Instead, I lifted my head, and Raihn’s stare, red as dried blood, nailed me to the wall.
“I spent seventy years trapped by the worst of vampire power,” he said. “And I spent so much of that time trying to make them make sense. But they don’t. Rishan. Hiaj. Nightborn. Shadowborn. Bloodborn. Hell, fucking gods. It doesn’t matter. Neculai Vasarus was—” His throat bobbed. “Evil doesn’t even cover it. And for a long time, I thought he didn’t love anything. I was wrong. He did love his wife. He loved her, and he hated that he loved her. He loved her so much he choked the life out of her.”
Raihn’s eyes had drifted far away—drifted somewhere in the past that I knew, just from the look on his face, hurt him to stare at directly.
“There’s nothing they’re more afraid of than love,” he murmured. “They’ve been taught their entire lives that every true connection is nothing but a danger to them.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Why?”
Because I was still stuck on this—on this idea that Vincent had been afraid of me. This idea that went against everything I had ever known.
His mouth twisted into a wry smirk. “Love is fucking terrifying,” he murmured. “I think that’s true no matter who you are.”
I stilled.
There was something about the way he said that—the closeness of him, the steadiness of his stare—that jolted me back to my senses.
What was I doing?
Why was I showing him this? Raihn was my kidnapper. He had lied to me. He had used me.
Raihn had murdered my father.
And now he was lecturing me about the sanctity of love?
He was right. Love was terrifying. To be so vulnerable to another person. And I’d— I stopped that thought.
No. Whatever I had felt for Raihn was not love.
But it had been vulnerable. More vulnerable than I ever should have let myself become.
And look at how I’d paid for it.
Look at how my father had paid for it.
My anger, my grief, drained away. In its place was the thick burn of shame.
I yanked away from Raihn’s touch and tried not to notice the flicker of disappointment on his face.
“I’d like to be alone,” I said.
My voice was harsh. A finality.
Silence. Then he said, “It’s dangerous out here.”
“I can handle it.”
He paused. Unconvinced, I knew.
I wouldn’t look at him, but I knew if I did, he’d have that look on his face—that fucking look, like he wanted to say something that would be too earnest, too real.
“Just go,” I said. It sounded more like a plea than I wanted it to. But maybe that was what made him listen.
“Alright,” he said softly, and the sound of his wings faded off into the night.
24
ORAYA
I sat on top of those towering ruins for a long time, trying and failing to feel nothing.
The sky slowly warmed, cold moonlight replaced by the gold touch of dawn, revealing all the ugliest truths of this city.
He had been so eager to forget this place. But this place never forgot him. Never recovered from the nonchalant cruelty of his departure.
I hated how familiar that felt.
All of it was like the room that Evelaena now kept as a twisted shrine to him. Nothing but discarded trash, and she projected such meaning onto it. A shoe. A hairbrush. A stupid scribble of ink—
I blinked.
A scribble of ink.
Recognition nagged at the back of my mind. Somewhere I had seen this view before—
I stood, then took several steps back, watching the way the landscape shifted with my perspective. The sea a bit to the right, the tower slightly overlapping it…
No. Not quite. But close.
I closed my eyes and pictured it: the ink drawing on Vincent’s desk, perfectly preserved for centuries.
Then I opened my eyes and peered around the edge. Another tower stood just slightly to the south of this one—it somehow managed to look even older. But by my estimation, the viewpoint would line up. If I was right… the sketch of Lahor that Vincent had made might’ve been drawn from those ruins.
I hesitated, taking a moment to flex my back muscles. They were fiercely sore, and every movement felt clumsy with the wings attached to them. I didn’t regret sending Raihn away, exactly—no, I told myself, I definitely didn’t regret it—but it might’ve been wise to get some more wing instruction before I had.
I wasn’t going to let you fall. But more importantly, I knew you weren’t going to let you fall.
The words floated through my mind unprompted.
Mother, I hoped he was right.
I kept my eye on my target, and I jumped.
Whatever I did to get from one tower to the other was probably better described as “controlled falling” than “flying.”
But I made it.
Barely.
I let out an ugly oof as my side jammed against a pile of ancient brick. Pain tore through my left wing as it scraped a stray shard of rock—it was amazing how disorienting it was for the boundaries of your own body to suddenly be twice as wide in both directions. The impact threw me, sending me rolling across the brick floor with a collection of ragged grunts.
I pushed myself to my hands and knees, collecting myself. I was more shaken than I’d like to admit. Wings were sensitive, apparently, because the cut hurt fiercely. I craned my neck to try to see the injury with little success.
I lifted my head, and suddenly my wound didn’t matter anymore.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
Wings spread out over the wall before me.
Hiaj wings, slate gray with tinges of purple. They were life-size, or maybe bigger, pressed against the crumbling remains of the stone wall. Growths that at first looked like bulging veins spread along their length, clinging to the formation of the bones and reaching across the expanses of skin, tinted red, forming a knot at the center that pulsed bright crimson.
A heart. It looked almost exactly like a heart.
But as I pushed myself up and dragged myself closer, I realized the growths weren’t veins at all. They were some kind of… fungus, maybe, though one that looked sickeningly lifelike. The heart at the center of the wings, though… that looked so real. Was it flesh, petrified like the wings? Or something else?
I didn’t remember getting to my feet, nor crossing the room, but the next thing I knew, I was standing right before it.
The veins and the heart pulsed in small, rhythmic movements, slowly quickening. I realized, after a moment, that they mirrored my breathing. The hairs stood upright on the back of my neck. I’d never been so repelled by something and simultaneously so drawn to it. It was disgusting. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
One part of me thought, I need to get far, far away from whatever this is.
The other part thought, Septimus was right. I do just know.
Simple, uncomplicated fact. This was what we had been looking for. It was beyond questioning.
And I’d just found it alone.
My hand was outstretched before I even told my body to move.