Текст книги "The Serpent and the Wings of Night"

Автор книги: Carissa Broadbent

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Vincent was exactly where we had agreed. I snuck out of the Moon Palace just before dawn, waiting as long as I could for the other contestants to retreat back to their rooms. After the feast was over, we had started to somewhat warily explore the rest of the Moon Palace and discovered hundreds of fully furnished and stocked suites throughout it. Most had claimed rooms as their own, some by themselves and some in partnerships or groups for protection.

Still, I remained in my greenhouse. No walls or locks would protect me as well as those windows could. Besides, I found something oddly comforting in the way the greenery wrapped me in an embrace. The plants were fragile and alive and impermanent—just like me—and yet, they’d still managed to reclaim the ancient structure. It was a little inspiring.

When the sky was tinted red, I made my journey. The Ministaer had been honest. The Moon Palace did not lock us in. Vincent met me beyond the gates, beneath the steps where the slab paths gave way to the silty mud of the riverbank. Stone bridges arced overhead, leading to the city.

Vincent had described this spot to me before the Kejari began. “It’s private,” he had told me. “It will be our meeting place.”

Here, under the shadow of the bridge, I felt like I stood upon the boundary between two worlds. To my right, the Moon Palace loomed, ancient and foreboding. To my left, Sivrinaj rose into the sky, silhouetted by the near-full moon. No one cared what happened here, in this little shadowy crevice that was a part of neither.

How did Vincent know about this place? Had he met someone here when he was a contestant in his own Kejari, two hundred years ago? Did he have… well, a Vincent? Someone who had trained him, guided him? A member of the family he had killed in his rise to power?

Or another mentor who told him to do it?

I knew better than to ask those sorts of questions. Maybe when I became Vincent’s equal—his Coriatae—I finally would.

“Oraya.”

I wasn’t expecting the sound of Vincent’s voice to hurt as it did—an ache right in the center of my chest. I turned to see him approaching from beneath the shadow of the bridge. When the moonlight fell across his face, my throat grew suddenly thick.

I’d been strong before this. There was no time to grieve, no time to be frightened, when I had to focus singularly on survival. But now the sight of him, the sheer familiarity of his face, took me back sixteen years. I was a child again, hiding in the space between the wall and the dresser, and Vincent was the only safe person in the world.

Ilana was gone. Dead. I had only him.

He looked me up and down. His face was stone-still.

“Are you injured?”

“No.”

He lifted his chin to my hand. “That?”

I’d forgotten about it. “Nothing. Just a little cut.”

“You need your hands.”

He beckoned, and I rested my hand in his palm. He gently removed the bandage—purple silk. I had to fight the sting in my eyes as I watched it shimmer beneath the moonlight, now covered in blood. The rest of Ilana’s scarf was in my pocket. I’d tried to salvage as much of it as I could, though so much of it was now stained and torn.

Vincent frowned at it—not at my wound, but the fabric. “Where did you get this?”

“I found it. In the Moon Palace.”

I didn’t even have to try to lie anymore. They came so easily.

“Hm.” He withdrew a bottle from his pocket, then dripped a few drops of the shimmery, silver-blue liquid onto my palm. A puff of smoke unfurled from the cut, the sound echoing the hiss I drew through my teeth.

“Don’t whine.”

I did not miss the hint of affection in the chastisement.

“I never whine.”

And he probably did not miss the slight crack in my voice.

The wound on my hand was now just a puffy pink-white scar. He replaced the bandage and handed me the bottle. “Take care of that. I don’t know when I will be able to get you more. I’ll try.”

Medicine that was safe for humans was, understandably, difficult to come by in the House of Night. Vincent needed to trade for them from the human kingdoms in the south and the east. The stuff was precious as gold. More, actually—gold did nothing to stop bleeding.

“It was earlier than I thought,” Vincent said. “My year, we started the night before the full moon. Not two. I suppose they like to keep things interesting. It makes no difference.”

