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

Автор книги: Carissa Broadbent

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Текущая страница: 30 (всего у книги 37 страниц)

“Perfect match,” Raihn said. “You’ve completed the set.”

They did look nice together. But more than that, it felt good to have one more connection to the past that had been taken from me.

“Thank—”

A sudden shock jolted through me. I gasped, lurching upright, pressing my hand to my chest.

My hand—My chest—

“What?” Raihn was already half-standing, one hand on my arm, ready to call for Alya. “What is it?”

I didn’t even know how to answer that question. I felt… strange. The last time I’d felt this way, it was when I’d looked down to see the Heir Mark tattooed over my chest. My breath came in rapid gasps. My hand, my throat—“burning” wasn’t quite the right word, but they—

I forced my hand away from my throat, splaying it out flat, doing my best to hold it steady through the tremors.

Raihn and I stared down at it.

“Well, fuck,” he whispered.

Fuck, indeed.

Inked over the back of my hand, in a triangle formed between the ring and the bracelet, was a map.

62

ORAYA

All this time, I had been trying so desperately to decode my father’s past, my father’s secrets, to find the power I needed to reclaim my kingdom.

How fitting that in the end, it was my mother who gave me the answer.

Raihn and I hastily set up the mirror, dripping my blood into it and summoning an extremely relieved Jesmine. Vale, Mische, and Ketura joined her, and we called Alya into the room too, showing her the map on my skin.

Once the initial shock wore off, Alya seemed equal parts proud and sad when she pieced together what she was looking at. It was a spell, she explained, forged into the metalwork of the jewelry, only to be activated once all three were worn together by its intended bearer.

“My sister’s magic,” she said softly. “I’d recognize it anywhere.”

She touched the bracelet—an affectionate caress.

“Too smart for her own good, that one,” she muttered. “Always was.”

“Wouldn’t Vincent have known if the ring was enchanted?” I asked. “He was a powerful magic user, too.”

“Of Nyaxia’s magic, yes. But he wouldn’t have had enough experience with Acaeja’s to know what to look for.”

A lump rose in my throat, my thumb sweeping over the little black ring. The one token he’d allowed me to have from my former life. Little did he know.

The map on the back of my hand depicted the House of Night, or at least a small part of it—Vartana in the bottom left corner, Sivrinaj in the upper right, and a little star marked at the top center, right over my knuckle. No town or city existed there. It was right in the middle of the desert, nothing but ruins.

Ruins that still managed to be uncomfortably, dangerously close to Sivrinaj.

“Do you have any idea what this could be?” I asked Alya.

I knew what I hoped it could be. I didn’t want to dream. It seemed like too much to possibly wish for.

Alya tilted her head, thoughtful.

“In the end, she was scared,” she said. “Scared of whatever she was helping him do. I remember that. She never would tell me the details, but I know my sister. I think—I think she was growing afraid of what that kind of power could do in the hands of someone so distrustful, especially if he was the only one who had access to it. Perhaps, she may have given you a path to that power too, just in case, knowing that your blood may allow you to wield it.” A barely-there smile—a little sad, a little proud. “I can’t say for sure. But I can imagine that.”

I let out a shuddering exhale of relief, and with it, a flood of affection for the mother I barely remembered.

She saved us. Goddess, she saved us.

“That’s if Septimus hasn’t already gotten to whatever this is,” Jesmine pointed out. “Whatever power he’d given Simon wasn’t of this world. I’m certain of that.”

But Alya shook her head firmly. “Based on what they described, what you saw wasn’t any creation of my sister’s. It sounds like cobbled-together magic. An activator hacked apart to force it to work with something it wasn’t intended to.”

“An activator,” Raihn repeated. “The pendant.”

Mische looked proud of herself—because this had always been her suspicion.

“From what you’ve described, it sounds like it,” Alya said. “I’d assume that Vincent would have created multiple activators with Alana’s help. And any of them, used with the right magic, could be twisted and modified to work with a power similar enough to their intended target. But it would be ugly, and it would be dangerous. Probably deadly to whoever used it, eventually.”

I remembered Simon’s glazed-over, bloodshot eyes and shuddered.

Yes, that was certainly ugly. He’d looked like he was already mostly dead.

“So Septimus only got a piece of what he wanted,” Raihn said, “in the form of the pendant. It worked enough, for now. But it means it’s unlikely he has what he really came here for.”

“Meaning that the god blood, if it exists,” I added, “is probably still out there.”

I curled my fingers and gazed down at my hand, shifting it beneath the firelight. The strokes of red shivered slightly, like moonlight through rippling leaves.

