Текст книги "The Serpent and the Wings of Night"

Автор книги: Carissa Broadbent

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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Raihn and I knew how to fight each other too well. We knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses and habits. I knew not only when he would move, but how he would respond when I did. Each lunge was the result of half a dozen calculations based on the innate knowledge of each other that we had accumulated over the last months.

It felt perverse. Depraved. To use that intimacy to kill each other.

I wondered if he was thinking the same thing. There was none of his usual savage joy in this. No snarky comments or half-smiles. No satisfaction in his strikes. The first time I nicked his skin, I winced as if it had hit my own. And in turn, the first time he drew my blood, he jerked back as if to stop himself.

Still, our dance continued. The crowd shrieked with amusement with every clash of steel. I barely heard them. My blood pumped in my ears, roaring.

This was agonizing. Agonizing. I needed it to hurt more everywhere else, so it hurt less in my heart.

As I danced closer to him, I hissed, “You’re holding back.”

You’re holding back, I had said as I took him into my body. I knew he was thinking of it, too.

“So are you,” he said.

Was that what I had to do? Go after him as hard as I could, to make him do the same to me?

“You said we’re doing this,” I spat, drawing back my weapons. “So fucking do it.”

His gaze hardened in a way that sent a chill down my spine.

“As you wish,” he said.

And when he charged at me this time, it was with his Asteris.

He was tired, and that weakened his magic considerably, but it was still a deadly force. I gasped, staggering back. I blocked his sword, but the burst of black-white light tore at my skin, leaving it bleeding and scalded. It was naive of me to be surprised that he so willingly rose to my challenge.

I asked him to come after me, and he had.

Fear is a collection of physical responses, I told myself.

Fear is accelerated heartbeats and rapid breaths and sweaty palms. Fear is a doorway to anger, and anger is a doorway to power.

When I looked into Raihn’s eyes and imagined his blood soaking in this cursed dirt, the fear that stole through my lungs was overwhelming. But all of that was power, too.

When I lunged this time, Nightfire surrounded me.

Something had broken between us. All those delicate little jabs, those careful dances of blocks and dodges, shattered. We went at each other for blood.

Asteris bloomed over Raihn’s every blow, as Nightfire burned in mine. Every time we came together, the two magics burst and sputtered around each other, darkness and light ripping each other to pieces. His magic raked over my skin, leaving it raw and bleeding. Mine blistered over his, searing burns into his exposed flesh.

There were no more lingering stares, no more hesitations. Only brutal efficiency.

I’d always admired Raihn’s skill as a warrior. He wielded a sword the way an artist wielded a paintbrush, each stroke an exercise in grace and beauty. Now, it awed me, the elegance of his instincts and movements, all these new angles of his brutality visible only as its target. Perhaps I could only appreciate every brushstroke of death once I was the canvas.

I no longer saw or heard the crowd. Nightfire spread across the sand as quietly inevitable as the slow march of death. Raihn had loosened his grip on his magic, each burst of Asteris sweeping the entire arena.

I met his eyes through the flames. They seemed so, so red here, surrounded by the cold blue-white of my magic and the purple-black of his. Within them, I saw only grim resolve. Of course. He had everything to fight for. People relying on him. People he needed to save. Whatever we’d built together had been a bump on that road.

His next strike was to kill.

Raihn was so much bigger than me, so much stronger. I was faster, but not by much—and not when his wings were out. He extended them now, using them to hurl himself at me. I couldn’t react quickly enough.

Pain, as his sword sliced open my arm.

I pulled away, panting, somewhat amazed I was alive.

Raihn’s jaw was set, eyes cold.

Why did it surprise me, to see him looking at me that way? Why did it hurt? It shouldn’t. I had told him to fight. I was a human girl he’d known for a few months. A friend, yes. But friends didn't exist in a place like this.

He came after me hard, again.

I saw my life flash before my eyes. My short, pathetic life. Every dead human I was too late to save. Ilana’s body, little more than tatters of flesh. Barely anything left to burn.

You don't have to be this, Oraya.

She had told me that once.

I saw death coming for me at the edge of Raihn’s blade, in the focused determination of his stare.

She was right. I didn’t. I could make myself something better.

Raihn’s blow should have been my death. I was already teetering on its precipice.

But something was left inside of me. I rallied with everything I had. Let out a roar of rage. Not at Raihn, but at the world that had put both of us here.