It made a difference to Ilana. One more night, and she would have been out of the city, safe—if unhappy—in the human districts.

If I allowed my grief to show, he didn’t seem to notice it. He unhooked two sheathed weapons from his belt.

“Here.”

He tossed them into my arms. I caught them deftly, then slid one from the black leather scabbard—blinking in stunned awe at what was revealed.

The swords were—they were—

I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t find words.

They were short and delicate, designed for dual wielding, as I preferred. They were impossibly light for their size. The blades curved gracefully, polished black steel with red marks etched into the flat—long swirls of decorative smoke and stark, staccato glyphs locked in a dance. The hilts—silver, topped with two interlocking moons—welcomed my hands as if they had been waiting for me my entire life.

And yet, it felt wrong to even touch them.

“They should serve you well,” Vincent said. “Light. The right size. I gave the smith all your measurements. They’re designed specifically for you.”

“These are…”

Perfect. Stunning. Eye-wateringly expensive, yes, but it wasn’t just about the money. The weapons were the epitome of the deadly artistry the Nightborn were known for, wielded only by the most esteemed House of Night warriors. Hundreds and hundreds of hours of craftsmanship had gone into creating these. Centuries of expertise in blacksmithing and magic. An entire civilization’s skill, right here in my hands.

No doubt several generations of Nightborn kings rolled in their graves to think of such a weapon wielded by an adopted human girl. I felt as if I was tainting these simply by touching them.

“These are…” I started again.

“They are yours,” Vincent said quietly.

As if he heard everything I didn’t say.

I swallowed my wave of emotion—Mother, Oraya, get a fucking hold on yourself—and affixed the sheaths to my belt. Perhaps I didn’t deserve these yet. But I would, one day. Once I won.

“Thank you,” I said.

Vincent glanced again to the sky. “You should go. The sun is coming.”

He was right. The last thing I needed was to get disqualified for being late back to the Moon Palace. I nodded. But before I could turn, he caught my arm, gripping so hard his fingernails dug into my flesh.

“I won’t tell you to be careful, Oraya. I won’t tell you because I know you are. I taught you to be. Resilient. Clever. Fast. Focused. Vicious. You must be all of it now. You have no room for weakness or missteps.”

Emotions rarely showed on Vincent’s face. But now I caught a glimpse—only a glimpse—of some strange tenderness shivering across the cold muscles of his expression, gone before either of us could or would acknowledge it.

“I will,” I said.

“You must be better than they are.”

And just as Vincent heard what I didn’t say, I heard his unspoken words here, too: To make up for what you are not.

There was no room for weakness in the Kejari, but mine was entwined in my own human flesh. I blinked and saw Ilana’s body, so easily destroyed. I fought back the wave of nausea, the stab of pain. Those were weaknesses, too.

Instead, I made my grief into anger. I made it steel.

“I know,” I said. “I am.”

He was still for a long moment, then released me.

“The blades hold poison,” he said. “There’s enough in them to last you awhile. You can refill it through the hilt.”

This, I knew, was Vincent telling me that he loved me. No one had ever said those words to me—at least, not that I could ever remember. But he communicated it a thousand ways over the years, most of them coated in death. I love you. Here’s how you stay alive. Here’s how you make sure that no one can hurt you.

For vampires, that was the ultimate gift.

I nodded, lifted my hand in a silent goodbye, and we parted without another word.

I cut my return closer than I should have, but at least it meant that the Palace was quiet when I got back. I was trying to figure out whether I was hallucinating or if the layout of the place had changed—again—when I rounded a corner and nearly ran into a wall.

No—not a wall. A person.

I reacted fast, putting several strides between me and the figure before I even looked at their face. My blades were out in seconds. Mother, these things were light.

I lifted my gaze to see dark red eyes drinking me in.

