Текст книги "The Serpent and the Wings of Night"

Автор книги: Carissa Broadbent

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“That was a foolish decision. I taught you better than to serve yourself to your enemies that way.”

I hadn’t seen Vincent this appalled by my actions in nearly a decade.

I had no choice, I wanted to say, but I swallowed those words before they made it to my lips. I knew better. Vincent believed that you always had a choice, and if you found yourself in a position where you didn’t, you’d made a very poor one earlier that put you there. Either way, you had no one to blame but yourself.

“I need an ally for the Halfmoon, and he’s a good one,” I said instead.

“He is a Rishan.”

“So are a third of the contestants in there.”

“Think about why a Rishan would want to get close to you, Oraya. You.”

He paced. Vincent only paced when he was nervous, but even that was a smooth, deliberate movement. Three long steps, and a sharp turn, exactly the same length, exactly the same rhythm.

He was tense. I was tense. It was a bad combination, and I knew it from the moment I saw him. He had worked hard over the years to grind my emotional impulsivity out of me. But the stress of the competition, my injury, and the choice I’d been forced to make brought my nerves to the surface. Beneath all of it lay my grief over Ilana’s death; never acknowledged but still raw and bleeding, amplifying every negative emotion.

All of that meant I had to watch my voice and my words very carefully.

“I have,” I said. “He thinks that allying with me will mean advantages from you. As far as selfish motivations go, I can accept that one. Better that than him keeping me around for a quick meal if food gets scarce.”

Step, step, step, turn, as Vincent pivoted sharply to me. “And it will.”

I almost shivered at that thought. “At least when that happens, I have protection.”

“Protection.” His lips curled into a sneer—he threw the word at me as if I’d just said something revolting.

My teeth clenched, biting down on my response. Did he think I wasn’t well aware of all the caveats and weaknesses of that word in this place? There was no such thing as protection—not in the Kejari, not in the House of Night, and not in all of Obitraes. There was no such thing as safety, and there was certainly no such thing as trust, not for anyone other than the person who stood before me.

But my irritation faded under a rising tide of concern as I watched my father pace. Watched his hand run through his hair in his only forever-clear tell.

“What happened?” I asked, quietly.

Rebel activity from the Rishan? That might explain why Vincent was so sensitive to the thought of me allying with a Rishan, no matter who it was. Or… maybe more threats from the House of Blood. That would be even more disturbing.

I didn’t know why I even bothered to ask. Predictably, Vincent looked away and said nothing. A single muscle twitched in his cheek, signaling his annoyance.

Concern knotted in my stomach as I thought of Angelika’s sneer and the way she had looked at me, and as I thought of Raihn, a Rishan vampire. In theory, the Kejari was an isolated tournament, in which each contestant stood on equal footing. But in practice? It was just an extension of the tensions and conflicts of the outside world.

“If things are happening out here that could affect what’s happening in there, I need to know about it,” I said.

“You need to focus on staying alive. Nothing else.”

“I am focusing on staying alive.”

“By throwing yourself into the grip of a Rishan? I taught you better.”

Before I could stop myself, I spat, “Would you rather I have let myself bleed to death? I needed to act, and I tried to come to you for help and you weren’t there.”

The words shot from my lips too quickly to stop, sharp as the blades he had given me the last time we met. His eyes snapped to me, revealing a momentary glimmer of hurt that quickly hardened to ice.

I regretted my words right away. I pushed too hard. The change in him was stark and immediate, as if the same features were now a mask worn by an entirely different person.

Vincent, my father, loved me above all. But Vincent, the Nightborn King, was too ruthless to allow the slightest challenge, love or no.

“You think I haven’t been doing everything I can to help you?” he said coldly.

“I do,” I said. “Of course I do.”

“I gave you those blades to help you become someone who deserves to wield them. If you don’t want that—”

“I do.”

The last time he sounded this way, he left my room and did not speak to me again for a week. I was a little ashamed of the sudden, desperate panic that seized me at the idea of him withdrawing like that now.

That foreign hardness in his expression did not soften. He turned away, silhouetted against Sivrinaj’s skyline.

“I apologize,” I said, past a lump in my throat. “I know you’re doing everything that you can. I shouldn’t have implied otherwise.”

