Текст книги "The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King"

Автор книги: Carissa Broadbent

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2

RAIHN

The last time I had stood in this room with these people, I’d been a slave.

Sometimes, I wondered if they remembered me. I was nothing to them back then, of course. Another faceless body, something more akin to a tool or a pet than a sentient being.

These people, of course, knew who I was now. Knew what my past held. But I couldn’t help but wonder, as they filed into the vast, beautiful throne room, whether they actually remembered me. They certainly didn’t remember all those little mundane cruelties, to them just another part of another night. I remembered, though. Every humiliation, every violation, every strike, every casual agony.

I remembered it all.

And now here I was, standing before the Rishan nobility, with a Goddess-damned crown on my head.

My, how things had changed.

Not as much as I wished, though. Because secretly, even after all this time, I was still terrified of them.

I hid the truth with a performance that was so carefully curated—a fucking impeccable mimicry of my former master. I stood on the dais, my hands behind my back, my wings out, my crown perfect, my eyes cold and cruel. That last part wasn’t difficult. The hatred, after all, was real.

The nobles had been called from every corner of Rishan territory. They were old power. Most of them had been in power when Neculai was king. They were as finely dressed as I remembered, swaddled in silk garments so intricate that it was obvious some poor slave had spent weeks toiling over every stitch of embroidery. Their faces held the same haughtiness, the same elegant ruthlessness that, I knew by now, was shared by all vampire nobility.

That was the same.

But a lot was different, too. Two hundred years had passed. And maybe those two hundred years hadn’t marked their bodies, but they were hard years, and those hard years had certainly marked their souls. These were the handful of powerful Rishan who had survived a violent coup and then two centuries of Hiaj rule. They’d lorded over the ruins that Vincent had allowed them to keep.

And now they were here, standing before a king they already hated, ready to fight like hell for their pile of bones.

The worst of privilege. The worst of oppression.

I lifted my chin, smirk at my lips.

“What a somber bunch,” I said. “I’d think you’d all be happier to be here, considering the circumstances of the last two centuries.”

I’d intended to make my voice sound like his. A perpetual threat. Only thing these people understood.

Still, it was a little shocking to hear it coming out of my mouth.

I loosened my grip on my magic, letting wisps of night unfurl around my wings—highlighting, I knew, the streaks of red feathers. Reminding them who I was, and why I was here.

“Nyaxia has finally seen fit to restore us to rule,” I said, pacing along the dais with slow, lazy steps. “And with the power she has granted me, I will lead the House of Night into a stronger era than ever before. I have reclaimed this kingdom from the Hiaj. From the man who murdered our king, raped our queen, decimated our people, and took our crown for two hundred years.”

I was so deeply aware of Oraya’s stare, digging into my back as I listed Vincent’s misdeeds. I was constantly conscious of Oraya, actually, through this entire act—knowing she could see right through it.

But I couldn’t show distraction. Instead, I let my lip curl in disgust.

“Now, I will make the House of Night once again something to fear. I will restore it to what it used to be.”

Every I was carefully chosen, reminding them with every sentence of my role.

I’d watched Neculai give some version of this speech countless times, and I’d watched these people lap it up like kittens at milk.

But no matter how good my acting was, I was not Neculai.

They just stared at me, the silence heavy not with reverence but with skepticism—and just a little bit of disgust.

Despite the Mark, the crown, the wings, they still saw a Turned slave.

Fuck them.

I paced the dais, staring them down. I stopped short when I saw a familiar face—a man with ash-brown hair speckled with gray at his temples, and sharp dark eyes. I recognized him immediately—faster than I’d like—because the memories came in an unwelcome, violent slash. That face, and hundreds of nights of suffering.

He resembled Neculai, in some ways. The same hard-angled features, and the same cruelty in them. That made sense. They were cousins, after all.

He’d been bad. Not the worst. That prize went to his brother, Simon, who, I noticed with a quick scan of the room, was not here today.

I paused before him, head cocked, smirk at my lips. I just couldn’t help myself.

“Martas,” I said pleasantly. “It’s a surprise to see you here. I could have sworn my invitation was addressed to your brother.”

“He couldn’t make the journey,” Martas said blandly. Downright dismissively. And there was no mistaking the way his eyes flicked up my body, the twitch of disgust at his lip.

The room was utterly silent. Harmless words on the surface. But everyone here knew what an insult they were.

Simon was one of the most powerful Rishan nobles that still remained alive—hell, the most powerful. But he was still just a noble. When a king summons, you fucking come.