At the feast, even from across the room, I’d thought this man seemed unlike most other vampires I’d met. Up close, there was no doubt about it. Raihn’s features were strong—almost unpleasantly so, like each held too much personality to be combined in such a way. While time left marks on humans, in vampires it simply sanded away imperfections, leaving them with beauty as finely honed as a Nightborn blade. But this man’s face certainly seemed to hold evidence of the life he had lived—a scar marking his left cheek in two lines arranged in an upside-down V, one eyebrow that seemed a little higher than the other, hair that was left in unruly waves.

That stare now casually moved down my body, then to my blades, which were poised and ready to strike. His left eyebrow, the one that seemed permanently, ever-so-slightly raised, quirked even higher.

“Are those new? Thank the Mother you didn’t have those last night. I wouldn’t have a leg anymore.”

“Get out of my way.”

“Where were you?”

I tried to walk past him, but he placed his hand on the opposite wall, blocking my path with a thick, muscled arm clad in leather, right at face-height.

“I know where you were. You were visiting the Nightborn King. That’s you, isn’t it? His human?” He cocked his head. “You’re very famous, you know. Even in the borderlands. A real curiosity.”

I tried to duck under his arm to continue to the greenhouse, but he moved it down to block my path. Then he nodded down to his leg.

“You stabbed me.”

“You grabbed me.”

“I was trying to save your life.”

I shouldn’t even engage. I could practically hear Vincent’s voice in my ear: Think about what you have to gain from an interaction. The answer is usually nothing.

But my ego spoke first. I made a show of looking myself up and down.

“I don’t think so. I escaped, and I look alive to me.”

That eyebrow twitched again. “For now.”

He said this as if it was very amusing.

But only now, a moment too late, did my mind circle back to what he had said—I was trying to save your life.

That night, I’d been so distraught, I hadn’t even given myself time to think about who had grabbed me—or why. It only sank in now that he had been trying to help me, or at least, appeared to be.

That was… strange. So strange, it did nothing to endear him to me. Far from it. I was certain he hadn’t done it out of the kindness of his benevolent heart.

“What do you want?” I demanded.

“I want an apology. For stabbing me. Especially given that I could have turned you over to your victim’s brother, and didn’t.” He leaned a bit closer, and I matched the movement by stepping back. “Because you did kill that bastard, didn’t you?”

I scoffed.

He frowned. “What?”

“I’m not a fool.”

“Oh?”

“You wanted him to give you an excuse. You just wanted to swing your cock around.”

Because in the House of Night, everything was a power game. His spectacle at the feast? That was a performance.

Well, fine. I’d rather have my enemies looking at him than looking at me. But that didn’t mean I had to put up with it. Maybe he was curious about me. Maybe he just liked to toy with his food. I didn’t need to know why he was playing the game to know I had nothing to win.

I raised my blade. “Now let me pass.”

He arched his brows. “I ask for an apology, and I get threats.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t aim higher.”

He looked pointedly down at himself. “A little higher, or a lot higher?”

That was almost funny. It caught me a bit off guard. It was rare that vampires made jokes. Hundreds of years withered away a sense of humor. When I was fifteen or so, I gave up on trying to make Vincent understand. I was lucky I’d had Ilana to—

The casual thought of her triggered a stab of pain so intense it took my breath away.

“Let me pass,” I snapped.

He gave me a strange look. “What was that?”

That caught me a bit off guard, too. That he noticed the brief emotion I had allowed to flinch over my face.

“Let me pass.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll stab you again.”

“How much higher?”

For a moment, I actually considered doing it. Maybe this was the best opportunity I’d get, right now, when he was acting like it was all a big fucking joke. What a luxury that must be.

It was only the thought of that flash of black, then white—Asteris, I was sure of it—that stilled my hand.

Instead, I made a dramatic show of looking him up and down—lingering at his thigh and trailing up to the crotch of his leather pants, and said, “A little.”

I ducked under his arm. This time, he chuckled softly and didn’t try to stop me.