And I meant it. I had overreacted to his overprotective grumbling. I owed everything that I was to Vincent, and I never forgot that.

Several long, tense seconds passed. I let out an involuntary exhale when he turned back to me and his expression was no longer that of a disrespected king, but of my concerned, tired father.

“I would have been there,” he said, “if I could.”

It was the closest I’d ever get to an apology. I had never seen Vincent apologize to anyone for anything, ever. But one had to learn how to hear what lingered in between the words. Just like he never told me he loved me, but I heard it in every stern instruction. And now, even though he did not say he was sorry, I heard it in the slightly lower cadence of his voice in that single sentence.

You had to bend, with people like Vincent. Reach for what they wouldn’t give you themselves.

“I know,” I murmured.

He gave me a long, searching look. “You need to win this.”

He said it not with tenderness, but straightforward firmness. A directive.

“I know.”

He reached out and touched my cheek.

I flinched, just because it was so unexpected. I could barely remember the last time that Vincent touched me other than to strike me in the sparring ring. And yet, a part of me wanted to lean into that small caress.

When I was very young, he used to hug me, sometimes. One of my earliest memories was laying my head against Vincent’s shoulder and experiencing the sudden jolt of realization that I felt safe. Even so young, I knew how rare it was—I felt it then like a sigh of relief, as if I’d been unknowingly holding my breath since the day my house had collapsed around me.

It had been a long, long time since I’d felt that way. One day love became not an offering of safety, but a reminder of everything cruel and dangerous in the world.

He pulled his hand away and stepped back. “Keep your ally,” he said. “But keep those teeth ready, little serpent. Watch his back, but don’t let him see yours. Because the minute you turn it, he will kill you. Use him. But never allow him to use you.”

All things I was acutely aware of. I nodded.

He reached into his pocket, then handed me another little vial of healing potion.

“Guard it,” he said. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to get more.”

I slipped the potion into my pack and slipped off into the night.

It was much more useful than a hug, anyway.

I encountered no one else on my way back to the Moon Palace. The hours this close to dawn were often quiet—most vampires had retreated to their homes by now, preparing for sleep, and the route I took was secluded.

Still, just as I was preparing to scale the walls of the Palace grounds, I paused.

I peered over my shoulder to see nothing but silent cobblestone paths and the murky, untamed outline of overgrown rose vines. Not a hint of movement. Not a single sound.

Yet, the hairs rose on the back of my neck, as if coaxed to attention by the touch of watchful eyes.

I shuddered, turned back to the wall, and hoisted myself over it.

By the time I made it up all the stairs, dawn peeked over the horizon. When I opened the apartment door, I was surprised to see that the curtains had been parted, and Raihn’s considerable form filled the space between them. He leaned against the window, one arm braced to the glass.

“Where were you?” he asked, without turning.

“That’s not your concern.” I closed the door and crossed the sitting room.

“It’s a little my concern, isn’t it? Allies and all.”

Mother, I hated that word and all he seemed to think it implied.

I said, pointedly, nothing as I went to the hall. His face tilted just enough to watch me. The silver of the moonlight had started to flush with the pink promise of the sun, outlining the strong angle of his cheekbone to his jaw, bleeding down to the muscle of his throat.

Those muscles tightened slightly as he gave me a rueful almost-smile.

“You don’t give an inch, do you?”

My eyes flicked coldly up his body.

“Do you? Or is an inch all you have to offer?”

Petty. Stupid. I didn’t even know why I said it, except that when he let out a low laugh, I found it oddly satisfying.

“Sleep well,” he said. “I hope the knife under your pillow doesn’t give you a crick in your neck.”

“I’m used to it.”

“Good. We’ll start training tomorrow. Need to prepare for the next trial.”

Fuck. The next trial. I had barely recovered from the last one, and I’d lost precious days to my recovery. We had only two weeks to prepare. And the thought of training with Raihn—and somehow managing to do that without inadvertently showing him too much—made me a little ill.

“I’m thrilled,” I said flatly, and began to return to my room. But at the last moment, I looked back over my shoulder. It was right on the cusp of daybreak. The cast on Raihn’s face was now golden—the definitive light of the sun. And still, he didn’t move, face to the horizon.