“Really?” I said. “That’s a shame. What was so important?”

Martas—that snake—actually looked me straight in the eye, and said, “He’s a very busy man.”

A dark, bloodthirsty pleasure seeped through my careful composure.

“I suppose you’ll have to swear fealty on his behalf, then.” I lifted my chin, staring down my nose at him, smiling broadly enough to reveal my fangs. “Bow.”

I knew exactly what was about to happen.

Simon and Martas had believed that they had a clear path to the throne. They were the king’s only remaining relatives—surely, they must have thought, Simon would find an Heir Mark on his skin when Neculai died, as Neculai’s oldest next-of-kin.

But unfortunately for them—unfortunately for me—Nyaxia wasn’t so predictable.

The pricks had probably spent the last two hundred years assuming that no one had the Mark at all. Must have been an unpleasant shock a few weeks ago, when I revealed mine and then summoned them to Sivrinaj to kneel before the Turned slave they’d abused for seventy years.

They had no intention of doing so, and I knew that.

Martas did not move.

“I cannot,” he said.

One might have expected a gasp through the room, a ripple of murmurs. No. The crowd was silent. No one was surprised.

“My brother only swears his fealty to the rightful king of the House of Night, and I bow only to that man,” Martas went on. “You are no king.” The sneer at his lip twitched again. “I’ve seen the way you’ve defiled yourself. I can’t bow to someone who has done such things. Nor to someone who stands on a dais beside a Bloodborn prince.”

Defiled myself.

What a way to phrase it. It was almost fucking elegant, the way he made this about some non-existent moral code—as if I’d chosen anything that had happened all those years ago, and as if he hadn’t been one of the ones holding me down.

I nodded slowly, considering them. I smiled at him. It was now entirely genuine. I couldn’t have suppressed it even if I’d wanted to.

Bloodlust hammered through my body with every heartbeat, taking over.

And then Martas said, words growing faster, hand thrust to the dais, “You say you’ve freed us from the Hiaj, but I see Vincent’s whore sitting right next to your throne.”

His eyes flicked over my shoulder. Landing, I knew, on Oraya.

I knew that look. Hatred and hunger and desire and disgust, all rolled together. “Fine if you want to fuck her,” he snarled. “But look at her. So untouched. Not a scratch on her. All you need is a mouth and a cunt. Why did you bother keeping the rest?”

My smile disappeared.

I no longer found it fun to toy with him.

I had been keeping everything about this meeting calculated, deliberate. But now I moved on nothing but impulse.

“I appreciate your honesty,” I said calmly. “And I appreciate Simon’s.”

I stepped down the stairs in two long strides and placed my hands gently on either side of Martas’s face. He really did look so damned similar to how he had centuries ago.

Maybe people never changed.

I had felt different ever since Nyaxia restored the power of the Rishan heir line. I’d felt something change in me from the moment Neculai died, but I’d been able to stifle that power, subdue it into something easier to control and less likely to draw attention. But ever since that night, my magic had surged back with an uncontrollable force, like Nyaxia’s gift had ripped open a new vein of it.

It was actually something of a relief to use it at full force again.

I let it go.

Asteris was both exhausting and exhilarating to use. It felt like the raw power of the stars bursting through my skin, tearing through my body.

It tore through Martas’s, too.

The room went white, then black, then snapped back into an unpleasant sharpness.

Warmth spattered over me. A dull THUMP cut through the silence, as a broken, crushed body fell to the floor in a pile of silk.

The light faded, revealing a sea of shocked, silent faces. I held Martas’s head, the features twisted into satisfying confusion. Now, that was a new expression for him.

A few people near the front of the crowd took several quick steps back to avoid the pool of black blood spreading over the marble. There was no screaming, no hysterics. Vampires, even vampire nobles, were well accustomed to bloodshed. They weren’t horrified, no, but they were surprised.

Maybe it was unwise to murder the brother of my most powerful noble.

In this moment, I didn’t care. I felt nothing but satisfaction. I wasn’t built for this bullshit—the preening, the parties, the politics. But this? The killing?

I was good at that. Felt good to give it to someone who deserved it.

I glanced over my shoulder. I wasn’t sure why—I did it without thinking.

The look on Oraya’s face struck me.

Satisfaction. Bloodthirsty satisfaction.

The first time in weeks I’d seen something that looked like fight in her eyes. Goddess, I could’ve fucking wept for it.

