Страница 59 из 114
“We can take her somewhere when the sun sets,” I said.
“I’ll figure something out. Hopefully she’ll still be too groggy to argue.”
Three more stitches. I had to pause to wipe my hands with Raihn’s discarded shirt, leaving smears of red-black on the few clean patches left.
Raihn said softly, as if he didn’t mean to speak, “I haven’t seen her like this in a very, very long time.”
“Her wounds are already starting to heal.”
“I’m not worried about those. It’s…”
He trailed off. In the silence, Mische’s agonized words echoed in my head.
He left me. I called and called and he wouldn’t come.
Only now did it occur to me that she hadn’t been talking about Raihn.
“Do you know what she was trying to do, when we found her?” he said, voice full of quiet wrath. “She was trying to call upon Atroxus. Her magic failed her and she couldn’t get it back. She was there with those demons and that fucking Nightfire begging her god for help. If she died there, the last thing she heard would have been his silence.”
His fingers tightened around the fabric as I made another stitch.
“I told her it would happen. It hurt her every time she used that magic. And I told her, I fucking told her, that one day he would stop answering. That the God of the Sun wouldn’t keep allowing one of Nyaxia’s children”—he spat the term in disgust—“to draw upon his power. But she just…”
The burns on Mische’s arms. Years’ and years’ worth. Suddenly so much made sad, morbid sense.
“How was she ever able to do it?” I asked. “Wield that magic?”
“She was a priestess. Before. When she was human.”
My brows leapt. “A priestess of Atroxus?”
“Mhm. In Pachnai. Came here for some kind of missionary work. Isn’t that something?” A short laugh, cut off with a wince. “Missionaries coming to preach to fucking vampires. And that’s when it happened. Whoever Turned her just left her there to die. Probably figured he had a nice little eternal slave if she lived, and at least got a decent meal out of it if she didn’t. Decided she was too much trouble when she got sick and left. She didn’t even know what he was doing to her.”
I had long ago grown accustomed to the careless cruelty of the vampires. But it still sickened me to imagine what Mische, a foreigner barely older than a teenager, must have gone through.
I thought again of the Ministaer’s mouth on my skin, just hours ago. Thought of a kiss on my throat, and teeth, and pain—then jerked back to reality when Raihn cursed because I jabbed him a little too hard.
“Sorry.” I steadied my hand. “Who? Who was it?”
“I wish I fucking knew. I don’t even know what House she is. She won’t tell me. If I found out…”
He let out a low breath that made all sorts of wordless promises.
Fuck, I’d help.
“The thing that kills me,” Raihn said, “is that the bastard didn’t even know or care that he was taking literally everything from her. Didn’t even give enough of a shit to drag her to civilization before leaving her to die. And now…”
And now the final vestige of her humanity was gone.
“They don’t care,” I said softly. “They never care.”
“No. They never fucking care. And sometimes—” He tensed. Maybe because of the stitch. Maybe not. “Sometimes I’m ashamed to call myself one of them.”
I don’t want to watch you become one of them, Ilana had said to me.
And until now—until this exact moment—I hadn’t even thought about it as giving something up. Not until I heard the ache in Raihn’s voice that had nothing to do with the wounds on his back.
“What was it like?” I asked. “Turning?”
“Ix’s tits. Your bedside ma
I could hear the expression on his face. My mouth tightened. Almost a smile.
I didn’t think he would answer, but he said, “It feels like death. I don’t remember most of it.”
“Who—?”
“Now that’s a question I can’t answer in a moment like this.” The cadence of a joke. The edge of a rebuke. Fair enough.
I finished the last two stitches, then admired my handiwork.
“How does it look?” he asked.
I answered honestly. “Fucking awful.”
He sighed. “Terrific.”
Blood still covered the rest of his back. I took the towel and gently wiped it away—from his shoulders, his sides, and finally, down the middle of his spine.
There, I paused, the cloth half raised. I had been right—the mark down the center of his back was a scar, a big one, far older than the marks from tonight. It carved a large triangle across his upper back, then trailed all the way down its center. A burn, maybe?
“How did you get this?”
“No, no, no. That isn’t how this works.” With a grunt of pain, he rose. “I don’t need to be distracted anymore, which means that I don’t have to answer your questions.”
I stood, too, wincing as I stretched the stiff fingers of my right hand. He turned to me, the corner of his mouth quirked, clearly about to say something insulting—but then he noticed me rubbing my bandaged wrist, and his face changed.
The smirk was gone.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. A little cut.”
“What happened, Oraya?”
The intensity of his voice struck me in places I didn’t expect.