I couldn’t stop myself from asking. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

He didn’t so much as look at me. “Not too bad yet.”

Bizarre.

It was all I could do to bother myself with this vampire’s stupid self-destructive habits. I went back to my room. I threw open the curtains to let the light flood in, then dragged the desk chair to the door and wedged it firmly beneath the handle.

Sleep took me fast. I dreamed of goddesses and trials and sharpened teeth, and exactly how Nightborn steel might feel sliding deep into my back.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

We began training right away. The next trial, Waning Moon, likely wouldn’t require allies, as the Halfmoon was the only one that typically demanded teamwork. Still, Raihn and Mische seemed certain that we had an opportunity to help each other—and that five weeks of training was better than three to see if we could work well together.

I really did consider refusing. But I understood, too, that I was in no position to turn down help, even help riddled with dangerous caveats… nor the opportunity to study my enemy, even if I didn’t love that it meant they got to study me, too.

So, we trained together. It went… differently than I expected.

“What in the seven fucking hells is wrong with you?”

Worse.

So much worse.

Raihn threw his sword to the ground in an utterly childish fit of frustration. The metal hit the carpet with a forceful, deafening THUD, even against the soft surface.

Me? What the hell was wrong with me? I wasn’t the one throwing my weapons around. I drew back to the edge of the living room, glowering at him. Mische pulled her legs up onto the armchair, cringing as her eyes darted between us.

Raihn jabbed his finger at me. “We can’t cooperate if you won’t let me get close to you.”

“What do you want me to do? Crawl into your lap?”

“I won’t even dignify that with a response,” he spat. “How many times are we going to do this? We have less than a day until the trial. A day. And you’re wasting our fucking time.”

Mische heaved a sigh and rubbed her temples.

Thirteen nights of this. Night after night after night.

I was beginning to think that our cooperation in the first trial had been some sort of twisted stroke of luck. Vincent was a ruthless teacher, and I’d still take his harshest instruction—sessions that sometimes pushed me to the point of losing consciousness—over this.

I’d take it ten times over. Twenty times.

At least Vincent’s training was straightforward. I knew what he wanted from me. This? This was an exercise in choosing between two losing scenarios. We needed to learn how to cooperate, at least if this alliance thing was going to work. But I also needed to protect myself. I needed to watch Raihn as he worked and learn his strategies—in only a handful of weeks, I would need to exploit them. And at the same time, I needed to shield myself from his prying eyes.

You’ll be easy to kill later, he had told me.

Like hell I would.

But as the nights passed, I learned that these two objectives—being a strong ally and protecting myself—were in direct conflict. Each goal compromised the other, and I couldn’t afford that.

So we trained, and we bickered, and we ended each session more frustrated than the one before. But I knew the minute we began that tonight would be the night it finally exploded. Raihn woke up itching for a fight, barely grunting a greeting before grabbing his sword and launching into an especially brutal drill. No hesitation, no pleasantries, no smiles at Mische’s cheerful quips, not even any biting jokes at my expense. He came after me hard during sparring, like a man with a grudge. And later, when we switched tasks and practiced our cooperative fighting against Mische’s opposition, his annoyance at last erupted in an outburst of rage.

“Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing?” he snapped. “You’re working against me, not with me.”

This was a mistake. All of it. I should’ve just bled out in the greenhouse. I’d prefer to do that than wait for Raihn to rip my throat out, which seemed increasingly inevitable.

“Working with you? What does working with you look like, by your standards? Following you?” At his hesitation, I scoffed bitterly. “You don’t even know.”

This was someone who was used to working alone, and when he wasn’t, he was the leader. Mische was talented, especially with magic, but she was content to support. The two of them were clearly close, though I still wasn’t sure in what capacity—though by now, I gathered it wasn’t romantic. Regardless, they knew how to complement each other, Mische falling to the back while Raihn took up the forefront.

Me? That wasn’t my style. I was used to fighting alone. Two decades of training from Vincent had taught me how to do that well: survive, alone.