I didn’t have to think. Didn’t have to see. I fought on instinct alone, strike after strike after strike, meeting hard resistance, soft resistance, meeting the pain of Asteris, the burn of Nightfire. Meeting leather armor.

And at last, meeting flesh. Raihn’s flesh.

I froze with the tip of my blade at his chest, some distant instinct screaming, STOP.

The crowd was shrieking in utter delight.

Raihn was beneath me. Nightfire surrounded us. Blisters opened over his skin like decaying roses. I became aware of the agonizing pain of each breath, each movement.

He trembled, too. I’d opened poison-mottled wounds all over his torso, his shoulders, his arms, even one over his cheek. I was bleeding from the ones he’d inflicted on me, too, and badly. As I draped myself over him, pinning him to the ground, his blood and mine mingled—the final strokes of his painting, red and black.

My blade was at his chest. His hand gripped my wrist, hard. His lips curled into a smirk.

And he whispered, “There she is.”

All at once, I realized what he had been doing.

He had been baiting me, just like he had baited the man in the feast all those months ago. He had been fighting me so hard to make me fight back with just as much strength.

I had told myself I would do it.

I had work to do. People to help. Power to gain. I could do none of that as a human constantly struggling to survive.

A trickle of blood at the tip of my blade. My hand shook.

“End it, princess,” Raihn murmured.

End the danger and the fear and the violence.

End it, end it, end it—

No. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

But Raihn’s hand tightened.

Look them in the eyes as you slide the blade in, Vincent’s voice whispered.

No. I squeezed my eyes shut. I thought I was pulling away.

But maybe Raihn yanked my wrist. Maybe he drove that blade into his own chest.

Or perhaps my vampire heart won the battle, after all.

Because I felt the blade slip, slip, slip. Felt the breastbone part. Felt the muscle tear. I felt that blade go into my own heart as it slid into Raihn’s.

The crowd erupted into wild, gleeful wails. Warmth covered my hands. The weight below me slackened.

I opened my eyes.

I had won.

Raihn was dead.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

No.

My Nightfire withered away.

Raihn’s head had rolled back into the sand. His eyes were half-open, staring sightlessly to the crowd. That stupid little smile still clung to his lips.

I had just gotten everything I’d ever wanted. All my greatest dreams fulfilled.

And all I could think was, No.

No, he wasn’t dead. I hadn’t done that. I knew I hadn’t—I hadn’t pushed that blade in. My mind grasped desperately at those last few crucial seconds.

He couldn’t be dead.

He couldn’t.

Distantly, as if in a whole other world, the Ministaer’s voice echoed through the arena.

“The twenty-first Kejari has its victor!”

The delirious cheers of a bloodthirsty populace thrilled by their blood-soaked victor filled the colosseum.

I didn’t move.

I had to force my fingers to relinquish their grip on my blade. They ghosted over Raihn’s lifeless face. His skin was still warm. My thumb swept that curl at the corner of his mouth.

“Raihn,” I choked, half expecting him to answer me.

He didn’t.

He didn’t move.

I had killed him.

I had killed him.

Oh, Mother, what had I done.

I gripped his face with both hands. My breath came in deep, painful gasps. My vision blurred.

I didn’t cry when Ilana died. I hadn’t cried since the last time I stabbed my lover. I swore to myself—and to Vincent—that night that I never would again.

But I had been wrong. I had been wrong about so, so much. The world had just lost an incredible force. And my presence here was not enough to make up for that.

In this game, only one of us would win. And it shouldn’t have been me. It shouldn’t have been me.

Nothing existed except for him and the light I had just snuffed out of this world.

Not even the sounds of the crowd. Not the Ministaer’s voice, reverberating through the stands, as he said, “Rise, victor. Rise to greet your goddess.”

No, I heard none of that.

I only raised my gaze when it all went silent. A shiver passed over my skin. I looked up—up to the sky. It was clear and bright, stars stark against the velvet night. My sight was so blurry with tears that they flared like little supernovas.

Or…

My brow furrowed.

No. It wasn’t my tears. The stars did indeed brighten, as if fed with fresh kindling. Silver wisps, like torn scraps of gossamer, swirled in the sky above the colosseum. The air grew very, very still, like every breeze had been stolen for the breath of a greater being.

A greater being like the Goddess of Night, of Blood, of Shadow herself. Heir to the Crown of the Dead.