“This all sounds,” Vale said, “like a lot of conjecture.”

“It is,” Raihn replied. “But it’s also all we have.”

“I accept that sometimes we need to act based on what we don’t know,” Vale said. “But what I do know is that Simon and his armies will be coming for us at any moment, and if they meet us now, they will win. I know that they’re searching for you both, and this map takes you right by Sivrinaj. I know that if you go there, they’ll know, and they will come after you with far more power than you two could possibly fight off alone. So if we choose to make this our gamble, then it will need to be a big one.”

A wry smile tugged at the corner of Raihn’s mouth. “How big, exactly?”

Vale was silent. I could practically see him questioning all the life decisions that led him to this moment.

“We all converge there,” he said at last. “Whatever men we have left, ready to meet them one more time. We hold them off while Oraya... does whatever she needs to do. And we pray to the Mother that whatever she finds there is powerful enough to buy us a victory.”

I felt a little nauseous.

Raihn threw back his head and laughed.

“Oh,” he said. “Is that all?”

“I told you it was a big gamble,” Vale said, annoyed.

“What else can we do?” Mische asked, grabbing the mirror and tipping it toward her. “If Raihn and Oraya go by themselves, they get killed. If we wait for Simon to come for us, we get killed. If we attack Sivrinaj again, we get killed.” She threw her hands up. “It sounds like this is the only option that gives us a tiny little chance of maybe not getting killed.”

“Other than surrender,” Jesmine pointed out, which earned a face of disgust from every single person in the conversation.

“If we surrender,” I said, “they kill us all, anyway. And that’s not how I want to go.”

At least this way, I’ll die doing something.

No one disagreed.

We were all silent for a long, long moment.

It was outlandish. It was dangerous. It was downright foolish in its riskiness.

It was also all we had.

My eyes slipped to Raihn—and he was already looking at me, resolve firm in his gaze. I knew that look. Same one we would give each other before yet another impossible Kejari trial.

“So it’s decided,” he said. “We go down fighting in the name of blind fucking hope.”

None of us could argue with that.

At least if we were idiots, we were all idiots together. That counted for something, I supposed.

The gears were, once again, set in motion. Alya left not long after, citing errands, leaving Raihn and I alone at her worn kitchen table. We spent the rest of the day there, strategizing with frequent correspondence with Jesmine and Vale. The hours blurred together.

When Alya returned, some time later, she was not alone.

I was so focused—and so exhausted—that I didn’t even hear the door open, until I glanced up from my maps to see Raihn sitting rod-straight, looking at the door like he wasn’t sure whether to run or attack.

Alya closed the door behind her and her two companions: a mustached man with cropped, peppered hair, and a woman, a fair bit younger, with curly dark hair bound tight at the back of her head. Both prominently bore weapons hanging at their hips—the woman a sword, and the man an axe.

I stiffened. For a second, the prospect of Alya’s betrayal nearly shattered me.

“They’re friends,” Alya said quickly at our reaction, raising her palms. “Oraya, Raihn, this is my husband, Jace. And my friend, Tamyra.”

Raihn didn’t relax, and neither did I. I didn’t quite like the way either of them were sizing us up—especially the woman, Tamyra, who seemed like she hadn’t quite decided that she wasn’t going to kill us yet.

Alya glanced between all of us and heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Mother help us, no one has time for this. That’s not necessary, Tamyra.”

The man approached first, each step slow, his eyes locked onto me. I rose, just because it seemed like I should. It wasn’t until he was just a pace away that I saw the gleam in his eyes—the shine of almost-tears.

“You look just the same,” he said, deep voice rough. “Never thought we’d see you again, Alya and I, we —”

He snapped his jaw shut, as if abandoning words.

And then he lowered to his knees.

It took everything in me not to jump—because I found the gesture that startling. And it was even more startling when, behind him, Tamyra approached and lowered into a kneel as well, bowing her head before me.

“Highness,” she said. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

Mother, this was bizarre.

I cleared my throat. “You may... rise.”

My voice sounded much weaker than Vincent’s ever had when issuing that command.

Jace and Tamyra stood, and Tamyra stepped forward. With the lantern light falling across her face, I could see that she was heavily scarred—an angry pink slash across one cheek, and even what looked like fang marks on her throat, barely visible beneath the grease-stained fabric of her collar.

“I know you’re very busy, so I don’t ask for much of your time.” Her voice was low and brusque—the kind of voice that was impossible not to listen to. “My king, my queen, I consider myself a protector of this city. For nearly twenty years, my soldiers and I have looked after the safety of the people who live in these districts. I’m sure you know that in the House of Night, that’s often not an easy task.” Her gaze lingered on mine. “I hear rumors that you’ve acted in a role much like mine for some years now.”

