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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 stu
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. Stu
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.