There she is, I thought.

And something about the way she stared at me, right in the eyes, speared through my costume and my performance. I could practically hear her saying it, too: There he is.

I turned back to the crowd, stepping backwards up the dais steps.

“I am the Nightborn King,” I said, voice low and deadly. “Do you think I’m going to beg for your respect? I don’t need your respect. Your fear will do. Bow.”

And I let the head fall with a sickening wet thump, rolling down the stairs right into his former body. Fittingly, the position it had fallen into did indeed resemble a bow of prostration.

The nobles stared. The world held its breath.

I held my breath, and tried desperately not to show it.

I was walking a very thin line here. Vampires respected brutality, but only from the right people. I wasn’t one of the right people. Maybe I never would be.

If one or two refused to bow, I could handle that. But Heir Mark or no, I needed some loyalty from my nobles, especially if I ever wanted to get out from beneath Bloodborn control. If all of them refused—

The door burst open, the slam against the walls splitting the silence like a sword through flesh.

Vale stood in the doorway.

I never thought I would be relieved to see that man. But Ix’s tits, I had to physically stop myself from letting out a sigh of relief.

He took in the scene—me, the crowd, the advisors, Martas’s bloody body—and immediately strung together what he’d just walked into.

He strode purposefully into the room, so fast his long dark waves flew out behind him. The crowd parted for him. A woman followed him, then lingered at the back of the crowd, looking around the throne room with wide, curious eyes, curly chestnut hair piled atop her head.

“My king,” Vale said, as he approached the dais. “I apologize for my tardiness.”

Before me, he immediately dropped into a smooth kneel—right at the center of the crowd, right into the pool of Martas’s seeping blood.

“Highness.” His voice boomed through the throne room. He knew exactly what he was doing—knew to make himself as visible as possible. “You have my sword, my blood, my life. I swear to you my loyalty and my service. It is my greatest honor to serve as your Head of War.”

A strange echo of the past in those words. The last time I’d heard Vale say them, it was to Neculai. Inwardly, I cringed at hearing them directed at me.

Outwardly, I accepted them as if they were nothing but what was expected.

I lifted my gaze to the others, waiting.

Vale was a noble. He was respected. He’d just tipped some precarious scale.

Slowly at first, and then in a wave, the other nobles lowered into bows.

This was exactly what I’d wanted. Needed. And yet, the sight made me so viscerally uncomfortable. I was all at once very conscious of the crown on my head, worn by centuries of kings before me, kings who were cursed to rules of cruelty and paranoia. Kings I had killed, directly or indirectly, just like they had killed the ones who came before them.

I couldn’t help myself. I glanced over my shoulder again—just for a split second, barely long enough for anyone to notice.

Oraya’s eyes skewered me. Like she was seeing that little shard of dark honesty, stripped bare.

I looked away quickly, but that stare stayed with me, anyway.

3

ORAYA

The look on Raihn’s face lingered with me longer than I wish it did. Why would he give me that? Something so honest.

I hated that I knew it was honest.

I was ushered out of the throne room quickly after that, Raihn striding away without giving his nobles a second glance, casual in a way that I knew was calculated. Ketura’s guards flanked me, and Raihn walked several steps ahead, though I could see the whitened knuckles at his side. He didn’t even say a word to me as Cairis, Ketura, and the noble—his new Head of War?—flocked around him, the group of them disappearing down a side hallway while the guards ushered me to the staircase that led back to my rooms.

Septimus joined me several steps up. I smelled him before I heard him. He walked silently, but that damned cigarillo smoke gave him away.

“Well that,” he said, “was interesting, wasn’t it?”

He eyed the guards, who had visibly stiffened in his presence.

“Oh, pardon my rudeness. Am I interrupting?”

The guards said nothing. As always.

Septimus smirked, satisfied with this non-answer.

“I knew your husband’s past was a subject of… we’ll call it controversy, among the Rishan nobles,” he went on, to me. “But I have to say, that exceeded my expectations. Suppose I’ll probably have to call in more troops from the House of Blood.” He flicked ash to the marble staircase, grinding it under his heel. “Looks like the Rishan won’t be much help, if that’s the best they have to offer.”

We turned up another flight of stairs.

I had nothing to say. Septimus’s words floated through me like background noise.

“You,” he said at last, “have gotten much quieter.”

“I don’t just talk for the sake of hearing my own voice.”

“That’s a shame. You always had such interesting things to say.”

