Mother, I didn’t even know who this version of myself was.

He made a sound between an exhale and a scoff.

“You don’t even know, Oraya.” The corner of his mouth, where a little smudge of my blood remained, curled as he shook his head. “The things I’ve thought about. ‘Want’ doesn’t even fucking cover it. I have a list.”

A chill ran up my spine. I’d known he desired me, even if I didn’t want to acknowledge that. But it still felt strange to hear him confirm it aloud.

I liked it.

“But I want you to want those things too. You. Not the venom.”

The rejection stung a little. I pulled away from him.

He chuckled. “That face. There she is.”

“Fuck you,” I managed.

“You wish I would.”

His smile faded. My scowl faded. It wasn’t banter anymore because we both knew it was true.

Raihn staggered to his feet—he was unsteady, but already looked so much better than before. Meanwhile, when I stood, I nearly fell back to my knees.

He caught me. “Easy. You’ve lost a lot of blood. Your body is a bit shocked.”

He was right. I had lost a lot of blood. Given him so much. And yet… not too much. Even in starvation, even two steps from bloodlust, he had stopped long before he risked me.