“Rest, little serpent. No harm will come to you.”

He stroked her cheek, and she tried to bite again, but a spark of magic trailed his fingertips. With that whisper of night came a dreamless sleep too heavy for even this vicious little thing to fight.

“What do you want us to do with her?” one of the soldiers asked.

The king strode past them. “Nothing. I will take her.”

A beat of silence. Though he could not see them, the king knew they were exchanging confused glances.

“Where?” one asked, at last.

“Home,” the king replied.

The child slept, one hand clenched tight around the silk fabric of the king’s shirt—fighting still, in this small way, even in sleep.

Home. He would take her home.

Because the king of the Hiaj vampires—conqueror of the House of Night, blessed of the Goddess Nyaxia, and one of the most powerful men to have walked this realm or the next—saw a fragment of himself in this child. And there, right beneath the clenched fist of her palm, something warm and bittersweet stirred in his chest at the sight of her. Something more dangerous than hunger.

Hundreds of years later, historians and scholars would look back upon this moment. This decision that, one day, would topple an empire.

What a strange choice, they would whisper. Why would he do this?

Why, indeed.

After all, vampires know better than anyone how important it is to protect their hearts.

And love, understand, is sharper than any stake.

CHAPTER ONE

It started as practice. Just a little game, a little exercise. Something I needed to prove to myself. I wasn’t sure when it had evolved into sport—my shameful, secret rebellion.

Some might find it stupid for me, a human, to hunt at night, when I was at a considerable disadvantage compared to my prey. But the night was when they acted, and so it was when I did, too.

I pressed to the wall, the dagger clenched tight in my hands. The night was warm, the kind when the sun’s heat clung to the steamy humidity of the air long after sunset. The smell hung in a thick, rotten cloud—rancid food from the trash in the alleys, yes, but also decaying meat and sour blood. The vampires didn’t care to clean up after themselves here, in the human districts of the House of Night.

Humans were supposed to be safe here, within the walls of the kingdom—citizens, if inferior ones, weaker than the Nightborn in every way. But that second truth too often rendered the first irrelevant.

The man was a Hiaj, his wings tucked in close to his back. Apparently he wasn’t much of a magic user, because he didn’t spirit them away for easier hunting. Or maybe he just enjoyed the effect that they had on his prey. Some of them were showy like that. They liked to be feared.

From the rooftop, I watched the man stalk his target—a little boy, perhaps ten, though small from obvious malnourishment. The boy was in the fenced-in dirt yard of a clay house, bouncing a ball against the dust over and over again, oblivious to death creeping up on him.

It was so, so stupid for this boy to be out at night alone. But then again, I knew better than anyone how growing up in constant danger could wear upon a person. Maybe this family had kept their children inside after dark every single day of the last ten years. It only took one lapse, one distracted mother who forgot to call him back, one grumpy child who wasn’t ready to come inside for dinner. Just one night in a lifetime.

It happened so often.

But it wouldn’t happen tonight.

When the vampire moved, so did I.

I dropped from the rooftop down to the cobblestones. I was quiet, but vampire hearing was impeccable. The man turned, greeting me with icy eyes and a curled lip that revealed a glint of sharp ivory.

Did he recognize me? Sometimes they did. I didn’t give this one the chance.

It was practically routine, by now. A system I’d honed to perfection on hundreds of nights just like this one.

Wings first. Two slashes, one through each—enough to keep him from flying. With Hiaj vampires, that was easy. The membranous skin was delicate as paper. Sometimes I would catch Rishan vampires instead, and that was a bit more challenging—their feathered wings were harder to puncture—but I had refined the technique. This step was important, and that was why it came first. I needed to keep them here on the ground with me. I made the mistake of skipping it once, and almost didn’t survive to learn the lesson.

I couldn’t be stronger than them, so I had to be more precise. No time for mistakes.

The vampire let out a sound between a gasp of pain and a snarl of rage. My heartbeat had become a rapid drum, blood close to the surface of my skin. I wondered if he smelled it. I spent my entire life trying to hide the flush of my blood, but right now, I was glad for it. It made them stupid. This fool wasn’t even armed, yet he still threw himself at me without a care in the world.

I loved it—really, truly loved it—when they underestimated me.

A blade to the side, beneath the ribs. Another to the throat. Not enough to kill. Enough to make him falter.

I pushed him against the wall, one blade skewering him to keep him still. I’d coated the edges with Dhaivinth—a fast-acting paralytic, potent though short-lived. It would only work for a few minutes, but that was all I needed.

He only managed a couple scratches across my cheek with razor-tipped fingers before his movements began to weaken. And just when I saw his eyes blink fast, like he was trying to wake himself up, I struck.

You have to push hard to make it through the breastbone.

I did—hard enough to crack the bone, to open the passage to his heart. Vampires were stronger than me in every way—their bodies more muscular, movements swifter, teeth sharper.

But their hearts were just as soft.

The moment my blade punctured their chest, I always heard my father’s voice.

Don’t look away, little serpent, Vincent whispered in my ear.

I didn’t. Not then, and not now. Because I knew what I’d see there in the darkness. I knew I’d see the beautiful face of a boy I once loved very much, and exactly how it looked when my knife slid into his chest.

Vampires were the children of the goddess of death. So it was a bit funny to me that they feared it just as much as humans did. I watched them every time, and I saw the terror settle over their faces as they realized it was coming for them.

At least in this, we were the same. At least we’re all fucking cowards in the end.

Vampire blood was darker than human blood. Almost black, as if darkened layer over layer by human and animal blood consumed over the course of centuries. Once I let the vampire fall, I was covered in it.

I stepped back from the body. It was only then that I saw the family staring at me—I was quiet, but not quiet enough to avoid notice when I was practically on their doorstep. The boy was now clutched tight in his mother’s arms. A man was with them, too, and another child, a younger girl. They were thin, their clothes plain and threadbare, stained from long days of work. All four of them stood in the doorway, eyes locked on me.

I froze, like a stag caught by a tracker in the forest.

Strange, that it was these starving humans, not the vampire, that turned me from the hunter to the hunted.

Maybe it was because when I was with vampires, I knew what I was. But when I looked at these humans, the lines grew blurry and ill-defined—like I was observing a twisted reflection of myself.

Or maybe I was the reflection.

They were like me. And yet, I could find nothing in common between us. I imagined that if I opened my mouth to speak to them, we wouldn’t even understand the noises each other made. They looked like animals to me.