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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The laugh was low and deep, rough and smooth at the same time—quiet, and yet it commanded the room. It was the first thing to seep through my addled mind; the first thing to cut through my hazy consciousness.
I rolled over. My body protested with a symphony of aches, but that was nothing compared to before. The absence of pain was jarring.
As I blinked away sleep, the first thing I saw was wings—deep black, the gloss of the feathers reflecting warm strokes of lantern light. I hadn’t had the time in the ring to properly admire Raihn’s wings, but they were—as much as I hated to admit it—quite beautiful. I saw Rishan wings much less often than I saw Hiaj ones, and never any as uniquely colored as these—deep black, with that oil-slick sheen of reds and purples and blues.
Raihn crouched before Mische, who sat atop a coffee table. He held her foot, which he leaned over with what seemed like intense concentration, a roll of bandages in his other hand.
“I told you to stop moving, Mische,” he muttered.
“It’s taking too long.”
“You can stay still for two fucking minutes.”
His words were rough. And yet, the tone of them was so much softer—tender, even.
Mische heaved a long-suffering sigh and squirmed like an impatient child.
I blinked again and the rest of the room came into focus. We were in what looked to be the common space of an apartment—a very, very nice one, albeit a couple of centuries out of date. Lanterns lined the walls, lit with a mix of fire and blue-white light that flickered over brocade wallpaper in a strange contrast of warmth and coolness. A wall of thick velvet curtains covered the eastern half of the room—all windows, if I had to guess. Grand furniture was arranged artfully throughout, crafted of deep mahogany wood or generously marbled black stone and upholstered with silky brocade. All of it appeared to be a relic from another age in style, but looked as pristine as if it had been made yesterday.
“I told you, it’s fine! It won’t slow me down a—oh! Oh!”
Mische leapt to her feet with such excited verve that she came delightfully close to kicking Raihn in the face.
“What did we just talk about?” he muttered as he dodged, and Mische paid him no mind as she darted across the room to me. My head was still spi
She froze, raising her hands.
“Oh. I’m sorry! I know—he told me. Slow.” She shrugged, letting out an awkward laugh.
He told me. I bristled at that. What might that have looked like? She’s a weak little human, terrified of everything, so treat her like a wounded animal.
Raihn looked away, muttering a curse.
“How are you feeling?” Mische asked. She settled down on the floor, folding her legs beneath her and resting her palms on her knees—like she needed to physically restrain herself from ru
“Better,” I answered, after a long moment.
Mische gri
“We have met. At the feast.”
“Well, I mean, really meet. Raihn told me all about the trial. And how it was your idea to find the pack leader. That saved my ass, so thank you.” She laughed and shook her head, as if the recent near-death experience was a fond distant memory.
I’d never met another vampire who behaved anything like this. Even at their most outgoing, they were reserved. And yet, I couldn’t shake the sense that she did remind me of someone. Not a vampire, I realized after a moment, but a human. She reminded me of Ilana.
Sure, Mische had none of Ilana’s biting edge. But she had that same loud, unapologetic flair. She was… unabashedly colorful. What was the relationship, I wondered, between her and Raihn? They were both odd by vampire standards, but in ways that could not possibly be more different from each other.
She rose and spread her arms, gesturing to the room. “Welcome to our home. Isn’t it stu
“Give her a sun-damned minute before you talk her to death, Mische.”
Raihn slid his hands into the pockets of his jacket—long, black, simple, and slightly too small at the shoulders—and approached me, a smug smile that made me bristle spreading over his lips.
“You changed your mind quickly, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“So we saw.”
“And thank the gods you did come here,” Mische breathed. “You would’ve died.” Her face hardened. “Those Bloodborn shits. He tried to rip you to pieces, didn’t he?”
Thank the gods, she had said. Not the Goddess. Interesting.
“I have a gift for you,” Raihn said, very casually, “to welcome you to our little family.”
Mische gri
“Oh, yes!” She reached into one of the chests pushed against the far wall, and when she turned back around, I had to stop myself from recoiling.
It was a head.