He was playing with me, and I hated it. If I’d had the energy, maybe I would’ve granted his wish and snapped at him.

I didn’t have the energy, so I said nothing.

We made it to the top floor. Just as we rounded the corner, my bedchamber door ahead, quick steps approached from behind. Desdemona, one of Septimus’s guards, fell into stride beside him.

“Pardon, Highness. We have an issue.”

Septimus and Desdemona fell back, while I kept walking. Still… my ears perked.

“It’s about the attack on Misrada,” Desdemona was saying, voice low. “We’ll need to pull troops from the armory if we want to get enough men in two weeks—”

My door swung open, jerking my attention back. The familiar haven—prison—of my bedchamber opened before me.

“Well, then do it,” Septimus was saying, sounding impatient. “I don’t care about—”

I walked inside.

The door shut behind me, closing me in once again. I loosened the buttons on my dress and immediately flopped onto the bed, waiting for the all-too-familiar sound of my door. Four clicks. Four locks.

Click.

Click.

I waited. Seconds passed. Footsteps faded.

My brow furrowed. Curiosity piqued for the first time in weeks.

I sat up.

Had I imagined it? My mind had been blurry lately. Maybe I’d missed the other two.

I went to the door and squinted into the crack. Two shadows interrupted the sliver of light from the hall. The upper two locks—simple sliding bars—were closed.

And the bottom two had been left open.

Fuck.

My first day here, I’d managed to get three of the locks open. It was the bottom one, the big deadbolt, that had evaded me. But now…

I stepped away from the door, sizing it up the way I’d size up an opponent in the ring. A glimmer of a foreign, unpracticed sensation—hope—stirred in my chest.

I could get those locks open. I could get out.

It was nighttime still, albeit nearing dawn. I should wait until the sun rose and the vampires had mostly gone to their respective rooms. Then I winced—thinking of the room right next to mine, and the man within who’d be back any minute. Vampire hearing was impeccable. If I tried to get out while he was there, he’d know it.

But… I’d paid attention to Raihn’s movements, too. He spent very little time in his room. Oftentimes, he didn’t return until well after sunrise.

So, I’d have to gamble. Wait until tomorrow—wait long enough that most vampires had gone to sleep, but not long enough that Raihn had.

And then what?

You know this castle better than anyone here, little serpent, Vincent whispered to me, and I flinched, as I always did when I heard his voice.

He was right, though. Not only had I lived in this castle my entire life, I’d learned how to sneak around it with no one noticing—not even the last King of the Nightborn.

I just needed to bide my time.

4

RAIHN

“That,” Cairis muttered, “was a shit show.”

“I don’t think it went that badly.”

Ketura closed the door behind us. The room was simultaneously too empty and so messy you couldn’t think in it. It had been a library before—a room devoted to displaying items that were very beautiful, very old, or very expensive, and usually all three. Ketura had commanded most of the castle be stripped—for information, for traps—and some poor servant had gotten halfway through pulling the books off the shelves before she decided that this particular room was the only acceptable base of operations.

Now, it was a haphazard disaster—the shelves on one side bare, piles of books shoved into a corner. The long table at the center of the room was covered with notes and maps and books and a few discarded glass goblets from the night before, congealing red crusted at their bottoms.

Vincent had been in power for two-hundred years. There was a lot of clutter to strip away.

I was secretly grateful for it.

The night the Kejari ended, I had flown here with a pit of dread in my stomach. I’d had more than enough distractions—Oraya’s unconscious body in my arms, Vincent’s blood all over my hands, an Heir Mark burning on my back, and an entire fucking kingdom on my shoulders. And yet, I’d still paused at the doors of this castle, the memory of the past chasing me.

Maybe that made me a coward.

But two hundred years was a long time. The place looked very different under Vincent’s rule. It was enough to disguise the worst of the memories, night-to-night. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to visit some wings at all.

I dragged a seat out and sat down heavily, propping my heels up on the corner of the table. The chair groaned slightly under my weight. I let my head fall back and stared at the ceiling—silver tiles, etched with Hiaj wings. Ugh.

“What were you going to do if Vale didn’t show up when he did?” Cairis asked. “Slaughter them all?”

“Doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” I said. “It’s what the great Neculai Vasarus would have done.”

“You aren’t him.”

Something about his tone made my head snap up.

He said that like it was a bad thing.

That thought sickened me. For some reason, my mind drifted back to the night of the wedding, and the promise I had made Oraya when I’d practically begged her to work with me.

