Beneath my palm, the curse inside him pulsed, as if struck.
“But I think you know that, too,” I murmured. “All about goddesses and broken promises. Don’t you?”
He laughed, vicious as torn flesh. “You want to see the truth, Sylina? Do you have room in your heart for another dark story?”
He was taunting me. Like his jeering tone could chase me away. He was wrong.
I thought of the fragments of his vision, still burning in my memory and throbbing in his chest. The snow. The cold. A young vampire man’s head in his hands. And Nyaxia, cold and cruel and drenched in hate.
“I live in dark stories. And I’ve been living in yours for nearly four months. If you’re going to invite me in, invite me.” I pushed against his chest, hard. “I already see you, Atrius. I’m not afraid.”
So quick I wouldn’t even sense the movement, his other hand clutched my hair, tilting my head back toward his. I could feel his words over my lips when he spoke again, low like shifting gravel.
“You want my confessions, seer? Fine. Once, a long time ago, just like you, I thought my goddess would save us. And I gave her everything. Everything.”
The walls, all at once, shattered. And the wave of pain, of rage, of darkness and fear that rolled over me threatened to sweep me away. I had been reaching deep into Atrius’s presence—now, his emotions, such perfect mirrors of my own, surrounded me.
Far in the threads, I sensed an old memory—a city of white and red, powerful spires and moonlit crimson glass windows, framed against mountainous peaks.
“Do you see that?” His mouth came to my ear, breath hard and ragged. “That was my home once. A long time ago. My cursed, damned home. The House of Blood. When I was young, I met a man who was an idealist. A prince. My prince. And some wretched seer’s prophecy said that he would save the House of Blood from itself, and I believed in him.”
His voice sounded like glass breaking, all pain and anger. It poured through my threads, mingling with my own.
“So I followed. I built his army. I led his warriors. People who trusted me. And together, we journeyed to places no mortal, human or vampire, should go.”
The images melted, reformed. I couldn’t even make sense of the next fractured memories—buildings floating in the night sky, shadowy figures walking on misty nothingness, bodiless faces peering through the darkness. All of them too distant, too quick, to capture.
“We were to earn back the love of Nyaxia. We would prove to her that the House of Blood was worthy of her. The things we did—”
A ragged breath. His threads pulsed like a quickening heartbeat, as if horrified and terrified by the memories, even now, even all these years later. Goosebumps rose on my arms.
“No mortals,” he breathed, “should do what we did. We committed acts worthy of fucking gods. Great things. Terrible things. All in Nyaxia’s name. All to prove our love to our goddess. For decades.”
His jaw tightened there, shook against the silence. Every part of his presence railed against this exposure. He was trying to reassemble his defenses, reel in what had broken free.
But I whispered, “And?”
One word. A beckoning hand. An open door.
Why? Why did I want to know, even if it hurt? Even if it made it harder—perhaps impossible—to rebuild my own walls?
He let out a shaky breath. He was trembling, every muscle taut.
“And we went back to her,” he whispered, slowly, between clenched teeth. “My prince and I. We gave her every head she asked for. Every artifact. Every slain monster. Everything. And then we went to our knees to ask for our salvation.” A single, enraged tear slid down his cheek. “And I will never forget the sound of her laugh.”
And as if I had been there with him, I could hear it too, floating through the past to the present, as beautiful and terrible as funeral hymns.
“She said we were fools,” he spat, “to think that our ancestors’ disrespect could ever be forgiven. She left me with two gifts that night, and two commands. The first gift was the head of my prince, and the first command was to carry it back to the House of Blood to present to the king and queen. The second gift...”
His throat bobbed. His hand fell over mine, over his chest, where the curse pulsed.
He didn’t need to say it. I knew.
“And the second command?” I whispered.
A long pause. Like he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“She wanted a new kingdom conquered in her name,” he said. “I offered that to her, with my own life as collateral.”
And suddenly, it all clicked together.
“My people would not be allowed back home after being scorned by Nyaxia. The king and queen saw us—all of us—as complicit in their son’s death. They still wanted to believe a prophecy existed. Still wanted to believe that their goddess could save us.” His face hardened, like cut stone. “They had followed me to the ends of time. They had nowhere left to go. I was desperate to save them, even if I couldn’t save myself. So I made a deal with the very goddess who had forsaken us.”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. His pain surrounded us both, scalding, and I knew it had been burning for years, decades, centuries.
I understood it so painfully well. The desire to believe that something larger than you could save you, even after it struck you down again and again.
“And now here we are,” he ground out, lip curling. “The innocents I was trying to protect, slaughtered. The warriors I was trying to save, now dying at the hand of a human tyrant. All for a goddess who spited us already. All in the name of blind fucking hope.”
Another tear glided down his cheek, the silver damp pooling in all those stone-cut lines of utter fury.
His fingers tightened in my hair.
“Tell me I’m a fool.”
He was shaking with rage, so thick I could taste it in his exhale against my lips.
I shook my head. “No.”
He let out a choked breath, his forehead leaning against mine.
“Tell me to stop.”
Four words that could mean so much. Tell me to stop—stop this war, stop the search for redemption, stop the quest for vengeance, stop this, whatever dangerous thing was about to happen in this moment, inching to inevitability.
I didn’t want him to stop any of it.
I wanted Atrius to destroy the Pythora King. I wanted him to do it slowly, painfully, relishing revenge. I wanted him to let me help. I wanted him to save his people. I wanted him to earn Nyaxia’s respect.
I wanted to burn it all down with him.
I murmured, “No.”
Another wordless sound, a choked groan. “You shouldn’t be here.”
This time he spoke against my mouth—not quite a kiss, but the promise of one.
I whispered, “Why?”
“Because you make me ravenous.”
You make me ravenous.
Those words buried in my soul. I felt the truth of them. Felt, somewhere innately, that he had said them to me once before—in Obitraen, the night he kissed me.
And I understood it. The hunger for revenge, for salvation, for blood, for sex, for death, for life, for all the things we’d been denied.
I felt it all.