This struck me, strange and confusing. My humanness had been the reason why I’d spent a lifetime dimming myself. For these people, it was the reason they burned brighter.

It was so utterly foreign that I was certain—certain—that everyone would stop to stare at us the minute we crossed the threshold.

It didn’t happen.

I glanced at Raihn, hand moving to the hilt of my blade, watching for signs of bloodlust. With so many sweaty humans packed into this small a space, the scent of blood must be overwhelming. But his nose didn’t so much as twitch.

I’d been skeptical when he said he could pass as human. Much more separated vampires and humans than the teeth and the wings—their entire demeanors were different. Vampires simply moved like predators, all silent grace and calculated finesse. And Raihn, though he was an unusual vampire, still had that in spades.

Until he just… didn’t.

The moment we walked into the pub, Raihn… changed. The way he stood changed, growing a little more relaxed and lopsided. The way he walked changed, his steps a little more meandering. The way he held his face changed, predatory stillness replaced with laid-back ease. Everything about the way he held himself grew a little rougher, a little less polished.

And just like that, Raihn was human. A very tall human, yes—a human that no one would want to fuck with—but human.

He jerked his chin towards the back of the room, took hold of my arm, and led me to an unoccupied little booth in the corner. Then he announced that he was going to get us the shittiest beer the place had and was gone before I could say anything else.

I watched him in awe as he cut through the crowd. Everything, from how he gently touched people’s shoulders to move them out of the way, to the half-nod of greeting he gave the keeper, to the lumbering swagger of his walk back to the table—beer in hand—was immaculate.

He placed a large, chipped glass mug full of foamy mud-brown liquid in front of me, then took his own and slid into the seat beside me. The booth was a small half-circle with a wobbly table at its center. He took up roughly three-quarters of the seating space. He leaned against the wall, limbs sprawled, threw his head back, and took several long gulps of his drink.

“Fucking horrific,” he said affectionately, as he slammed the mug down on the table. “It’s perfect.”

“Impressive,” I said.

“Thank you. I’ve had plenty of practice drinking terrible alcohol.”

“Not that.” I gestured broadly to him, up and down. “That.”

His eyebrow twitched. “I’ve had a lot of practice on my physique, too. I didn’t think you’d noticed.”

I scoffed, then leaned closer. “You are a very good actor, is what I mean. You look very…”

“Human.”

“Yes.”

He shrugged and took another drink.

“Makes sense.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Maybe I was right to distrust you in the beginning. You have so many different versions of yourself.”

“Oh, they’re all me.” Now it was his turn to give me that look—the kind that picked me apart. “Meanwhile, you look like someone has shoved you in a pen with a bunch of lions. Do you actually have your hand on your blade right now?”

I yanked my fingers away from the hilt at my hip and placed my hands on the table. “No.”

“You’re safe, Oraya. Relax.”

It could have sounded dismissive, but his voice was unexpectedly tender.

You are safe. I could not remember the last time those words were uttered to me. It was never true, after all. And strangely enough, even though these people were so much less dangerous than the predators that surrounded me every day, I felt more exposed here than ever.

I looked out across the room. “Did you used to come to places like this? When you were…”

“Human? Yes. Often.” His gaze slipped out over the room. “They looked quite a bit different back then, though. A lot of time has passed.”

“How much time?”

A pause. “A couple of hundred years.”

He said it very casually, but I knew that pause. It was the same kind of pause I made when he asked me how long I had been coming to the human districts. He knew exactly how long it had been—years, days, minutes.

“But I still come to places like this regularly. I get a bit exhausted by vampires, sometimes.”

“Do you miss it? Humanity?”

It was only after the question left my lips that I realized how oddly intimate it was. I thought he wouldn’t answer. He was silent, watching the patrons laugh and drink.

“I miss the sun,” he said at last.

And for a moment, he wore the same expression that he did when I would come back to the apartment at dawn to find him looking out the window, long after the light would have been eating at his skin.

I didn’t know why I felt the urge to pull away from that uncomfortable question, as if I’d prodded a wound. I took a sip of my beer. Thick bitterness flooded my mouth. I made a face, and Raihn laughed.

“Ugh. That’s disgusting.”

“Disgusting and amazing.”

“Just disgusting.”

“You have no taste, princess.”

Despite myself, I chuckled. Maybe he had a point, because I took another sip.

“Mische probably also used to be human,” I remarked.

A warm smile curled the corner of his mouth. “She makes it obvious, doesn’t she?”

“I haven’t met another vampire like her.”

“Nor have I.”

“Were you the one who—”

The warmth disappeared from Raihn’s face. “No,” he said, sharply enough to cut off the rest of the question and any further follow up on that topic, then took a long drink.

I watched him closer than I allowed myself to let on.

Raihn had told me that he wanted to ally with me because he was curious about me. And I hated to admit this—even to myself—but I was curious about him, too. It had been a long time since I found myself wanting to know more about someone, even if it was only because they were so confusing.

He set down his drink—already mostly empty—and we sat in silence, observing the patrons.

Eventually I asked, “Why did you enter the Kejari?”

Such an obvious question, and yet none of us had ever asked it of each other. It was like once we entered the Moon Palace, the outside world and the circumstances that had brought us there ceased to exist.

“I have a lot of people depending on me, and Turned Rishan from the slums don’t get many options.” He shook his head. “Never make deathbed promises, Oraya. Always bites you in the ass.”

Turned Rishan from the slums. I was often so focused on the suffering of the humans within the House of Night that it was easy to forget that vampires suffered here, too. I’d thought that most would enter the Kejari for the glory of it, but maybe it was really desperation fueling all of us.

“Family?” I asked.

“In a sense. And I exhausted all other avenues. Joining this fucking barbaric spectacle was not high up on my list of things I wanted to do with my pathetic never-ending life.” His mouth twisted into a wry smile. “I wouldn’t even be here if Mische didn’t force me into it.”

My eyebrows leapt.

He chuckled and took another drink. “Look at that face. You thought I was the—what was your word?—brute who Turned Mische, carted her around Obitraes for a few hundred years, then dragged that poor, innocent little sunshine sprite halfway across the world to the bloodthirsty Kejari tournament, is that it?”

“Yes,” I said, without hesitation. “Absolutely.”

“That fucking girl.” He shook his head. “No, this was all her idea. And she knew I’d never let her do it alone.”

I struggled to reconcile this information with the version of Mische that I knew. Tried to imagine the girl who put flowers all over the apartment and giggled uproariously whenever anyone made a sound that vaguely resembled flatulence dragging Raihn to the Kejari.