We’ll rip apart the worlds that subjugated both of us, and from the ashes we’ll build something new.

I’d meant every word of it.

But Oraya had just looked at me with hatred and disgust, and hell if I could blame her for that. And now here I was picking blood out from under my fingernails, deciding how to best make myself just like the man who had destroyed me.

She could always see right through the bullshit.

A knock rang out, thankfully interrupting that line of conversation. Ketura opened the door, and Vale stepped in. He paused and bowed his head to me as he closed the door behind him.

“Highness.”

Sometimes, it’s the little things that make the reality of a situation hit you.

Vale’s over-the-top declaration of fealty hadn’t done it. But this, this casual little half bow, the exact same one he used to give Neculai—it made me feel as if I was two centuries in the past, my former master standing right behind me.

Ketura had wanted Vale as my Head of War. She was good at execution, but we needed someone strategic. And Cairis had insisted that it be someone with noble blood—someone respected by all the people who wouldn’t respect me. “To legitimize you,” he’d said.

Legitimize. I had a blessing from a goddess and an ugly magical tattoo I couldn’t get rid of. Yet it was Vale who was going to give me “legitimacy.”

It was hard for me to forget. No, Vale had never participated in the depravity quite like the others did. Maybe he thought consensual lovers were more enthusiastic. Maybe he inflicted enough bloodshed at work that it wasn’t what he wanted to do for fun.

Didn’t make him a saint. And it didn’t mean that he didn’t still look at me as a slave.

“I apologize for my lateness today,” he said. “Storms over the seas.”

“You can’t control the wind. And I’m sure your wife probably needed time to recover.”

A blink.

“From the Turning,” I clarified. Then smiled. “Congratulations, by the way.”

Vale’s eyes hardened, gleaming like those of a guard dog barely tethered.

Did he think I was threatening her? It’s what Neculai would have done.

But no. I just didn’t like that Vale had Turned some human woman and dragged her over here. I didn’t like it at all.

“It went as well as it could have,” he said. “She’s resting. A bit seasick on the journey. I wanted to get her settled.”

His expression softened, and that… that, I wasn’t quite expecting. It looked oddly close to actual affection.

I wasn’t sure if that made me feel any better. Neculai had loved Nessanyn, his wife. Hadn’t saved her from anything.

“Well. I’m glad you made it.” I gestured to the table and the maps strewn across it. “Plenty to catch you up on, as you can see.”

The consensus, after hours of talking, was that we were in deep shit.

Vale thought it was stupid that I had taken Septimus’s deal.

He thought it was very stupid that I had done so without negotiating his terms.

And he thought it was monumentally stupid that I had kept Oraya alive.

I dismissed these criticisms as casually as I could manage. I couldn’t justify why I had made those decisions without revealing more than I wanted to about my true motivations—motivations that held none of the vicious cruelty they wanted to see from me.

Still, the reality of our situation was bleak. The Hiaj were not backing down. They held on to several key cities. Two hundred years of power had made their forces strong. Vincent, even at the height of his power, hadn’t rested. He’d continued building his strength and whittling down the Rishan until we had almost nothing left.

That meant our brute strength relied almost completely on the Bloodborn. And yes, the bastards were efficient at what they did. They had bodies, and they were willing to throw them at anything. With the Bloodborn’s help, we’d managed to beat back many of the biggest Hiaj strongholds.

But it also meant that if Septimus decided to withdraw, we would be fucked. The Rishan forces just weren’t capable of holding up against the Hiaj alone.

Vale did not hide his frustration with this situation. A couple of centuries away from polite society had made him even more blunt than he used to be, which was saying something. Still, I had to admit that he was good at what he did. He ended the meeting with a list of recommendations to strengthen our position, and when we disbanded, he was already following Ketura out the door with a list of questions about our armies.

Cairis, though, lingered after Vale and Ketura were gone. I hated that—the hovering. He used to do it back then, too, when he was going to try to whisper something in someone’s ear and make it seem like it had all been their idea.

I sighed. “I don’t need to be handled. Just say it.”

“Fine. I’ll be straightforward. That went badly. We already knew the nobles hated you. Now—”

“Nothing was going to stop them from hating me. Actually, maybe we should’ve thought of that as a test. Which noble would bow willingly?”

“If it was a test,” Cairis said drily, “then no one passed.”

“Exactly. So let’s just execute them all.”

He gave me a long, steady stare, like he was trying to decide if this was a joke.

It was not. I raised my eyebrows, a silent, Well?