Once, not long ago, I would have been embarrassed to have my nighttime activities so blatantly named. Not anymore. I wasn’t ashamed of what I’d done.

“There aren’t too many of us, but we have enough,” she went on. “We network across cities throughout the House of Night. Don’t have a presence everywhere, yet, but we’re expanding every day. Organizing. Teaching humans how to protect themselves. The thing is, our work has gotten a lot easier these last few months.”

Her eyes slipped to Raihn, full of reluctant admiration, though clearly much warier of him than she was of me.

“I’ve come to thank you,” she said, “for prioritizing the safety of your human citizens.”

Raihn kept his face neutral. But maybe I was the only one who saw his tell—the little bob of his throat.

“I was human once,” he said. “A part of me always will be. Just seemed like the fair thing to do.”

“Past kings didn’t agree.”

“I don’t agree with much about past kings.”

A ghost of a smile, like Tamyra liked hearing this. She turned back to me.

“I’ve come to make an offer to you, King Raihn, Queen Oraya, from one human to another.”

Queen Oraya. Two words that left me slightly dizzy.

I didn’t show it.

“If you can guarantee that you will continue to protect the safety of your human population during your reigns,” she said, “then I can guarantee we’ll offer whatever forces we have into helping you keep that reign.”

My brows lurched before I could stop them.

“Like I said, we don’t have many,” she went on, “A few hundred, among the cities close enough to offer up troops in time for your march. My soldiers probably aren’t as strong as the vampire warriors you’re accustomed to. But we’re well trained, and we’re loyal as hell, and we know how to fight. You’ll be glad you have us.”

And then she just stared at us, expectant.

I could feel Raihn’s eyes on me too, as if to say, Go on, princess. This one’s yours.

“Thank you,” I said. “We would be honored to have your men fighting beside us.”

No flowery words. No performances. Just the truth.

I extended my hand.

Tamyra stared at it for a moment, blinking in confusion—which made me realize that probably, most queens didn’t go around accepting oaths of loyalty with a handshake.

But then she grasped my hand firmly, a slow smile spreading over her lips.

“Then I won’t waste time,” she said. “I’ll gather my soldiers and send word to the others. We move at your command.”

I released her hand, she bowed once more, and left. Once she was gone, Jace approached, carrying a canvas sack.

“You’ll need a weapon, I figured,” he said. “But I can’t salvage this, I’m afraid.”

He dumped the bag out on the table with a clatter, and my chest clenched.

The Taker of Hearts.

It was in pieces. My father’s sword had been decimated, reduced to nothing but faintly glowing, red shards. Even the hand guard was hopelessly warped.

“Jace and I can make magic-touched weapons together,” Alya said, joining us beside the table. “We might have been able to repair this one, if more of it was intact. But...”

She didn’t have to say anything more. If the debris on the table was all that remained of it, then more than half the blade was missing.

I picked up one of the shards, pressing it to my palm. The magic thrummed against my skin, calling to my blood—Vincent’s presence near, as if his ghost loomed over the corpse of his prized weapon.

Another piece of him gone.

I had so wanted to preserve this weapon—to be worthy of wielding it. When I’d finally managed it, I felt like I’d achieved something he’d always held just out of my grasp, even if I had to do it in his death.

Yes, the sword was powerful. But was that really why it had meant so much to me?

Or was it just another way of chasing the approval of a dead man who couldn’t give it to me?

I didn’t even like wielding rapiers. Never had.

“The magic in it is strong,” Alya said. “It would be a shame to waste it. I couldn’t recreate it from scratch, but we may be able to use the pieces—”

“Could you forge them into something else?” I asked.

They exchanged a glance. “It’d be tough,” Jace said. “But I’ve done harder.”

I opened my palm and let the shard fall to the table with a metallic plink. Vincent’s ghost stepped back into the shadows.

“Could you make them,” I asked, “into dual blades?”

I glanced back at Raihn, and the pride in his face caught me off-guard. His eyes crinkled with a barely-there, knowing smirk.

And Goddess damn him, I could practically hear him saying it:

There she is.

63

ORAYA

Raihn and I left the next day.

The orders had been given. The armies had been rallied. The contingencies had been accounted for. It seemed ridiculous to think there was little more we could do to prepare, but the truth was that time was more precious than planning for outcomes we couldn’t guarantee.