A man’s head, the skin pale and wan, the hair mostly gray and streaked with some ash-brown. His ears were pointed, as were his teeth, visible through the perpetual snarl that graced his lips even in death.
I’d hardly gotten a good look at the vampire that attacked me, but I had to assume this was him.
My stomach lurched with sudden nausea. The memory came, as it always did, in brief, all-consuming flashes.
I have a gift for you.
I blinked hard, shaking away the past. Then carefully ironed my expression back into one of cold disinterest.
“And what the hell am I supposed to do with that?”
Raihn shrugged. “I don’t know. Gloat?”
“How satisfying,” I said dryly. “He certainly looks like he can now appreciate my superiority.”
Mische’s grin faded. Raihn’s lips thi
“I’ve saved your life twice now and presented you with the head of your enemy, and this isn’t enough? You’re a demanding little thing, aren’t you?”
“All of those ‘gifts’ have been self-serving. I helped you survive in that ring, too. And I’m sure you loved killing this one.”
An odd expression twitched over his face, quickly discarded in favor of an easy smile.
“That’s why we’re allies. Because our interests are mutually beneficial.”
“Hm.”
I tried not to show that the word “allies” chilled me down to my bones. Only now did the full consequences of my actions hit me. I had been forced to make a decision out of base desperation, and now, I was trapped here with these two.
Mische still held the head, though she now looked down at it with a slight pout.
“He really was an ass.” She sighed. “Even before. He would have died eventually, anyway. You practically gutted him.”
“Must’ve been quite a fight,” Raihn added, “judging by the state of both of you.”
I chanced a couple of steps closer to Mische, examining the head. Even for vampires, the pale gray tinge to his skin was unusual, as was the vibrant red that rimmed his sightless eyes. A spiderweb of black-crimson veins crawled up his throat. They were visible on his neck, his jaw, at the corners of his mouth and eyes. And even in death, they seemed to… pulse.
“What?” Raihn said. “You’ve never seen a Bloodborn curse up close before?”
I disliked that he found it so easy to read my face.
“It was bloodlust,” I said.
“It was a hell of a lot more than that.”
He sounded strangely serious. Perhaps even grim. When I tore my eyes away from the head to look at him, the smirk had faded from his lips.
Then he noticed my stare, and just like that, it returned.
“His days were numbered either way. A mercy. This was the least painful way he could’ve gone. Anyway.” The smirk became a crooked grin. “I’m glad you came to your senses. Mische, you want to get rid of that thing now?”
Mische nodded and tucked the head under her arm as she headed for one of the doors in the back of the room. “I’ll be right back. Then I’ll give you a tour, Oraya.”
Raihn and Mische really did manage to find a prime location. The apartment was huge, featuring a study, a kitchen, an office, four bedrooms (each with their own adjoining washrooms), and, of course, that grand sitting room—all of which were luxuriously ornate, even compared to the Nightborn castle. All citizens of the i
Mische showed me to my room—“We gave you the one with the most windows!” she a
The curtains were a heavy, deep blue velvet, with silver braided pulls. I hauled them open with considerable effort. The window revealed a near-perfect mirror of the view from my room in the Nightborn castle. In the distance, its silhouette was reduced to a series of vicious peaks and moon-silver domes. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen it from so far away. Buildings that were small in the distance from my bedroom window were now so close I could see every imperfection… of which there were many. Yes, the architecture was grand, but gold paint flaked and carvings crumbled. Stress fractures crawled like ivy over stone walls and cracks severed stained-glass windows. All marks of decay that were invisible from my room in Vincent’s castle.
I had always assumed that the ugliness of Sivrinaj was confined to the human districts. It had never occurred to me that perhaps the i
My eyes settled on a little flash of blocky darkness against the horizon. From my room at Vincent’s palace, I saw the dunes in the distance, graceful and silent. But from this one, that far-off view was instead of the human slums, partially hidden beyond the silhouetted grandiosity of the Nightborn castle.
I didn’t know why the sight of those two things, so stark in contrast, made me so uncomfortable.
I pulled the curtains closed again.
“You got this from the feast hall?”
“Uh-huh!”