“What do you not understand about this, Oraya? We are going to be thrown back into that ring in one day. One day.” His lips twisted into a cruel, humorless smile. “We’ve trained together for more than a week, and I’m still not totally convinced you’re not going to stab me again the minute we’re in there.”

I wasn’t either.

“Maybe I will. Maybe it’ll be more satisfying this time.” I cocked my head, frowned. “Do women say that to you often?”

He barked a laugh. “I’m sure you’re proud of yourself for that one.”

I was, actually.

“Oraya, look—”

He took two steps forward, and just as quickly, I matched the distance away.

He paused, eyes narrowing. “What?” he said. “You’re afraid of me?”

The cocky smile had left my face. I said nothing.

“What, no smart-ass retort for that?”

He took another step forward, and again, I took one back.

“Get away from me,” I hissed.

And he said quietly, “No.”

Another step.

I hit the wall.

“Raihn,” Mische whispered, “maybe don’t…”

My palms began to sweat. Raihn was now two strides away from me. My back pressed against the wood paneling, wedged to the corner.

Even during training, I never let him get this close. He was only three strides away—two of his. That was how much larger than me he was. He wore a linen shirt that clung to his body, sweaty with the exertion of the last six hours of exercise, highlighting each swell and dip of his muscular form. His hair was bound, but over the hours, strands of it had escaped and now plastered themselves to his face and neck. I couldn’t decide if he looked more or less intimidating this way—more, because he looked a bit unhinged, and less, because I appreciated all of these unpolished things more than I appreciated any other aspect of him.

His eyes now seemed especially red, and he didn’t break them from mine for even a moment as he took another step.

“We’re allies,” he said firmly. “You need to let me get close to you.”

My heart beat faster. Faster. Faster. My throat was thick, my skin slick.

“No,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. “I don’t.”

The realization shifted in his face. “You are afraid of me.”

No I wasn’t, I told myself. Fear did not exist. Fear is just a collection of physical responses.

But I wasn’t fooling anyone. Of course he could feel my heartbeat. Of course he could smell the rush of my blood.

“Raihn…” Mische said, from the other side of the room.

“Back up,” I commanded.

“I am not going to hurt you. How close do I have to get without splitting you open to make you believe that?”

Don’t trust anyone, Vincent whispered in my ear.

Raihn took another step. “This close?”

I didn’t blink. Couldn’t. Couldn’t take my gaze off a predator this near to me. Less than one stride. So close I could count the beads of sweat on his collarbone. So close I could see the flutter of his pulse beneath the angle of his jaw.

“Stop.”

“This close?”

“Back. Up. Raihn.”

He looked me dead in the eye.

“No,” he said.

And took one more step.

“BACK THE FUCK UP.” I slammed my palm against the hard muscle of his chest.

The burst of magic blinded me. Deafened me. White-blue consumed my vision. My back smashed against the wall.

Raihn went flying across the room.

And the flare of light faded just in time for me to see the window shatter, as he went careening through the glass.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Shit!” Mische gasped. “How did you do that?”

I barely heard her over the rushing blood in my ears, and even if I had, it might as well have been my own voice in my head—because all I could think as I dove across the room was, Ix’s tits, how did I do that?

We were at the top of one of the Moon Palace’s tallest spires, hundreds of feet above the ground. Fuck, did I just kill him? I didn’t mean to. At least, not yet.

My heart in my throat, I ran to the window, thrust my head through the open frame, and—

–nearly toppled backwards as a streak of tan and black soared up from below with enough force to send my hair whipping around my face.

Raihn’s wings were spread, looking as if they were made of the night itself, a million variations of purple and red and black and rust. Almost pretty enough to distract from the sheer fury on his face.

“You,” he breathed, “are being a shit about trusting me, and yet you’ve been hiding that?”

The words sat on the tip of my tongue—I didn’t know, I don’t know how the hell I just did that—but I swallowed them down. I didn’t need them to know that I wasn’t even aware of my own abilities. Give them yet another weakness to take advantage of.

Let them be a little afraid of me, for once.

So I tucked my trembling hands into my pockets and simply shrugged. “I’m sure you’re hiding all sorts of things from me.”