Raihn and I flew off on our own. We’d set up rendezvous points with the other armies, which would be marching out not long after we left. We’d get a small head start, which, we all prayed, would allow us to slip by unnoticed while Simon and Septimus were distracted by the movement of our forces. Having everyone move individually would hopefully mean a much smaller chance of being intercepted.

We left with only sparse supplies, the new blades that Jace and Alya had forged for me at my hips. When they’d presented them to me before we left, I was speechless, cradling the weapons for so long that they exchanged an awkward glance.

“If they won’t work for you—” Alya had started.

“No. No, they’re beautiful.”

Beautiful was a pitiful word, actually, for what these were. Once I’d thought that the Nightborn craftsmanship of the blades Vincent had given me was the epitome of deadly elegance. But these—I’d never seen anything like them before. A mix of vampire and human artistry, the blades seamlessly melded between fresh polished steel and the red shards of what had once been the Taker of Hearts. I’d sketched my previous swords for Jace, and he’d achieved an incredible recreation, tailoring them to my preference in style and weight—the blades slightly curved, and incredibly light.

When my hands folded around those hilts, it felt like coming home. I could still feel the echo of Vincent’s presence when I touched them, but it was only an echo—a part, not the whole.

These felt like mine.

Raihn and I flew for a long time without talking much, keeping an eye out for Rishan spies patrolling the air. I was glad we were leaving Alya’s quickly, because Jesmine and Vale both suspected that Simon either knew where we were or would very soon, given how many resources he and Septimus would be pouring into finding us. Several times, we had to carefully reroute to avoid guards in the skies, hiding ourselves in the clouds.

We weren’t far from our destination. The map on my hand moved with us, shifting in scale and angle to show us our position relative to our target. It was only a day’s travel, even with the convoluted detours.

When dawn approached, we stopped in the desert and pitched a tent, hidden in a rocky area of stone and brush that would hide our location from above. We’d pushed our timing as far as we could on such a cloudless day—the sun was already peeking over the horizon by the time we crawled inside. The shelter was barely big enough for both of us, designed to be temporary and portable.

Raihn let out a grunt as he flopped down on the rough, uneven ground. We hadn’t bothered packing bedrolls—we could sleep anywhere, we figured, for a single day. Better to save the weight.

“Now this,” he said, “is what I expected when I became a king.”

“I’m sure you’ll miss it tomorrow.”

“You’re probably right.”

He was still smiling, but the joke seemed a little less lighthearted.

I lay down beside him, hands folded over my stomach, staring up at the canvas. The fabric was so lightweight that while it kept out the worst of the sun, I could make out the outline of it through the cream fabric, like an all-seeing eye.

I thought about the hundreds of vampire soldiers sleeping today in tents just like this one, staring up at this sky, wondering if they were going to die tonight.

“They must be on their way,” I murmured.

They. The Rishan. The Hiaj. The humans. Simon and Septimus. Everyone.

“Mm. Probably.”

Raihn rolled over. I did the same, so we lay face to face. We were so close that I could see every strand of color in his eyes, faintly illuminated by the light through the canvas. So many disparate strands—brown and purple and blue and red and near-black. I wondered if they’d looked like that when he was human.

I found myself trying to commit them to memory, those eyes. Like coins I wanted to slip into my pocket.

In his presence, I felt safer than I did anywhere else. And yet, sometimes when I looked at him, paralyzing fear seized me, so much sharper than the fear I felt for myself.

In these moments, I thought of what Raihn’s dead body had looked like in the colosseum sands, and I couldn’t breathe.

A wrinkle formed between his brows. His thumb brushed my cheek, then the corner of my mouth.

“What’s that face for, princess?”

I didn’t know how to answer that question. “I’m scared” didn’t say enough and said too much.

Instead of answering, I leaned forward and pressed my mouth against his.

The kiss was more than I had intended it to be. Deeper, softer, slower. He met it with equal fervor, lips melting against mine, tongue caressing me with gentle strokes. So easily, my hands found his face, pulling him closer as his touch fell to my sides. He lowered me to the ground, his body moving over mine, natural as the movement of the ocean over the shore, our kisses never parting.

We’d never been quite like this. I wanted to feel him from every angle before I died.

My fingertips ran down over his bare torso, tracing the lines and valleys of his muscles and scars with something akin to reverence. His played at the hem of my undershirt, and I whimpered my approval against his lips. Heat built between us, in the small sliver of flesh where my stomach met his. But it wasn’t the raging, out-of-control fire of our previous encounters. It was the heat of a fireplace in a comfortable home, warm and familiar.

And yet, dangerous. Dangerous in its safety.

I shifted further beneath his body, my thighs opening around his hips, so his erection pressed against my core.

