There were a lot of things Vincent didn’t know. Parts of myself that didn’t line up with his vision for who I was. Just as there were things about me that Ilana would never understand.

Still, I didn’t know what I would do without either of them. I had no family here. Whoever was in that house with me when Vincent found me had been killed. If any distant relatives remained, they were trapped somewhere I couldn’t reach; at least, not until I won the Kejari. But I had Vincent, and I had Ilana, and they had become everything that I imagined a family to be, even if neither of them could understand every contradictory part of me.

Now, as the possibility of losing Ilana seemed suddenly far too tangible, fear clenched my heart and refused to relinquish it.

“Ilana, please.” My voice was oddly choked. “Please, just go.”

Ilana’s face softened. She stuffed her cigar into an overflowing ashtray and came close enough that I could count the wrinkles around her eyes. Her leathery hand caressed my cheek. She smelled like smoke and too-pungent rose perfume—and blood.

“You’re sweet,” she said. “Prickly, but sweet. In an acidic sort of way. Like… like a pineapple.”

Despite myself, the corner of my mouth twisted. “A pineapple?”

What a ridiculous word. Knowing her, she probably made it up.

“But I’m tired, sweetheart. Tired of being afraid. I left the district because I wanted to see what it was like here, and it has been exactly as much of an adventure as I thought it would be. I risk my life every day to be here. As do you.”

“You don’t have to be stupid about it.”

“It becomes a rebellion not to care. I know you know that as well as I do. Even if you stuff the colors into the back of your dresser.” She shot a pointed look to my bloodstained clothes. “Even if you hide it in the shadows of the district’s alleyways.”

“Please, Ilana. Just for a week, even if it isn’t for the full Kejari. Here.” I thrust out the scarf. “Take this garish thing and give it to me when you come back, and I even promise I’ll wear it.”

She was silent for a long moment, then took the silk and tucked it into her pocket. “Fine. I’ll leave in the morning.”

I let out a sigh of relief.

“But you. You, stubborn rat…” Her hands came to my face, squishing my cheeks between them. “You be careful. I won’t lecture you about what he’s making you do—”

I pulled away from her shockingly strong grip. “He’s not making me do anything.”

“Bah!” I had moved just in time, because the scoff was so vicious it sent flecks of spittle flying. “I don’t want to watch you become one of them. It would be—” Her jaw snapped shut, and her eyes searched my face, a wave of unnervingly intense emotion passing over her expression. “It would be fucking boring.”

It wasn’t what she wanted to say, and I knew it. But Ilana and I had that sort of relationship. All the raw honesty, all the unpleasant tenderness, hid in the things we didn’t say. Just as I would not say aloud that I was competing in the Kejari, she would not say aloud that she was scared for me.

Still, it startled me to see her on the verge of tears. Only now did I really realize that she only had me. I, at least, had Vincent, but she was alone.

My gaze drifted up to the clock, and I spat a curse.

“I have to go,” I blurted out, retreating to the window. “Don’t drink yourself to death, you old hag.”

“Don’t skewer yourself with that stick up your ass,” she retorted, wiping her eyes, all hints of her earlier vulnerability gone.

Crazy old bitch, I thought, affectionately.

I threw open the window and let the steam of the summer rain hit my face. I didn’t mean to pause—something heavier sat on the tip of my tongue, words I’d only said out loud once before to someone who deserved it less.

But Ilana had already disappeared back into her bedroom. I swallowed whatever I was going to say, and fell back into the night.

CHAPTER TWO

Once the rain started, it came on fast. Typical of the House of Night. Vincent joked often, in his dry, sardonic way, that this country never did anything halfway. The sun either assaulted us with unrelenting heat, or it retreated completely beneath many layers of dusky, red-gray clouds. The air was arid and so hot you swore it would bake you alive, or cold enough to make your joints crack. Half the time, the moon hid within the haze, but when it was visible, it gleamed like polished silver, its light so intense it made the dips and hills of the sand resemble the waves of the ocean—or what I’d imagined such a thing would look like.

It did not rain often in the Nightborn kingdom, but when it did, it was a downpour.

By the time I made it back to the Palace, I was soaked. My path up the side of the building was treacherous, each grip of stone slippery and water-slicked, but it wasn’t the first time I’d made the journey in the rain and it wouldn’t be the last. When I finally vaulted into my bedchamber, many stories above the ground, my muscles burned with the effort.

My hair was dripping wet. I wrung it out, sending a symphony of droplets spattering to the velvet bench beneath the window, and turned to the horizon. It was so hot that the rain summoned a silver cloud of steam over the city. The view from up here was very different than the one from the rooftop in the human quarter of the city. That had been an expanse of clay blocks, a painting of varying shades of brown squares beneath the moonlight. In the heart of Sivrinaj, though—in royal Nightborn territory—every glance overflowed with sumptuous elegance.

The view from my window was a symmetrical sea of undulating curves. The Nightborn drew their architectural inspiration from the sky and moon—metal-capped domes, polished granite, silver that cradled indigo stained glass. From up here, the moonlight and rain caressed an expanse of platinum. The ground was so flat that even though Sivrinaj was a massive city, I could still glimpse the dunes in the distance beyond its walls.

Eternity gave vampires so many years to perfect the art of dark, dangerous beauty. I’d heard that the House of Shadow, across the Ivory Sea, crafted their buildings the way they crafted blades, each castle an intricate set of pointed spires sprawling with blood-kissed ivy. Some claimed theirs was the most exquisite architecture in the world—but I didn’t know how anyone could say that if they saw the House of Night as I did, from this room. It was even stunning in daylight, when no one here but me could witness it.

I carefully closed the window, and I had barely finished latching it when the knock sounded at my door. Two raps, quiet but demanding.

Fuck.

I was lucky I hadn’t gotten here just a few minutes later. It had been risky to go out tonight, but I couldn’t help myself. My nerves were too strained. My hands had to do something.

I hastily removed my coat and tossed it into a discarded pile of clothes in the corner, then grabbed my robe and wrapped it around myself. It would be enough to cover the blood, at least.

I rushed across the room and opened the door, and Vincent didn’t hesitate before striding in.

He gave my room a cold, judgmental once over. “It’s a mess in here.”

Now I knew how Ilana felt. “I’ve had bigger things to worry about than cleaning.”

“Keeping a tidy space is important for mental clarity, Oraya.”

I was twenty-three, and he still lectured me that way.

I touched my forehead, as if he had just bestowed upon me information that rearranged my universe. “Fuck. It is?”

Vincent’s moon-silver eyes narrowed at me. “You’re an insolent brat, little serpent.”

He never sounded more affectionate than when he was insulting me. Maybe it meant something that both Ilana and Vincent cradled their tenderness in harsh words. They were so different from each other in every other sense. But maybe this place made all of us that way. Taught us to hide love in sharp edges.