Mother of vampires.

The hair rose on my arms.

“Bow,” the Ministaer whispered. “Bow for our Mother of the Ravenous Dark, Nyaxia.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

I did not need to bow. I was already on my knees, and I couldn’t bring myself to stand.

I felt her before I saw her.

I had always been a bit of a skeptic when it came to the gods. As much as everyone in Obitraes liked to moon over Nyaxia and her incomprehensible power, I wondered if perhaps some of it was exaggeration or myth.

In this moment, those doubts disappeared.

Because the entire damned world bowed to Nyaxia. Not just the people, but the air, the sky, the earth. The sand shifted beneath my palms, as if inching to get just a little closer to her. The night writhed, as if aching to be in her lungs.

Every part of me called to her. Turn, turn, turn, the wind whispered.

Still, I could not tear myself away from Raihn.

“Look at me, my child.”

Her voice was a million shades of a million sounds, painted over each other in exquisite layers. History, power, grief distilled.

I forced myself to let go of Raihn’s face, allowing him to slump to the sand, sickeningly lifeless.

Numbly, I rose. Turned.

Nyaxia stood before me.

She was not a person. She was an event.

My mind emptied of thought, my lips parting. She floated just above the ground, delicate bare feet pointed to the sand. Her hair was long and black, tendrils of night floating around her as if carried by an ever-present breeze. Stars glinted in its darkness—no, not just stars, but every infinite shade of the sky. Dappled streaks of distant worlds. Purples and blues of galaxies. It was nearly to her knees, a curtain of night around her. Her skin was ice-white, her eyes midnight-black. Her naked body looked to have been dipped in melted silver, a thousand shades of platinum playing across every dip of her form. Shadows caressed her curves with dancing fragments of darkness.

Her mouth was bright red. As she smiled, a drop of blood dripped down her elegant pointed chin.

I ached to touch her skin. Ached to lick the drop of blood from her mouth. I had learned long ago that vampire beauty was dangerous, a trap set with silver teeth. Their allure was made to draw in prey.

Nyaxia’s allure dwarfed it, and it terrified me.

I recognized this, and yet in this moment, when the full force of her presence hit me, I would have died for her. I would have killed for her. I would have shivered in ecstasy if she had offered me agony by those stunning blood-dipped fingertips.

I struggled to steady myself. The rawness of my grief had opened me, the tear it had cut in my armor too wide to patch.

Nyaxia stepped to the sands, each footfall silent. She bent down and cradled my face in her hands. Her eyes, all black, held the waning glow of a dying sunset, revealing a different shade of the sky every time she turned her head.

“Oraya.”

She said my name the only way it was ever meant to be said.

A smile twisted her lips. She looked over her shoulder.

“She has your eyes,” she laughed.

Vincent. She was looking at Vincent. I tore my gaze away from her. He had pressed up against the rail, unblinking. Pride and anticipation warred over his face. His eyes shone.

“My daughter, Oraya of the House of Night,” Nyaxia said. “You have fought hard and fought well. Tell me, my champion. What might I grant you as your gift?”

Champion.

Fought.

Those words destroyed the temporary haze of Nyaxia’s presence. The reality of where I stood—of what I had done to be here—crashed down around me.

The grief was unbearable. A million jagged edges of a million decisions I could have made differently. The burn of Raihn’s blood on my hands.

Nyaxia’s devastating face went thoughtful. Those night-hewn eyes fell to Raihn’s lifeless body.

“You grieve, my child.”

I could not tell if it was sympathy I heard in her voice.

I didn’t answer aloud, but she heard my response anyway.

“I know grief,” she said, voice soft. “I know what it is to lose half of one’s soul.”

Half of one’s soul. It did feel that way. He had taken more of me than I thought he would when he went.

Storm clouds swirled in the night of Nyaxia’s stare. “To have such a thing stolen from you is a great loss indeed.” Lightning faded as they turned back to me. “But perhaps, too, it is a blessing, my child. Such a pure love, distilled forever in its innocence. A flower frozen in bloom.”

Her fingers caressed my throat, drifted down to my chest, lingering there—as if feeling for my human pulse. “A dead lover can never break your heart.”

Was that how she felt about her dead husband?

If so, I envied her. Because she was wrong. My heart was already broken. It had cracked in a thousand moments over the last twenty years. The first blow came the night my family died. Only now, by my own hand, did it shatter.