“I don’t know how I ever thought this was going to work.” He landed back in the apartment. The movement was effortlessly smooth, the boundary between the sky and the ground nothing but a single graceful step. “You don’t know how to give a fuck about a single person other than yourself. Just like all the rest of them. The Nightborn princess, living up in Vincent’s castle, probably taught that the whole fucking world belonged to her. Is that what he promised you? Become just like him, learn how to double-cross all the right people, and this whole shitty dead world will be yours. Is that what you think you have waiting for you?”

“Don’t talk about my family that way,” I snarled.

He scoffed—a sound of pure hatred. “Family. What a sad life you must have.”

My fists trembled, white-knuckled at my sides. “What the hell have you done to earn my trust? Am I supposed to be so honored that you chose me that I fall into a little pile of gelatin at your feet? Typical Rishan trash. Look at where that kind of entitlement got your people before you speak that way about my father.”

The room brightened, the orange of the flames turning white in fits and bursts. A well-timed gust of wind whipped my hair and Raihn’s about our faces. His entire body was rigid, his wings still out, his eyes spearing me while mine skewered him to the wall.

Mische darted between us. “Alright. Alright. Everyone is angry. That’s enough.”

I wasn’t going to be the first one to break the stare.

“That’s enough,” she repeated, voice high and nervous.

At last, Raihn turned away.

“Fine,” I said, doing the same. “I’m done.”

“Me too.”

He simply stepped from the open window and into the night sky. I threw open the door, setting off down the hallway. Both of us left Mische standing there among the broken glass, looking hopeless.

I needed Vincent to be at our meeting spot, and yet I wasn’t all that surprised when he wasn’t. I went every night. He met me less than half of those times, and when he did, he was distracted. Something big was happening, even though he refused to tell me what it was. And similarly, maybe he sensed my mounting annoyance with my situation with Raihn, even though I never uttered a word about it. I knew well by now which things were better kept from Vincent.

But tonight I was so angry—so confused—that I would have told him everything if he had been there. He, at least, would have answers about what my magic had just done, and I needed those desperately. The force I had used to throw Raihn across the room was so wildly disproportionate to anything I’d ever managed before, and I didn’t even know how I had done it. Now, as I walked alone through the darkened streets, I tried to summon that power and was greeted with only a few familiar weak sparks at my fingertips.

Still, maybe a small part of me was grateful for my father’s absence. As much as I wanted answers, I hated to reveal emotions that I couldn’t control. And I’d already done that more than enough today. Lost control. Of my magic. Of my temper.

I had been too raw. And I had been petulant. I knew it. I had allowed Raihn to goad me and bowed to my own worst impulses. He was wrong about a lot of things—a lot of things—but maybe he was right that I needed to either choose to be an ally or properly become an enemy.

When it became clear Vincent wasn’t coming, I wandered through the deserted grounds of the Moon Palace. I longed to go to the human districts and bury this sense of helplessness with a blade in some vampire piece of shit’s chest. It had been years since I’d gone so long without it. I hadn’t even realized how reliant I was upon that release.

The first time I killed there, it had been an accident, and now, I could barely function without it.

It was only a few days after… after. My own grief and loneliness had been eating me alive. It had been years since I had been so obsessed with my own flesh, but those awful days, I had gone back to old bad habits, opening little paths of blood over my skin and watching how easily it tore, how slow it healed. I hated that my body was so weak. That it attracted in all the ways I didn’t want it to. That it bore the marks from every bad memory, like the ones that now marked my throat, then two barely-scabbed wounds.

I wasn’t sure what I had been looking for that night when I went to the human districts, but I hadn’t been looking to kill. I had never felt like less of a vampire than I did in those awful days—maybe I had been searching for whatever connection I couldn’t get in the Nightborn castle. Maybe I had hoped I would find some missing piece of myself, when I had never felt more painfully incomplete.

Instead, I had found a district full of humans who seemed like foreign creatures, and a vampire who intended to prey on them. When I saw the vampire stalking a young woman washing laundry behind her crumbling little house, I didn’t think. I just acted. It was easier than I thought it would be. I was well-trained. The vampire was not prepared for a fight.