He pulled away just enough to break our kiss, his nose still brushing mine. His hair dangled around his face, tickling my cheeks. Those magnificent eyes searched mine. They seemed pained and full—full of words that matched the ones I couldn’t bring myself to say.

“Oraya,” he murmured.

“Sh,” I whispered. “We don’t have to.”

And I kissed him again.

Again.

I felt his entire body melt with his acquiescence. His weight settled over me. I yanked at my camisole and he reached down to loosen my trousers. We shimmied out of our remaining clothing, shedding it between kisses, before his weight settled over me again, skin against skin.

I’d never had him like this before.

Never had anyone like this, since the night I lost my virginity and nearly lost my life for it. Even in fantasies, the idea of being so trapped had been inconceivable. And yet, now I craved so deeply the very thing that I’d found repulsive for so long—I wanted him to surround me. I wanted to feel his weight over me. I wanted as much of my skin against him as I could offer him.

Those kisses, soft and searching, never broke. I reached down and aligned him with my entrance.

One push, and he was everywhere.

I gasped against his mouth, capturing his groan. My legs folded around his waist, opening more to ease him deeper. His first stroke was slow and deep, as if he wanted to savor what it felt like, before he withdrew.

“Oraya,” he murmured.

“Sh,” I whispered against his mouth, and kissed him again, languidly, exploring every angle.

And that was the pace he kept, too, each thrust patient and deep and thorough, like he wanted to sear it all into memory—my skin, my body, and what it felt like to be inside me.

How did I know that was what he was doing?

Maybe it was because I was doing the same. Committing him to memory. Making sure that every movement, every breath, every sound he made was marked onto my soul. I wanted to capture him like rainwater. I wanted to savor him like blood. I wanted him to open me and touch everything within me that I’d hidden away from the world. How could there be so much pleasure in vulnerability? How could there be so much pleasure in fear?

My hips rolled with him, wringing that slow pleasure from every stroke of his cock, drowning in the way his breath hitched against our kisses with each movement, each contraction of my muscles.

The slow fire was building, building, into something overwhelming, consuming us both. But never out of control. Never terrifying.

My exhales became moans, matched by his, swallowed in each other’s breaths. I wouldn’t let him go, even when our pace quickened, even when breathing through our kisses grew clumsy and desperate.

I wanted to feel it through my entire body when he came, feel the way his muscles strained, hold him against me in those final moments.

He pushed deep into me now, hard. Goddess, I wanted more. Needed more. And yet, I never wanted this moment to end.

The need to tell him something, everything—Mother, I didn’t even know what, only that it was so big, so important, so overwhelming—rose in my throat.

But I couldn’t wrangle whatever I was feeling into words.

So I choked out, “Raihn,” against his lips, a question, an answer, a plea.

Because that name was all those things, wasn’t it? Raihn. My downfall and my most valuable supporter. My weakness and my strength. My worst enemy and the greatest love I had ever known.

All of that in one name. One person. One soul I knew as well as my own, just as confusing, just as flawed.

Pleasure built, spiked, in the place where we were connected.

I wanted to feel him everywhere. Give him everything.

“Raihn,” I whimpered again, not even knowing what I was asking.

“I know, princess,” he whispered. “I know.”

And then, just as I knew we were both rushing to the precipice, he broke our kiss and pulled away.

I let out a small sound of protest, starting to move after him, needing to taste him in that moment of climax.

“Let me watch you,” he murmured, voice rough. “Please. One last time.”

And Mother, the way he said it. Like it was the only thing he wanted out of his life before he let it go.

I couldn’t deny him even if I’d wanted to, because then he reached down and guided my thighs wider, opening me more for one final push, touching the deepest parts of me.

My back arched, pushing myself against his chest. I didn’t mean to cry out, but the sound escaped me anyway, uncontrollable. My fingernails dug into his shoulder, clutching him through the wave of pleasure—clutching him so I could feel him straining too, riding with me into the end.

But even as we lost ourselves, neither of us closed our eyes. We watched each other, gazes locked, bare and exposed through the most vulnerable parts of our pleasure.

He was so beautiful. Lips parted, eyes sharp, his focus fixed entirely on me. Every angle of his face, every scar, every flaw.

Perfect.

The wave melted away, and with it, so did the tension of our muscles. Raihn rolled off me, and I settled easily into the crook of his arm, surrounded by the cadence of his breathing.

We didn’t speak. There was nothing more to say. I kissed the scar on his brow, and the upside-down V on his cheek, and finally, his lips, and then I settled back into his embrace, welcoming our final oblivion.