Everything I had ever wanted was within my grasp.

Power. Strength. I could never be afraid again. I could make myself the predator instead of the prey, the hunter instead of the hunted, the ruler instead of the subject. I could make myself a monster to fear. I could make myself something to remember, instead of another fading mortal life to forget.

Everything was right here.

Two hundred years ago, Vincent had made this decision. He had sacrificed everything.

And so had Nyaxia. Her grief became her power. She forged it into a weapon sharp enough to carve a whole new world.

I understood now. It always happened this way. Love was a sacrifice at the altar of power.

My gaze found Vincent’s. He was not blinking, was not breathing.

My father who had taught me how to survive, how to kill, how to feel nothing. Perhaps I didn’t share his blood, but I was his child in every other sense of the word, and he loved me the only way he knew how. At the edge of a blade.

I swallowed the sudden, desperate desire to know how he had felt when he stood in my place, two hundred years ago. Did he swear that he would be better than the one who came before him?

Nyaxia’s smile rolled over my cheek like the cold light of the moon.

“They always have dreams,” she murmured, answering the question I did not ask. “And his were the grandest of all. Tell me, what is yours, my child?”

I cradled my wish in my weak mortal heart. Perhaps I was more human than Vincent thought, after all.

My father taught me to look them in the eye as I slid the blade into their heart. And so, I did not look away from his as I told Nyaxia, “I wish that Raihn had won.”

Vincent’s face went white.

Nyaxia’s laugh sounded like the shifting of fates.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Nyaxia did not ask me if I was sure. She knew my soul. She knew I was.

“As you wish,” she said, as if I had just done something very amusing indeed.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting—maybe some dramatic flash of light or storm of darkness, or hell, maybe that I would disappear completely—but none of it happened.

No, it turns out that fate changing is a subtle beast. The air turns just a little colder, the direction of the wind just a little lost. You look down and suddenly your hands are shaking, holding the blade that, seconds and another reality ago, had been lodged in your lover’s chest.

I looked up, and Raihn was alive.

He sucked in a great gulp of air, his hands clutching at his chest—at the wound that was no longer there.

The crowd murmured and gasped.

I didn’t look at them. Raihn didn’t, either. Instead, his gaze shot to me. Only me. He looked at me before he even looked at Nyaxia.

The tears that pricked my eyes now were of relief.

It was worth it. I already knew it. Even if I never saw him again. It would have been worth it.

Confusion tangled in his expression as he rubbed his chest.

“Hello, Raihn Ashraj, my Nightborn son,” Nyaxia purred. “Victor of the Kejari.”

Raihn’s confusion turned to realization. Then turned to…

To…

My brow furrowed.

That wasn’t relief. That was anguish.

“Oraya,” he choked out. “What did you—”

“Rise,” Nyaxia commanded. “Rise, my son. And tell me how I may reward your victory.”

Raihn did not speak for a long moment. That silence seemed to stretch a million years. At last, he rose and approached Nyaxia. Her fingers stroked his cheek, leaving in their wake little paths of blood.

“My, what a long time it has been,” she crooned. “Even fate did not know if I would see this face again.”

“Likewise, my lady,” Raihn said.

Vincent’s jaw was so tight it trembled, his knuckles white at his sides, back straight. His wings quivered, as if he had to hold himself back from flying down here.

Nyaxia’s eyes danced with amusement—terrifying amusement.

My stomach clenched tight. I did not like to see that level of delight. The kind of delight that promised bloodshed.

Nyaxia likes her children squabbling.

Something… something was not right.

“Tell me, my son, what is your prize?”

The world held its breath. Raihn bowed his head.

In the crowd, I glimpsed Septimus pushing forward through the stands, a hungry grin spreading over his lips.

Why was Septimus looking so pleased, if his champion had fallen?

Raihn said, “Two hundred years ago, you came to this place and granted the winner of the Kejari a wish. You sealed away the power of the Rishan Nightborn King.”

The smirk on Nyaxia’s lips had grown to a grin, and with it, my stomach sank.

“I wish for that power, my lady. I wish for it to be restored to the Rishan Heir line. I wish for it to be restored to me.”

Restored?

Nyaxia laughed, low and silken. “I wondered when this might happen. Your wish is granted, Raihn Ashraj, Turned Heir of the Rishan king.”