After, I’d panicked and run back to the Nightborn castle. I spent the day in my washroom, vomiting. I couldn’t wash the blood from my hands, couldn’t scrub the sight of my victim’s face from the insides of my eyelids. I’d been certain that the minute Vincent showed up at my door, I would confess everything to him. He would lock me up for the next decade, and in that moment, I would have been grateful for it.

But the hours had passed. I lay on my bed and watched the sunlight filter through the curtains as guilt settled in my stomach like a disagreeable meal. I realized that killing that vampire—saving those humans—had made me feel powerful. And the guilt was fading, but the strength was not.

Was my guilt worth more than the life of the human woman I’d saved? Were Vincent’s arbitrary rules worth more than the countless other humans that monster would have killed, if he hadn’t been stopped? No. I hadn’t felt guilty about killing that man. I felt guilty about lying to my father.

But Vincent had made me this way, and a lie was a petty sin.

I realized that day, as I stared at the sunlight-speckled ceiling, that I’d gone a full twenty-four hours without thinking about the face that haunted me.

I wish I could say it was my noble intentions that brought me back to the slums the next night. But it wasn’t. It was my own selfishness. I’d rather dream of these dying faces than the other one. At least this made me stronger instead of weaker.

Now, I felt nothing when I killed but the satisfaction of a job well done. A mark etched upon the world. That was worth something, to a mortal living amongst immortal beings. A way for me to tell this place, You think my life is worth nothing, but I can still leave a stain on you that can’t be washed out.

My hands itched now to leave that mark, like an opium addict twitching for their next fix. But dawn was too close, and the human districts were far from the Moon Palace on foot. I couldn’t risk that journey.

Instead, I walked back the slow way, winding through deserted back paths. I remained close to the Lituro River, one of two tributaries that broke up the city and converged to form the inner city of Sivrinaj, right where the Nightborn castle sat. I often looked out over this view from my room. From up there, the streams were serene and peaceful, like elegant winding streaks of paint through the city.

Up close, it smelled like piss.

I paused at the riverbed and watched the water trickle by. A breeze trembled my hair, and with it came a warm, familiar scent—tobacco.

The hairs rose on the back of my neck. I wasn’t alone.

I glanced to my left to see another figure standing near the water, a cigarillo to his lips. He lifted his chin and let out a long exhale, the smoke silver as it caught the moonlight.

The smell hit me again, stronger, and with it came a wave of familiarity that made that seeping wound in my chest ache.

I half expected to hear Ilana’s cough. To see her face when I turned around. And Mother, I needed that. I craved it even more than I craved power.

“Hey.”

My hand on my blade, I approached the figure.

“Can I have one of those? I’ll buy it off you.”

What is wrong with you? I heard Vincent’s voice hiss in my ear. Approaching a stranger? For what?

The figure turned, cold light falling across only the lower part of his face, highlighting moon-pale skin, a narrow, angular jaw, and lips that curled slightly.

“Of course. Help yourself.”

His hand, clad in leather gloves, reached from beneath his long coat, holding a little wooden box. I reached to take it from him, but his grip didn’t let up.

He cocked his head, the movement allowing moonlight to creep further across his face. He was handsome, his features elegant and too sharp, like honed steel. Beneath a swoop of hair that was either silver or very fair blond—it was impossible to tell in the darkness—a set of yellow-amber eyes narrowed at me, then brightened in recognition.

“I know you.”

He smiled. It was the sort of smile that no doubt loosened undergarments and opened throats all over Obitraes.

“Oh?” I said.

He released the box, and I put distance between us as I slid it open and withdrew a cigarillo. Mother, I wanted to shove my face into this box. Just inhale that familiar scent and pretend it was my friend.

“I saw you in the Full Moon trial. Had a lot of bets hinged on you.” He chuckled softly and shook his head, the light catching a single ruby dangling from one ear. “The odds against you were staggering. Lot of people lost a lot of money.”

He struck a match and offered me the flame. I leaned just close enough to light my cigarillo, mumbled a thank you, and drew away.

“Sorry about your coin purse.”

A different, slower smile rolled across his lips. “Sorry? Oh no, dove. I don’t make bets I lose.” I offered him the box, and he shook his head. “Keep it. You paid for it.”

He turned away, offering one more inscrutable glance as he walked down the path. “Looking forward to tomorrow. Good luck out there.”