The moon gleamed bright and full, hanging heavy with challenge. The minutes since it rose had been tense and still. From my place in the greenhouse, I couldn’t hear a single sound from the Moon Palace halls.

It was nearly midnight when the ghostly thread of shadow appeared again, summoning us from our rooms. I followed it to the great hall, where the Ministaer had addressed us all the night before. The room slowly filled with people as more and more threads of shadow joined mine, until no more arrived and the shadows dissipated, leaving us all standing in awkward silence.

Everyone had taken the last day to prepare. Contestants were armed with new, freshly cleaned weapons, leather armor strapped tight to their bodies. Some wore protective sigils at their throats or etched into the armor itself. I noted those carefully—it didn’t necessarily mark them as magic wielders, but it did make the possibility more likely. Magic would be an ugly surprise in the ring.

Overnight, some had already formed little factions. The House of Blood contestants, of course, stayed together. Now, there was little doubt that the tall, muscular woman was their leader, as I’d suspected. The others listened, rapt, as she whispered to them in hushed command. Her mostly-silver hair was now bound up in a long braid, the tight pull of it emphasizing her sharp cheekbones and strong brow. As she turned to speak to one of her companions, I noticed a faint crimson crawling up from beneath the collar of her white leather armor.

Her curse. I’d never met a Bloodborn vampire before, but I’d heard that red marks on their skin signaled the end stages of it. If that was true, this woman was far along. The next step would be insanity. And beyond that…

Well, people murmured about what the House of Blood’s curse did to them. Turned them into little more than animals in the end.

I shuddered and looked away.

Some of the other contestants had formed little groups overnight, too—probably seeing the temporary value of strength in numbers. Almost certainly, too, thinking ahead to the Halfmoon trial. It was the only trial structure that was the same every year: in which contestants would need to fight in teams or partners, and half the field would be eliminated.

My eyes found Raihn at the other side of the room. Beside him was the cheerful woman with the short hair. She leaned close, whispering excitedly, while he surveyed the room.

What an odd pair.

Only a few now remained notably set back from the rest of the group: me, several members of the House of Shadows—known for their staunch independence—and Ibrihim, who was one of the last to reach the great room, visibly limping on his mangled foot.

The Kejari was no place for pity. Still, I felt it anyway as I watched him hobble down the hall. I knew better than anyone that no one should be dismissed out of hand. But it was hard to imagine any version of today’s events that wouldn’t end in Ibrihim’s death.

The minutes passed. We waited in tense silence.

I unsheathed my blades, adjusting my grip around the hilts.

I’d studied each of the twenty Kejaris that came before this, and I had thought long and hard about what this trial could be. The first trial usually represented Nyaxia’s departure from her home in the White Pantheon. She had ventured out beyond the borders of her land and was attacked by beasts during her midnight walk. They pursued her for miles, and in her panic, she grew impossibly lost. Sometimes, the trial involved blinding contestants, as Nyaxia was blinded during her attack. Sometimes, it required contestants to run and fight over treacherous terrain. But most often, it involved beasts—sometimes many, sometimes one.

The long silence gave way to uncomfortable whispers of confusion. Eventually, one of the Hiaj contestants asked what we were all wondering:

“So what now? Are we supposed to—”

The Moon Palace simply disappeared.

CHAPTER NINE

The screaming of the crowd shook the ground. Light blinded me—so bright that at first I questioned whether it was somehow sunlight.

But no. Torches. Thousands. Lining the rounded rim of the colosseum, floating hundreds of feet above of our heads, clutched in the thousands upon thousands of hands of the thousands upon thousands of spectators—all of whom were screaming, screaming, screaming—

Screaming like Ilana had screamed—

For a moment, nothing existed but the sky and the light and the roar of the spectators. I craned my neck up to the stars that were barely visible over the flare of the lanterns. They smeared in a circular blur, punctuated by rails of silver metal—like the top of the greenhouse. A glass ceiling.

