Someone struck me from behind. I went toppling to the ground. The little girl, the same one who had been staring at me, leaned over me, red dotting her face.
She lifted her knife in both hands over her head, ready to bring it down.
I tried to counter, tried to—
A blast rocked the room. My vision blurred, dimmed.
A moment or minutes or hours passed.
I forced my eyes open.
Raihn leaned over me, brow furrowed with concern.
I was hallucinating, clearly, or dreaming again. Someone pried my hands free and I let out a choked cry.
“It’s alright,” Raihn murmured, leaning close to me.
I hated these dreams, the ones where I dreamed of the way Raihn had once looked at me, when we fought together in the Kejari. Like his heart was outside his body.
Made it hard to reconcile all he had done to me, when he looked at me that way.
“You’re safe,” he whispered, as he gathered me in his arms, and I faded away.
27
ORAYA
I opened my eyes from a mercifully dreamless sleep. My head was throbbing, and my body hurt even worse.
Coarse linen rubbed against my cheek. I was in a plain little bedchamber. A desk, a chair, a crooked table. Behind me, someone was moving around. I could hear the snap of a fire, and the hiss of something boiling, and the smell of something delicious.
I tried to roll over and was met with a stab of pain so sharp I let out a little strangled sound that was intended to be a “fuck” but instead sounded more like “ffermmkk.”
Footsteps circled the room, approaching me.
“Well look at you,” Raihn said. “So bright and cheerful when you wake up.”
I tried to say, “Fuck you,” and coughed instead.
“Oh, I still heard that.”
He sat at the edge of my bed. It was so rickety that his considerable weight made the entire thing shift to one side.
I choked out, “Where are we?”
“One of the Crown homes in the east. It’s, uh… seen better days. But it’s safe. Quiet. And closer than Sivrinaj.”
“How long have we been here?”
“Little less than a week.”
I started, and Raihn raised his hands. “We kept you sedated for a while. Trust me, that was for the best.”
I didn’t love the idea of Raihn’s men carting around my unconscious body for a week.
As if he could read my face, he said, “Don’t worry. It was just me.”
That did feel like a relief, though I didn’t want to examine too closely why.
“Where are the others?”
“Mische is here. The Bloodborn are in Lahor with Ketura and her guards, getting it under control.”
Lahor. It all came back with overwhelming detail. The fire and Evelaena and the sword and— “I killed Evelaena,” I said, not quite intending to speak aloud. “She—”
“Strung you up in a basement. Yes. I know.”
The basement.
The tower. The sword. The—
Panic. I touched my chest, eyes going wide.
“I found something in the tower. I found—”
“This?”
He reached for the bedside table and withdrew a carefully wrapped object about the size of his hand, flat and circular. He opened the cloth covering, revealing the moon pendant. The last time I’d seen it, it had been covered in Evelaena’s blood, but now it was pristine.
“You were crawling for it when I found you. Even half-dead.” He quickly covered it and set it back on the table, wincing and rubbing his hand. “The minute I tried to touch it, I realized what it was.”
“I don’t know if I do know what it is. Just that it’s…”
“Special.”
“His. It was his. More than that. It was… It has to do with whatever Vincent was trying to hide.”
This certainty came to me with an unexpectedly strong flood of satisfaction. There was so little I understood about my father. Finding even one puzzle piece seemed like a triumphant victory, even if it only led to more questions.
“Probably,” Raihn said. “All the better that Septimus doesn’t know about it. I’m glad it’s here, with us, instead of with him.”
He seemed shockingly unconcerned with it. My eyes narrowed.
“I’m surprised it’s still here, and that you didn’t fly off to Sivrinaj with it. This was what you were looking for, wasn’t—”
“You were fucking dying,” he snapped. “I had more important things to worry about than your father’s games.”
He clamped his mouth shut, like he’d just said something he didn’t intend to. “That’ll burn,” he muttered, and rose to go stir the pot over the stove.
More important things.
He returned, carrying a plate piled with steaming meat and vegetables.
“Here. Eat.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said, even as my mouth watered.
“It’s delicious. You want it. Trust me.”
Arrogant.
But my stomach rumbled. I had to admit, the smell was… incredible.
I took a bite and almost melted back into the bed.
Mother fucking damn him.
I took another bite, and another.
“Was I right?” Raihn said, infuriatingly smugly.
“Mm,” I said, between bites.
“I’ll take that as, ‘Delicious, Raihn. Thank you for this meal cooked with love, and also for saving my life.’”
A joke. It was a joke.
Still, my chewing slowed. I set aside the plate—already almost half empty—and turned to Raihn with a hard stare.
He must have thought I ran away. It would’ve been a reasonable assumption.
“You came to find me,” I said.
His smile faded. “Is that really so surprising?”
“I thought you’d think I just—”
“Oh, I did think.”
“But you still came after me. Why?”
He let out a sound between an exhale and a scoff.
“What?” I said.
“I just—nothing. Just turn around so I can check your wings.”
My wings.
The thought made the blood drain from my face. Oh, Goddess. I’d been so disoriented, the pain so constant, that the terrible reality of what had happened to them hadn’t yet sunk in.
They had been nailed through. Many times.
He settled behind me. “Give me some room back here.”
I obeyed, wincing as I edged forward on the bed, my legs folded beneath me. He let out a breath through his teeth, and my stomach turned.
My new wings—the only gift of these last horrible months. Shredded.
I choked out, bracing myself for the answer, “How do they look?”
“I’m glad you killed that depraved bitch. If she’d been alive when I got there…”
He didn’t need to finish the sentence.
My throat was thick. “So it’s bad?”
“She nailed you to the fucking wall.”
“I couldn’t spirit them away. I couldn’t—”
“It’s hard to do. Harder than getting them out, and nearly impossible if they’re injured, even for those who were born with them. I should have made sure I taught you that before I left you. That was stupid of me.”
His voice softened at that, and I winced at it.
“I don’t need pity. Tell me the truth.” My words wavered a little, despite my best efforts. “They’re ruined, right?”
Silence.
Horrible silence.
The bed shifted. Raihn leaned around me, turning my head by my chin so I was looking into his face.
“That’s what you think? That you’ll never fly again?”
My face must have said enough.