“Do you have people to install in their places?” he said.

“I could find someone.”

He leaned across the table, weaving his fingers together. “Who? Do tell.”

I hated when Cairis was right about things. He was just so damned smug about it.

“I’m just saying that you need to be careful.” His voice lowered, as if to evade prying ears. “We already rely far too heavily on the Bloodborn.”

Understatement. Septimus practically had me bent over his desk.

“The last thing we need,” he went on, “is to destroy the loyalty of the scant forces we do have. Appearances are everything. Which brings me to…” He cleared his throat. “Her.”

I rose, my hands stuffed in my pockets, and paced the room.

“What about her?”

A beat of silence that said, You know what.

Cairis seemed to be choosing his words with uncharacteristic care. “She is a danger to you.”

“She can’t act against me.”

“She won the Kejari, Raihn.”

My hand found its way to my chest—right where her dagger had pierced it. There was no scar, no mark. There wouldn’t be—with Oraya’s wish, the act had been undone. I could’ve sworn I felt it sometimes, though. Right now, it pulsed with a vicious throb.

But I hid all that as I turned to him with a smug smirk. “You can’t say it doesn’t look good, to have Vincent’s daughter leashed at my side.”

I’d always been a good mimic. I slipped a little of Neculai’s cruelty into my voice, just like I had that day in the ring, when I justified letting Oraya live with a litany of atrocities.

Cairis’s face was stone, unconvinced.

“After what he did to Nessanyn,” I added, “don’t you think we deserve that satisfaction?”

He flinched at the mention of Nessanyn. Just like I knew he would. Just like I often did, when old memories caught me off guard.

“Maybe,” he admitted, after a long moment. “But it doesn’t do anything to help her now.”

I swallowed and turned to the wall of books, pretending to admire the trinkets on the shelves.

I didn’t like to think about Nessanyn. But I’d been doing it a lot these last few weeks. She was everywhere in this castle. All of it was everywhere here.

I couldn’t help Nessanyn when she was alive. I couldn’t help her when she was dead. And here I was, just using her memory to manipulate the people around me.

She had been used her entire life. Now she was being used in death, too.

Cairis wanted me to be just like Neculai. He didn’t even know how close he was to getting that wish.

I withdrew my hands from my pockets. Some of Martas’s blood still remained under my fingernails.

“Don’t you hate them?” I said.

I’d meant for the question to sound more lilting, more casual, than it really did.

Because Cairis had been there for all of it, too. Just another one of Neculai’s pets.

And yet now he could sit here and advocate for an alliance with the people who had inflicted unimaginable degradation upon us. It genuinely amazed me.

“Of course I hate them,” he said. “But we need them. For now. Who wins if you kill them all and we lose the House of Night to Septimus? Not us. She used to say that, too, remember?” I turned to see a soft, distant smile on his face—a rare expression from him. “‘Remember who wins.’”

He said it fondly, but my teeth ground.

Yes, I remembered. Couldn’t even count how many times I got right up to the edge, just about to strike back. And whenever it happened, Nessanyn would stop me. Don’t let them win, she would beg, her big brown eyes deep and damp. Who wins if he kills you?

“I remember,” I said.

Cairis shook his head, a sad smile at his lips. “We were all a little in love with her, right?”

Yes, we were all a little in love with Nessanyn. I had been the one sleeping with her, but all of us loved her. How could you not, when she was the only kindness you knew? The only one who treated you like a person instead of a collection of body parts?

“So think about that,” he said. “That’s what I do. Whenever I feel it, I ask myself, Who wins?”

He said it like it was some great proverb, some enlightening wisdom.

“Hm,” I said, thoroughly unconvinced.

I didn’t really sleep much these days.

The castle had an entire wing that was intended to be the king’s residence. I’d visited it nearly a full week after the takeover, putting it off for as long as I could. The decorations were different, and yet so much was the same.

I’d walked through all the rooms in silence.

I paused at a doorway, at a dent carved into the dark wood—a dent I remembered being made with Ketura’s head, centuries ago, then barely even visible beneath the blood. I could still feel the marks where her teeth had dug into the trim.

I’d paused, too, at Vincent’s bureau. It had all been pulled apart, his clothes strewn across the room. The top was adorned with little trinkets that were probably worth more than most estates. But mixed in among those treasures were little aged pieces of paper with handwriting that I recognized as Oraya’s—though in the clumsy curls of a child. All were studies, it looked like. Notes on fighting stances.