What?

My eyes went wide. I took several steps back, towards the stands. Some spectators were laughing, soaking up the drama of it all. But others, mostly Hiaj, had started to uneasily back out through the crowd.

Nyaxia cupped her hands before her.

“Congratulations on your victory.”

Raihn looked only at me, dismayed apology over his face, as Nyaxia’s hands opened over his chest, her lips pressing to his forehead.

The burst of power rearranged the world.

Everything went white, then black. But the real force of the shift was deeper than that. At any given moment, one could feel Vincent’s power innately—the kind of power kissed by the Goddess herself. Now, two polar extremes yanked in opposite directions.

I lifted my hand to shield my eyes. When the light faded, Raihn was standing before Vincent’s box. His wings burst forth—a million colors, black as night, with one notable exception:

Red, painted at their tips.

I let out a strangled noise.

Because Raihn’s armor had been so badly damaged that when his wings flung out, most of the leather had ripped away, revealing the landscape of scars over his back. The scars from Vincent’s torture, yes. But also the older one, the one that started at his upper back and ran down his spine.

Now light burned through that scar tissue, streaks of red piercing the mottled flesh. It formed a design—five phases of the moon over the top of his shoulders, and a spear of smoke down the center of his back.

A mark.

An Heir Mark.

It bloomed to life as if awakened by a sudden burst of power. Even if its owner had once, long ago, tried to burn it off his skin.

Fuck. Fuck. What had I done? Goddess, what had I done?

By now the Hiaj spectators understood what was happening. People trampled each other in the stands trying to escape, taking to the sky or to any open exits in clumsy masses.

A deafening crack sounded from beyond the colosseum. It shook the ground, followed by a deep grinding—like stone shattering. Like city walls falling. Like an empire crumbling.

Soldiers poured from the entrances of the colosseum. Soldiers wearing the red and white of the House of Blood. Septimus watched it all and smiled.

A dead lover can never break your heart, Nyaxia’s voice whispered to me, taunting.

It was all I could hear as Vincent spread his wings and drew his sword.

He didn’t move as Raihn approached him. No, Vincent never backed down from a threat. He’d face his challenger head-on.

No.

I didn’t remember drawing my blades. I just started running. I made it halfway up the steps to Vincent’s balcony before someone grabbed me. I didn’t know who. Didn’t care. Didn’t look.

I needed to get to him.

I needed to get to him right now, right now, right now—

Raihn’s lip curled. “You don’t even know who I am, do you?”

Vincent did not dignify this with a response. Instead, he lunged.

A cry leapt to my throat.

Vincent was one of the best warriors in all of Nyaxia’s kingdoms. And yet Raihn struck him down mid-movement, as if he were nothing. Power swelled and sparked at Raihn’s fingertips—flashes of light and darkness, like stars themselves, dwarfing even the force of his Asteris in the ring.

I thrashed against whoever held me back—thrashed so hard that soon another set of hands joined the first—

“We met,” Raihn said. “Two hundred years ago. The day you took power and opened a river of blood in this city. The day you slaughtered your own family and every Rishan man, woman, and child within these walls. The day you killed anyone you thought even had the sliver of a chance of taking the Rishan Heir line and challenging you for the House of Night.” He pushed Vincent’s sword away with a burst of power, sending it clattering to the floor. “Well. You missed one.”

Raihn grabbed Vincent’s throat. The red of Vincent’s Heir Mark sputtered in fits and starts, as if repelled by the grip of its natural enemy. A sickening CRACK as Raihn pushed Vincent’s body to the smooth stone of the wall, smearing crimson-black over white marble.

Horrible certainty fell over me.

I was about to watch my father die.

I fought harder. Two sets of hands became three. Someone yelped as I stabbed at them.

Raihn yanked Vincent closer, their heads bowing. Vincent said something to him, much too quietly for me to hear.

Then his head turned—slowly, as if it took all his strength—to look at me.

Raihn looked at me, too. And for a moment, that hate on his face was replaced with profound, tortured regret. I couldn’t hear anything over my frantic scream, but his lips formed the words, Look away.

I screamed something—perhaps a curse, a plea. I would never remember.

And I did not look away.

Not as magic flared at Raihn’s touch.

Not as Vincent’s body flew back against the wall with enough force to turn bones to liquid.

No, I did not look away as I watched Raihn kill my father.