She had already learned how to read his expressions, but this one was foreign. More than a decade later, she would think back to this conversation and know that what she had been seeing in him then was conflict—an expression so rare that she had not known how to identify it. She would think countless times about this night and about what her father would say to her next. The unanswered question of what he had been considering in that silence would haunt her.

But the little girl knew none of this now. She simply waited. At last, the king leaned forward in his chair, arms braced on his knees.

“There is one way you could, one day, become just as powerful as me.”

Hope flooded her.

“How?” she breathed.

The king’s mouth twisted into a rueful smile. “With a gift from a goddess.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The laugh was low and deep, rough and smooth at the same time—quiet, and yet it commanded the room. It was the first thing to seep through my addled mind; the first thing to cut through my hazy consciousness.

I rolled over. My body protested with a symphony of aches, but that was nothing compared to before. The absence of pain was jarring.

As I blinked away sleep, the first thing I saw was wings—deep black, the gloss of the feathers reflecting warm strokes of lantern light. I hadn’t had the time in the ring to properly admire Raihn’s wings, but they were—as much as I hated to admit it—quite beautiful. I saw Rishan wings much less often than I saw Hiaj ones, and never any as uniquely colored as these—deep black, with that oil-slick sheen of reds and purples and blues.

Raihn crouched before Mische, who sat atop a coffee table. He held her foot, which he leaned over with what seemed like intense concentration, a roll of bandages in his other hand.

“I told you to stop moving, Mische,” he muttered.

“It’s taking too long.”

“You can stay still for two fucking minutes.”

His words were rough. And yet, the tone of them was so much softer—tender, even.

Mische heaved a long-suffering sigh and squirmed like an impatient child.

I blinked again and the rest of the room came into focus. We were in what looked to be the common space of an apartment—a very, very nice one, albeit a couple of centuries out of date. Lanterns lined the walls, lit with a mix of fire and blue-white light that flickered over brocade wallpaper in a strange contrast of warmth and coolness. A wall of thick velvet curtains covered the eastern half of the room—all windows, if I had to guess. Grand furniture was arranged artfully throughout, crafted of deep mahogany wood or generously marbled black stone and upholstered with silky brocade. All of it appeared to be a relic from another age in style, but looked as pristine as if it had been made yesterday.

“I told you, it’s fine! It won’t slow me down a—oh! Oh!”

Mische leapt to her feet with such excited verve that she came delightfully close to kicking Raihn in the face.

“What did we just talk about?” he muttered as he dodged, and Mische paid him no mind as she darted across the room to me. My head was still spinning, but I lurched away from her nonetheless.

She froze, raising her hands.

“Oh. I’m sorry! I know—he told me. Slow.” She shrugged, letting out an awkward laugh.

He told me. I bristled at that. What might that have looked like? She’s a weak little human, terrified of everything, so treat her like a wounded animal.

Raihn looked away, muttering a curse.

“How are you feeling?” Mische asked. She settled down on the floor, folding her legs beneath her and resting her palms on her knees—like she needed to physically restrain herself from running over to me. Her eyes were too large for her face, almost comically out of proportion with her small nose and forever-upturned mouth. Yet, somehow, she was still strikingly beautiful. Then again, vampires always were.

“Better,” I answered, after a long moment.

Mische grinned. “Oh, good! I’m Mische. So excited to finally meet you.”

“We have met. At the feast.”

“Well, I mean, really meet. Raihn told me all about the trial. And how it was your idea to find the pack leader. That saved my ass, so thank you.” She laughed and shook her head, as if the recent near-death experience was a fond distant memory.

I’d never met another vampire who behaved anything like this. Even at their most outgoing, they were reserved. And yet, I couldn’t shake the sense that she did remind me of someone. Not a vampire, I realized after a moment, but a human. She reminded me of Ilana.

Sure, Mische had none of Ilana’s biting edge. But she had that same loud, unapologetic flair. She was… unabashedly colorful. What was the relationship, I wondered, between her and Raihn? They were both odd by vampire standards, but in ways that could not possibly be more different from each other.

She rose and spread her arms, gesturing to the room. “Welcome to our home. Isn’t it stunning? Well… maybe you don’t think so. I’m sure it’s nothing compared to the Nightborn castle. But we’ve never been anywhere like this before. Or—well, I suppose Raihn has, but I—”

“Give her a sun-damned minute before you talk her to death, Mische.”

Raihn slid his hands into the pockets of his jacket—long, black, simple, and slightly too small at the shoulders—and approached me, a smug smile that made me bristle spreading over his lips.

“You changed your mind quickly, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“So we saw.”

“And thank the gods you did come here,” Mische breathed. “You would’ve died.” Her face hardened. “Those Bloodborn shits. He tried to rip you to pieces, didn’t he?”

Thank the gods, she had said. Not the Goddess. Interesting.

“I have a gift for you,” Raihn said, very casually, “to welcome you to our little family.”

Mische grinned. It was jarring to see such a sunny and cheerful expression punctuated by those sharp canines.

“Oh, yes!” She reached into one of the chests pushed against the far wall, and when she turned back around, I had to stop myself from recoiling.

It was a head.

A man’s head, the skin pale and wan, the hair mostly gray and streaked with some ash-brown. His ears were pointed, as were his teeth, visible through the perpetual snarl that graced his lips even in death.

I’d hardly gotten a good look at the vampire that attacked me, but I had to assume this was him.

My stomach lurched with sudden nausea. The memory came, as it always did, in brief, all-consuming flashes.

I have a gift for you.

I blinked hard, shaking away the past. Then carefully ironed my expression back into one of cold disinterest.

“And what the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

Raihn shrugged. “I don’t know. Gloat?”

“How satisfying,” I said dryly. “He certainly looks like he can now appreciate my superiority.”

Mische’s grin faded. Raihn’s lips thinned in wry disapproval.

“I’ve saved your life twice now and presented you with the head of your enemy, and this isn’t enough? You’re a demanding little thing, aren’t you?”

“All of those ‘gifts’ have been self-serving. I helped you survive in that ring, too. And I’m sure you loved killing this one.”

An odd expression twitched over his face, quickly discarded in favor of an easy smile.

“That’s why we’re allies. Because our interests are mutually beneficial.”

“Hm.”

I tried not to show that the word “allies” chilled me down to my bones. Only now did the full consequences of my actions hit me. I had been forced to make a decision out of base desperation, and now, I was trapped here with these two.

Mische still held the head, though she now looked down at it with a slight pout.