She cursed and slammed my head against the floor.

Everything went white, then black.

I was only partially conscious when Raihn pulled Angelika away. I could not move my gaze from the ceiling. How much time passed? Seconds, minutes? The roar of the crowd swelled to a sudden crescendo. Everything spun.

Raihn leaned over me.

“It’s almost over, Oraya.” He looked like he was shouting but sounded so far away. “Get up. Come on. Quick. We don’t have time.”

I managed to turn my head. Angelika barely moved in a heap on the ground. My eyes fell to the little girl, unconscious, her leg twisted, dark hair falling over her face. So incredibly familiar. Like looking in a mirror.

I dragged myself to my hands and knees, pushing away Raihn’s hand.

“Lemme go,” I slurred.

“For fuck’s sake, princess, I’m not going to—”

“Lemme go!”

I crawled to the girl. Gathered her in my arms. Forced myself to my feet. My gaze settled on the gate ahead, though it tilted and smeared.

What was that, ten steps? I could make it ten steps.

Raihn held my arm, perhaps in frustration, perhaps to steady me.

“What are you doing?” he hissed.

I couldn’t answer that even if I wanted to. It took all my energy to make it those final steps.

Still, I would not let him help me. Still, I would not let go of that child.

I crossed the threshold and fell to my knees.

The colosseum spread out before me, gold-gilded and magnificent. Thousands of spectators packed the stands, screaming for blood. And yet, even in that crowd, I found Vincent right away—right there in the front, watching me with abject horror, as if his own heart had been carved out and thrust into my hands.

It struck me, all at once, exactly how much Vincent loved me.

Was that how I had looked, I wondered, when I looked at this little girl? Just like that?

At the thought of her, sudden fear overwhelmed me. These were predators. All of them. And she was prey.

Her blood and mine ran together as I turned to Raihn.

“Don’t let them take her,” I choked out.

The world faded. I didn’t remember falling, but suddenly, I was looking at the sky, my fingernails digging into Raihn’s arm, the other hand desperately clutching the limp child to my chest. Nightborn soldiers encroached upon us.

“Don’t let them take her,” I begged again.

The edges of my vision grew dark.

And Raihn leaned very close to me—closer than I ever allowed anyone—as he murmured, solemn as a vow, “I won’t.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

My arms were empty when I awoke.

I stared at the ceiling for several long seconds. My stomach churned. The mural on the ceiling—a night sky—streaked as the world spun. I lifted my hand to my chest and felt only the slow rise and fall of my own breath.

No child.

The trial came to me in bits and pieces, assembled in a fractured mosaic. The end of it was just a blurry, poorly rendered suggestion.

The girl. I remembered how limp she had been. How hard we’d hit the ground together. Remembered the guards closing in on me—on her. She was just a small, helpless human.

My hand slid down my body. Yes, I had some nicks and cuts, but the worst of my injuries had been healed. I had survived the second trial.

And I felt nothing.

Raihn was nowhere to be found when I awoke, but Mische was excited to see me conscious. A little too excited, actually, her grin tinged with a manic hint of concern. I had been in rough shape, and unconscious for days.

“It was mostly the blood magic that got you,” she told me.

As a human, I was especially susceptible to it. My blood was weak, easy to manipulate, easy to turn against my mortal flesh. If a body withstood it, recovery could be quick, but the line between survival and death, especially for a human, was very thin.

I thought of that child. How tiny she was, nestled against my chest. Surely too tiny to survive what I barely had.

I listened, numb, as Mische told me of the end of the trial—that eleven contestants had died, leaving twenty-nine of us. Even Ibrihim, miraculously, had managed to drag himself through at the last possible moment.

I sipped the water Mische gave me, but my mouth was still too dry to bring myself to ask the only question I cared about. I let her talk for a full half hour before I scraped up the courage to choke out, “The girl?”

She looked confused. “The what?”

“There was a little girl.”

She gave me a weak smile and a pitying shake of her head. “I don’t know.”

I wanted to press, wanted to demand that we find out, but the words were thick in my throat.

Why did I care so much? I shouldn’t care so much. And yet I couldn’t ignore it. Couldn’t escape it. I swallowed down what I could of the food Mische gave me, but the minutes ticked by and I grew antsy, as if everything I was trying to suppress just roiled and thrashed beneath my skin.

Eventually, I rose. Every muscle ached, but at least I could move. I grabbed my jacket from the coat hook.

“Where are you going?” Mische asked, alarmed, as I threw it over my shoulders.

“Just need some air.”

“But you should—”

I threw open the door.

“—rest,” she finished as I slammed it behind me.

It had been a while since I’d done three in a single night. My body railed against me for it—and I deserved that, I suppose—but even tired, the fuckers weren’t difficult to kill. They were lazy, and there were too many of them. It had been weeks since I’d walked these streets. Enough time, apparently, to lull these fools into a false sense of security.

I wasn’t surprised.

They were entitled. Selfish, gluttonous, entitled pieces of shit, who saw the people who lived here as nothing more than livestock. I hated them so much that watching them die—watching them watch me, a human, kill them—did nothing to ease my rage. It just made it feel like more of an injustice.

Over the years, I had learned to stitch up that wound, tuck it carefully away with all my other human weaknesses. Now, the bandage I so carefully maintained had been torn off, grasped in the little fingers of an innocent dead child.

I didn’t know how to make it stop. I had been taught young that bleeding was dangerous. And though my wounds had closed, the one deep in my chest bled more than ever. It made me just as vulnerable.

When I left the Moon Palace, I thought I was going to meet Vincent. I was sure that he would be waiting for me. I’d seen the way he looked at me in there. I needed to talk to him, to ask him about my magic, ask him about the humans—where had they come from? How did they get humans that should have been protected? Why children?

He’d have answers.

And yet, maybe that was exactly why I found myself walking in the opposite direction, to the human districts.

Words were complicated. Questions were difficult. And that wound inside of me was bleeding so much that I knew Vincent would smell it. The blood would seep out between my fingers if he ripped it open with an answer I didn’t like.

This was easier. More satisfying. At least it was fucking doing something.

My third victim looked at me like I was Nyaxia herself as the light left his eyes. I pinned him against the wall, here in the shit-stinking, piss-coated alleyway where he had been stalking young women in the pub across the street. I wasn’t the young woman he wanted, but I was certainly the one he deserved.

He opened his mouth, a waft of his rotting breath floating over my face as he slackened.

I yanked my blade free and let him slump to the ground.

Animal. Fucking rot there with the shit and the piss and the trash, just like all the other rat carcasses.