“Countless times, my followers have begged me to save their loved ones from death. Death is not the enemy. Death is a natural continuation of life. An intrinsic part of fate.” The visions in her wings shifted, as if to demonstrate—revealing glimpses of dark skies and bones and flowers growing from rotting flesh. “What makes you different?”
Nothing, I thought, at first. I was just another grieving lover, standing on the precipice of one more loss she couldn’t bear.
But I rasped out, “Because he could do such great things for this kingdom. We could, together. We could make things so much better for the people who live here. People—” My voice grew stronger. “People like my mother, who devoted her life to you, even when trying to survive so many hardships here.”
Acaeja tilted her head, as if she found this answer interesting. Compared to Nyaxia’s blatant emotionality, she was distant, calculated. I couldn’t read her.
I knew Nyaxia, despite her cruel dismissal, felt my pain. Acaeja, I feared, was only analyzing it.
“My cousin spoke the truth to you,” she said. “Granting a Coriatis bond between two Heirs would alter the course of the House of Night forever.”
“It would end millennia of warfare.”
“Yes. But it would come with many challenges, as well.”
My hand closed around Raihn’s limp, bloody fingers. “I know. We would face them.”
It almost surprised me, how easily this answer came to me. It wasn’t a platitude, wasn’t a performance. It was the truth.
Acaeja stared at me for a long moment. A shiver ran up my spine—the uncomfortable feeling that my past and future were being rifled through like pages in a record log.
Then she let out a soft chuckle. “Humans,” she said softly. “Such hope.”
I waited, not breathing.
At last, she said, “If I grant this request, do you swear that to me? That you both will use the power I am granting you to fight for what is Right in this world and the next, even against great opposition?”
My heart leapt.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. I do.”
“You will be under my protection as an offspring of my acolyte, and that protection will extend to him, as your heart-bonded. But understand that my cousin will not be happy about this development. She will not act against you. Not today. Not tomorrow. But someday soon, Oraya of the Nightborn, there will come a day when Nyaxia brings a great reckoning. And when that day comes, you must be prepared to face her displeasure.”
Goddess fucking help us.
And maybe I was a fool for it, but I still didn’t hesitate.
“Yes,” I said. “I understand.”
“I see your truth. I see the possibility in both your futures. I see that there is still much to come. And for that reason, I will grant you a Coriatis bond.”
The words were so unbelievable. At first, I couldn’t even grasp them.
“Thank you,” I tried to say, but it drowned in a sob.
“Quickly,” Acaeja said. “He fades.”
My eyes fell to Raihn’s face—motionless, battered, covered in blood, features broken beyond recognition. And yet, for some reason, the image of that same face on our wedding night came to my mind. The night he had promised himself to me, and I couldn’t offer him the same.
“This will be painful,” Acaeja warned.
She touched my chest, right over my heart.
“Painful” was not the right word for it. I gasped at the bolt of agony—like someone was spearing me straight through, hooking my heart and dragging it through my ribcage.
Still, I didn’t flinch, didn’t close my eyes. I looked only at Raihn’s face. Through the haze of pain, I heard our wedding vows: I give you my body.
I give you my blood.
I give you my soul.
Acaeja drew her hand from my chest, slowly, as if pulling a great weight, and then pressed it to Raihn’s. A blinding white light engulfed us.
The pain intensified.
From this night until the end of nights.
I doubled over, my forehead leaning against Raihn’s.
From daybreak until our days are broken.
Acaeja drew her hands back, a thread of light between them.
“I bind these hearts together.” Her voice rippled through the air like water. “Their souls are one. Their power is one. From this moment, until their threads cross this mortal plane.”
Her hands splayed, twenty long fingers weaving together our fates—and then, in one abrupt movement, drawing the threads taut.
I doubled over, unable to move, to breathe. My eyes squeezed shut. My head emptied of everything except for five words: I give you my heart.
The words I wouldn’t—couldn’t—say to Raihn that night. The vow I could not make.
Now I whispered those words over and over again, clinging to them, as my soul itself shattered and reformed.
“I give you my heart,” I murmured against his skin. “I give you my heart. I give you my heart.”
The light faded. The pain ebbed.
Acaeja sounded very far away, her voice like a wave rolling from the shore, as she said, “It is done.”
The words faded off into oblivion.
And so did I.
76
ORAYA
I did not dream of Vincent.
I dreamt of nothing at all.
I opened my eyes to a blue cerulean ceiling. It was the same ceiling that I had awoken to every day for nearly twenty years. But this time, from that first moment, everything felt different. As if my innermost self had been rearranged.
I felt... stronger. Like my blood thrummed through my veins with greater force.
And...
I laid my hand over my chest. Over my heart.
And... weaker.
Like a piece of my soul, the most vulnerable part of me, was now outside my body.
My mind pieced together the events of the battle, not quite in order, and then I shot bolt upright.
Every thought disintegrated except for his name.
Raihn.
My room was empty. An unoccupied chair sat beside my bed, and a few empty cups and plates on my nightstand, like someone had been here but had just left.
Raihn.
I threw back the covers and stood, only to immediately topple back to the bed with a dizzy spell that had my stomach lurching. An odd tug on my awareness disoriented me, like I was seeing something out of the corner of my eye that wasn’t there, or witnessing this room from another angle.
Mother. I must’ve really hit my head.
I got to my feet again and went out into my living room, then threw open my apartment door.
Raihn.
I wasn’t sure how I knew exactly where he was. Only that, without thinking, I was walking over to his chambers and— The door swung open just as my fingertips brushed the knob.
He was alive.
He was alive.
I didn’t take in anything else about him, only that he was here and alive and standing right before me and alive and smiling and alive.
And then his arms were around me, and mine around him, and the two of us held each other for a minute and an eternity, like two halves reunited. I buried my face against the bare skin of his chest and squeezed my eyes shut against the tears.
For a long time, we stayed like that.
And then eventually, he murmured against my hair, “So you missed me.”
Arrogant prick, I thought.
But aloud I said, “I love you.”
I felt his shock at those words—actually felt it, like it was my own. And then, the wave of contentment that followed, like the sun falling over my face.