Move, Oraya! a voice roared in the back of my head—Vincent’s voice, it was always Vincent’s voice—and I did, just in time.

Massive claws shredded the packed sand where I had been standing seconds ago.

The world snapped into violently harsh focus.

Another shriek rang out, much closer, as a Hiaj contestant was torn to pieces—one shattered wing clenched in a dripping maw, his body clutched in claws, black-red blood pouring onto the dirt.

Not just a beast. A fucking demon.

I’d only seen a demon in real life once, and I had been so injured that I barely remembered it. Even that horror had been nothing compared to these. They moved on all fours, hairless and dark-gray, with blackened veins that pulsed beneath their skin. Serrated black claws capped too-long fingers on hands made for grabbing and killing. Their faces—flat, with sharp cheekbones, slit noses, and white, mucus-coated eyes—were mostly mouth, which extended from pointed ear to pointed ear, dripping with blackened saliva over layers of jagged teeth. They were, at once, chillingly animalistic and sickeningly… humanoid.

They moved so fast I couldn’t count them—so fast that they crossed the arena in the time it took me to blink. More than five. Less than ten.

I pressed my back to the glass. It shook as something slammed violently against the wall in the next enclosure. The colosseum had been split into many smaller rings, separated by glass domes. I was trapped here with several Hiaj vampires. One Rishan. One Bloodborn. Kiretta, the Shadowborn magic wielder Vincent had warned me about. And—I let out a rough laugh, because it fucking figured—Raihn.

As the demons tangled in the center of the ring, momentarily distracted by the still-twitching body of the vampire they’d just ripped apart, the rest of us looked around warily. We were all thinking the same thing: Was the objective to kill the demons, or each other?

Or both?

I had no time to think about it as one of the demons lunged for me. I rolled out of the path of those razored hands—but then my body seized up. My muscles railed against me, as if they wanted to keep me in the demon’s path, wanted to—

Fuck. Blood magic.

I glanced up just in time to see the Bloodborn contestant meet my eyes, red mist around his raised hands, his magic in my blood. He could only maintain his focus for a moment, but that was enough to send me tumbling under the demon’s claws.

Move move move—

Pain skewered me. The moment I broke free of the magic hold, I grabbed one of my swords and plunged it into the roof of the demon’s mouth, just as those teeth were coming down upon me.

A horrific burning smell filled my nostrils—the poison in action. The demon let out a high-pitched, hollow wail. Puffs of black surrounded us as I yanked my sword from its flesh. When its jaw snapped closed, the skin was melting, top jaw dripping into bottom.

Mother, this shit was strong. I thanked Vincent silently and scrambled from my attacker’s grasp as it staggered back into the pack.

On the opposite side of the enclosure, Raihn went after a demon with sweeping strikes of his sword. An impressive weapon, even from a distant glimpse. It was Nightborn steel, like my blades, with streaks of red-tinted darkness following every swing.

To my right, the Bloodborn man dodged as one of the demons leapt for him, sinking its teeth into his leg. His lips twisted into a grim smile, hands raised and ready.

But then he froze. Horror fell across his face that had nothing to do with pain—as if he had just made a terrible realization. It distracted him long enough for the beast to yank him closer. A sheen of black-red beaded over its skin, followed by a fog of crimson.

Unnatural goosebumps rose on my arms, a burning sensation ghosting over my flesh as I leapt away from its swinging tail. Strange. Unsettling. Familiar. I couldn’t pinpoint it, but—

The Bloodborn man tried to fight now, but it was too late. His body crumpled like moist paper beneath the demon’s claws.

Puffs of shadow filled the enclosure as Kiretta unleashed the full force of her magic, fragments of darkness wrapping around demon limbs and throats to little effect. One of the Rishan had risen to the top of the glass dome and shot arrows at the monsters below, lurching and dipping to avoid their barbed tails, but they barely reacted to the blows. Blood spurted across my cheek as another Hiaj contestant fell.

