Lahor had seemed abandoned when we first arrived here, and the strangeness of the keep—seemingly occupied only by Evelaena and her stable of Turned children—had only made that sensation stronger. But the city, while dilapidated, was not deserted. People did indeed actually live here, congregating in the few habitable buildings throughout the city.
Or maybe “living” was too generous a term.
Raihn and I wandered through uneven, cracked roads and paths through dilapidated piles of brick. Those within peered at us with hungry, wary eyes, whispers falling to silence as we passed.
“Do you think they recognize us?” I whispered to Raihn.
“No,” he said. “No way these people know what a couple of royals from hundreds of miles away look like. They don’t recognize us, but they definitely recognize outsiders.”
That wasn’t hard. The people who lived here were twisted shadows of vampires or humans—all equally hungry. The eyes that stared at us were shadowed, more akin to those of starving animals than sentient beings. Unlike most cities in Obitraes, the city wasn’t divided into vampire and human territory—instead, everyone seemed to scurry for whatever workable shelter they could find.
Life anywhere in the House of Night was always dangerous and bloody. But here? The feral desperation festered like an infected wound. Raihn and I passed several vampires crouched over another, lying open and bleeding in the middle of the street.
A vampire body. Blood that wouldn’t even be able to keep them alive on its own, providing only the temporary pleasure of relief. But hunger that intense didn’t care.
It was hard not to shiver at the way their heads snapped up when we passed. The way their eyes followed me.
Raihn stepped a little closer to me after that, his hand on my back. We made the silent, mutual decision to drift away from the populated areas, instead wandering out toward the dunes.
Eventually, we came to the edge of a lake. It was an eerie, beautiful scene, the body formed by a crater in the ruins, remains of past destruction now cradling glassy water. Broken remnants of marble slabs jutted from the water’s surface, ghostly under the moonlight. Beyond it, several of Lahor’s tallest towers, spires of shattered stone, loomed over us.
Goosebumps rose on my arms.
“Must’ve been something,” Raihn murmured. “Long time ago.”
Yes. It was as beautiful as it was sad.
Raihn’s head turned. “Look.”
He nudged my arm and lifted his chin to our left. At the edge of the lake, a woman knelt down, filling a bucket. A human—I recognized that immediately. Her stupidity was mind-boggling to me. Why a human would be out after nightfall—even so close to dawn—in this place was beyond me.
But then again, living in constant danger made one numb to it. I knew that too well.
She didn’t see the Hiaj vampire flying overhead, landing on one of the nearby ruins and slowly climbing down, his eyes on her.
But we did.
I stiffened.
“Want to take care of that?” Raihn murmured in my ear. “I get the impression you’ve been anxious to kill something lately.”
I rubbed my fingertips together.
He thought right, as much as I hated to admit it. I craved death like an opiate addict craved their fix. And yet, a part of me was afraid.
Afraid to pierce another chest when the last one I had pierced was Raihn’s.
Afraid to hear my father’s voice in my ear.
Afraid of whatever I might not feel anymore.
The vampire crept closer.
“If you don’t move,” Raihn said, “then I will.”
But the words weren’t even out of his mouth before my decision was made.
I slipped through the ruins to circle around behind my target. I was out of practice. The terrain was unfamiliar. I wasn’t as silent as I usually was in my nighttime hunts in Sivrinaj. The vampire had turned to meet me by the time I reached him.
That was fine. I wanted more of a fight.
He came at me with his claws, but my blade was faster.
I nearly took his arm off when he swung at me. Blood dotted my face, iron-sweet when my tongue ran over it.
My target hissed and dove for me. I sidestepped, let him run himself into the wall. He wasn’t used to fighting, not really. Even compared to the laziest of Sivrinaj’s hunters, he was sluggish and unfocused. Starving. Untrained. Practically an animal.
Wings first, Vincent reminded me, and I tore two slashes through each one. Hiaj wings—so satisfyingly easy to pierce.
His claws opened a cut over my cheek. I didn’t even flinch. A strike to his leg, to make him stumble. His right shoulder, to take out his dominant arm. And then finally I had him, pinned.
He didn’t know my name or my title. He only smelled my human blood—the blood that made me unworthy of being anything other than food in his mind.
And now there was fear in his eyes.
For a brief moment, there it was. Power. Control.
Push hard to make it through the breastbone, Vincent whispered.
But I didn’t need my father’s advice anymore. My strike was quick and true, piercing cartilage, sliding right into his heart.
Too late, the memory hit me—of the way that this same blade had felt sliding into Raihn’s chest. That rust-red stare, urging me on.
End it, princess.
I snapped my eyes open, forced myself to replace Raihn’s face with this one. This person who deserved it. Uncomplicated. Easy.
I yanked my blade free. The vampire started to slide down the rock.
But I couldn’t stop myself before I stabbed again. Again. Again.
And finally, when the vampire’s chest was little more than pulp, I let the body slump to the ground.
I stared down at him, my shoulders heaving. His chest was a mess of broken flesh. For some reason, I thought of Evelaena’s scar, and how she might have looked lying on her bedroom floor, blood all over her chest, too.
“She got away.”
Raihn’s voice startled me. He’d flown up and perched atop the ruins. He nodded toward the lake. The human woman now wandered back down the path, bucket balanced against her hip, seemingly oblivious to how close she had just come to death.
I glanced down at the dead body. Another starving beast raised to see humans as nothing more than something to use. Another animal who was only a tool to those above him. On, and on, and on.
The futility of it was, all at once, dizzying.
“I feel like you usually take much more joy in this,” Raihn said.
“Just needed to be done,” I said, sheathing my weapon. “So we did it.”
“You did it. I watched.”
I glanced at him, and he smiled. “Enjoyed the view.”
I turned away and didn’t say anything. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his face fall.
I started to walk back to the path we’d taken, but he lingered behind. He tilted his head back, squinting into the distance. Then he pointed.
“Let’s go up there.”
I followed his gaze, to the spires of ruined towers that loomed over us.
“Why?” I asked.