“Nothing happened,” I said, tucking my hand away. “It’s from the attack.”
His eyes searched my face, unblinking. They looked redder than ever in the firelight, reflecting the orange of the lanterns behind me. He didn’t believe me, but he didn’t say so.
I reached into the medicine bag and pulled out a little glass bottle of tablets. I took his hand and placed the vial in it. “Here. They won’t heal you, but at least they’ll help the pain enough for you to sleep.”
I didn’t know why I didn’t remove my hand. Nor why I didn’t step back, even though he was so close—close enough his body heat surrounded me.
I swallowed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that he did this to you.”
“It isn’t your fault.”
Still. I felt it, even if I didn’t know why.
And I still didn’t move when he said, “One honest thing, Oraya. Do you want a different partner for the Halfmoon trial?”
I knew why he was asking. Because now it was just me and him. Because his back was destroyed. Because he couldn’t use his wings.
“You could find one,” he went on. “People died in the attack. They left partners behind. I would understand.”
It surprised me that the answer was so clear, so immediate.
“Too late for that. You’re stuck with me.”
I watched his lips curl. The smile looked real. Different than the smirks.
“The human and the cripple,” he murmured. “The others should be trembling in pure fucking terror.”
I surprised myself by returning it.
“They’d better.”
My hand still lay over Raihn’s calloused palm. His fingers curled around mine, as if in silent agreement.
One more day.
When the Halfmoon was over, we would be enemies. Maybe this felt something like intimacy, but soon, we would try to kill each other.
I never forgot that.
Tonight, though, my soul was heavy—with Raihn’s torture and Mische’s past, with Vincent’s lies and the dark memories stirred by the Ministaer’s mouth on my skin. Maybe I was weak. Maybe I was foolish.
But even though I knew I should pull away, I didn’t.
No, I drank up Raihn’s touch like one last gulp of wine. A secret, shameful vice.
Mische wanted to stay. Even in her half-conscious, delirious state, she protested as Raihn carried her from the Moon Palace. He had some friends, he told me, who would take her away from Sivrinaj and care for her until she recovered. I was secretly glad she was not only leaving the Kejari, but leaving Sivrinaj entirely. I couldn’t shake the feeling that things here would get far worse before they got better.
She was conscious when I said goodbye to her. She gave my hand a weak squeeze when I approached—and I let her, even though I didn’t like goodbyes.
“Take care of yourself,” I told her.
“You too. Keep feeding that shy magic.” Her weak smile softened. “And… keep an eye on him, alright?”
She didn’t need to specify who.
“He acts tough, but he needs someone. And he likes you.”
No, he doesn’t, I wanted to say. He shouldn’t. The worst possible thing he could do is like me.
But I just gave Mische my best attempt at a comforting smile and said, “Rest. Get better quickly.”
To which she gave me an equally weak, but much brighter, wave. “I’ll see you soon.”
We were summoned only hours later. Raihn and I didn’t speak to each other on the walk there—what was there to say? We only nodded at each other in grim acceptance of our task.
We all stood in awkward silence in the great room. The only sounds were the hushed whispers shared between teammates. I looked around the room, carefully memorizing who had paired with who. Three House of Blood contestants stood together. Beside them, Angelika and her partner, a slight blood magic user by the name of Ivan. Ibrihim had managed to find a partner, a Shadowborn man, who had also been badly injured in the last trial. Apparently no one else would have them. Neither looked pleased.
They weren’t the only ones who appeared to have paired up out of sheer necessity. Four other Rishan contestants now partnered with each other—presumably out of last-minute changes, dumped by their previous partners after Jesmine’s torture. I eyed them and tried not to show it, a knot in my stomach.
Their backs were sealed beneath layers of armor, but they moved stiffly, and I could imagine what they looked like. Still, they didn’t seem to be in as much pain as Raihn, who couldn’t even get into his own armor. I had to strap the leather over his back while he gripped the edge of the bureau and cursed through teeth so tight I was sure he’d crack them. He hid it now, though, and well, tucking every wince and slow movement away. This was not the time to show weakness.
I saw it anyway.
Vampires healed fast, but his wounds had improved only a little. I was disappointed, but not surprised. Nightborn soldiers wielded all kinds of tricks—poison, magic, whatever it took—to inflict as much pain as their task warranted. Raihn’s, apparently, had warranted it all.
As I watched the other Rishan, I couldn’t help but wonder if his had been worse. If he had been kept longer, tortured more, because of his co
He nudged my arm, snapping me from my thoughts. “We’re famous,” he muttered, motioning to the other side of the room, where several Hiaj contestants stared.
We did make one of the more… unusual pairs.