Four. Four of us remained.

I fought until I couldn’t feel my own body anymore. Kiretta was slowly being worn down. The Rishan with the arrows had more and more difficulty dodging. Even Raihn’s seemingly unstoppable blows appeared to be slowing. My hands were so slick with putrid black blood that I struggled to grip my swords, drips of poison leaving my skin raw.

We hadn’t managed to kill a single demon. Even the one I’d injured had torn its mouth back open and was acting like it had never been hurt at all.

Across the ring, a demon lunged for Raihn, and he leapt smoothly out of the way… majestic, feathered wings unfurling from his back. He stretched them wide as he rose to the top of the enclosure, red-black feathers tinted purple beneath strokes of silvery moonlight.

So he was Nightborn. A Rishan, of course. I should have fucking known.

I rolled out of the way of another attack, one eye still on him. I watched him plunge, watched him thrust his sword into the ribs of a demon—

And the beast diving for me—the one I hadn’t even struck yet—flinched.

Everything faded except for that single twitch. That one little seize of muscle. My attacker recovered fast, leaving me scurrying across the sand, but in my mind I replayed that moment, over and over.

No, I hadn’t imagined it. The demon had flinched, and exactly where Raihn had hit the other one.

I thought of the look of horror on the Bloodborn vampire’s face as the demon drank from him. Of the red sheen that covered their bodies now, the mist, the strange burning sensation of my skin—

Realization shook me.

It was blood magic. Sloppy and unrefined, yes, but blood magic all the same. And if the demons were using gifts exclusive to the vampires of the House of Blood…

I stabbed the hand of a monster that came for me and found fresh horror in its terrible wail of agony. Mother, it did almost sound like… like a voice.

These were not just demons. These were demons that had once been vampires—Bloodborn, cursed vampires.

Think, Oraya.

Transfiguration. I knew the curse made Bloodborn vampires something terrible in their final days, but nothing like this. So these had been changed. Created. Were they linked, somehow? I watched their movements with the split seconds I could spare between dodges or strikes—watched their dynamics.

A pack. They moved together, as if connected. And maybe that meant there was a leader. A heart at the core of the rotten flesh. If these were transfigured vampires, perhaps one was the original, and the others its spawn.

“Do that again!” I screamed to Raihn, who had risen back into the air. He cocked his head in confusion. The din of the crowd swallowed my words.

I jabbed my finger to the demon, then tapped my forehead—where it bore a single white mark between its eyes. “THAT ONE, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!”

I didn’t know if he’d understand what I was trying to tell him, or if he would help me even if he did.

I cut through the pack of beasts. I was betting everything on this theory. There was no way I’d survive this if I wasn’t right. Getting into the pack was difficult—getting out of it would be impossible. I levied strike after strike with my poisoned blades, making the demons falter, but had no time to make them fall. Precise. Fast.

The red mist, which had grown thicker with the demons’ every kill, burned my skin. The writhing bodies blended into each other, slick gray against slick gray, but I refused to take my eyes off my target, refused to blink—

My mark let out a sickening scream, its limbs flailing in all directions. Black blood spattered over my face as a massive blade plunged into its side. Raihn’s body trembled with exertion as he pinned the beast, barely dodging its tail and claws. His gaze met mine through the chaos and red smoke—and he nodded.

I couldn't even believe these words crossed my mind, but I thought, Nyaxia bless him.

If this demon had once been a vampire, that meant we needed its heart. And that meant I had to slide under this thing. I dropped to my knees, poised my blade, and—

Pain exploded through my hip.

My vision blurred. A POP rang out in my ears as the sound of the crowd and the demons faded to a distant din.

I didn’t realize I hit the ground until I saw my hands braced against the dirt. I looked down at myself. An arrow protruded from my thigh.

Fuck, I thought, just before all the demons were on me.