The man—Raihn—set down his goblet and laughed. It was a low sound that slithered through the air like a snake.

Klyn turned purple. Perhaps he was senseless with his own rage, but he was still a vampire, and that meant he was strong and fast. He crossed the room in several graceful strides.

“You did this!”

And just as quickly, Raihn was on his feet, meeting him halfway.

I drew in a sharp inhale.

The man I had seen at the feast. I recognized him right away, because here, just as he had at the ball, he stood out as markedly different than any other vampire. Everything about him seemed rough and unfinished, right down to the way he held himself—with an untamed, threatening ease, stark in contrast to elegant vampire beauty.

And when he stood, I realized all at once why his voice had sounded so familiar. There it was: the bloody bandage wrapped around his thigh. Right where, say, a short human girl might have plunged a dagger when trying to break out of his grasp.

Fuck.

Even across the room, I could see that his knuckles were white as he gripped Klyn’s wrist, seizing the sword mid-strike.

“You think I killed your brother?” Raihn said. “Me?”

“Don’t fucking toy with me, Raihn. I know you did it.”

“Oh, I didn’t kill your brother.”

Raihn’s eyes—rust-red—slipped right across the room. Landed right on me.

And he smirked.

Goddess fucking damn it. I didn’t expect to have to fight my way out of a pack of vampires before the tournament even started, but I would do it if I had to.

I started to rise, my hands going to my swords.

“This is ridiculous, isn’t it?”

I nearly jumped halfway across the room. I spun around to see a slender, curly-haired woman leaning against the wall beside me, rolling her eyes.

The very same woman I’d seen at Vincent’s party the other night.

“We should be saving our energy,” she sighed. She glanced at me like she expected an answer.

I said nothing. Mostly, I wanted to ask her what she was doing here. She didn’t exactly seem like the tournament-to-the-death type. But I could barely tear my gaze from the scene across the room.

Now, Klyn was inches from Raihn’s face. “Yes, you did! I know you did!”

“No,” Raihn said calmly, “I did not. Wish I had, though, because he was a repulsive asshole.”

“He was,” the girl agreed, beside me. “The worst.” She leaned close and whispered, “You did it, didn’t you?”

“I—what?”

“You did it. Right?”

“I—”

Across the room, Raihn said, “And I’m warning you, right now, not to go for that sword again, Klyn.”

“Oh, no,” the girl muttered.

Klyn went for his sword.

SMASH.

Klyn’s body hit the wall with enough force to send two of the grand antique paintings crashing to the ground, their wood frames splintering under the force of the impact. Raihn pinned him against arabesque wallpaper now dotted with spatters of black-red blood. Klyn’s sword arm dangled from his body at an odd angle, clearly broken. His head lolled.

Half the people in the hall had now gotten to their feet, watching wide-eyed. Everyone held their breath, waiting for the answer to the question no one was voicing: Would he do it?

Klyn’s attitude had changed dramatically in the last five seconds. “You can’t kill here,” he croaked. “You heard the Ministaer. He said you can’t kill until the trials.”

“Oh no,” the girl said again, not seeming all that distressed.

We were all thinking the same thing. Thinking of the Ministaer’s cryptic words. I knew someone would test the boundary. I just didn’t know it would happen so soon.

Raihn smiled.

“Oh, I can’t?”

The blast shook the room. I gasped, the air yanked from my lungs in one dramatic pulse. Pitch black consumed me, followed by blinding white, followed by a coughing fit as I found myself blinking hard, shaking away goosebumps.

Sun fucking take me.

Everyone gaped at the rust-eyed man, jaws hanging, questioning what we’d just seen.

Raihn let Klyn’s very, very dead body slide down the wall into a wobbly, boneless heap on the ground.

Silence. No one blinked. Raihn looked up, as if waiting for Nyaxia to strike him down. Five seconds passed, then ten, then thirty.

“Hm,” he said, at last. “Well, I suppose that answers that.”

He sat down and resumed eating.

The girl sighed. “So dramatic.”

I couldn’t bring myself to speak. That was fucking Asteris.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Vincent was exactly where we had agreed. I snuck out of the Moon Palace just before dawn, waiting as long as I could for the other contestants to retreat back to their rooms. After the feast was over, we had started to somewhat warily explore the rest of the Moon Palace and discovered hundreds of fully furnished and stocked suites throughout it. Most had claimed rooms as their own, some by themselves and some in partnerships or groups for protection.

Still, I remained in my greenhouse. No walls or locks would protect me as well as those windows could. Besides, I found something oddly comforting in the way the greenery wrapped me in an embrace. The plants were fragile and alive and impermanent—just like me—and yet, they’d still managed to reclaim the ancient structure. It was a little inspiring.

When the sky was tinted red, I made my journey. The Ministaer had been honest. The Moon Palace did not lock us in. Vincent met me beyond the gates, beneath the steps where the slab paths gave way to the silty mud of the riverbank. Stone bridges arced overhead, leading to the city.

Vincent had described this spot to me before the Kejari began. “It’s private,” he had told me. “It will be our meeting place.”

Here, under the shadow of the bridge, I felt like I stood upon the boundary between two worlds. To my right, the Moon Palace loomed, ancient and foreboding. To my left, Sivrinaj rose into the sky, silhouetted by the near-full moon. No one cared what happened here, in this little shadowy crevice that was a part of neither.

How did Vincent know about this place? Had he met someone here when he was a contestant in his own Kejari, two hundred years ago? Did he have… well, a Vincent? Someone who had trained him, guided him? A member of the family he had killed in his rise to power?

Or another mentor who told him to do it?

I knew better than to ask those sorts of questions. Maybe when I became Vincent’s equal—his Coriatae—I finally would.

“Oraya.”

I wasn’t expecting the sound of Vincent’s voice to hurt as it did—an ache right in the center of my chest. I turned to see him approaching from beneath the shadow of the bridge. When the moonlight fell across his face, my throat grew suddenly thick.

I’d been strong before this. There was no time to grieve, no time to be frightened, when I had to focus singularly on survival. But now the sight of him, the sheer familiarity of his face, took me back sixteen years. I was a child again, hiding in the space between the wall and the dresser, and Vincent was the only safe person in the world.

Ilana was gone. Dead. I had only him.

He looked me up and down. His face was stone-still.

“Are you injured?”

“No.”

He lifted his chin to my hand. “That?”

I’d forgotten about it. “Nothing. Just a little cut.”

“You need your hands.”

He beckoned, and I rested my hand in his palm. He gently removed the bandage—purple silk. I had to fight the sting in my eyes as I watched it shimmer beneath the moonlight, now covered in blood. The rest of Ilana’s scarf was in my pocket. I’d tried to salvage as much of it as I could, though so much of it was now stained and torn.

Vincent frowned at it—not at my wound, but the fabric. “Where did you get this?”