I had wondered many times over these last weeks why both of them were here. They clearly loved each other deeply—neither, I was certain, would be willing to hurt the other. But then again, it wasn’t unheard of for close friends to enter together, if their interests aligned. Two chances at victory were better than one.

“Then… why is she here?” I asked.

“Because she’s a manipulative little thing,” he grumbled, as if to himself.

“Manipulative?”

“Right. Like someone else I know. Trying to get me drunk so you can ask all kinds of invasive questions.” He took a drink and shot me a wary glare. He set down his mug, and with every second of silence, I grew more surprised.

“And now,” he said, “you’re waiting for me to ask you why you’re doing this.”

“A bit,” I admitted.

A human in the Kejari? Anyone would be curious.

“Well, I won’t. I know already.”

My brows rose. “Oh, you do?”

“I’ll admit that before, I was wondering. I was thinking, ‘Why would this human put herself in a situation where she was surrounded by predators? Near certain death?’” He smirked. “Or, more accurately, ‘Why would Vincent put her in this situation?’ Easy, viper.” He raised his hands at the glare I shot him. “I know. But I was curious about a lot. Like, why were you here at all? You’re an adult. Vincent clearly doesn’t keep you literally locked up. Why did you remain in the House of Night, instead of crossing the Bone Seas to the human nations, where you could live a real life?”

A real life, he said, as if my life wasn’t real.

The truth was, it had barely even occurred to me that it was an option to leave the House of Night—leave Vincent. Only once, when I was seventeen years old, did I consider it. Ilana had raised the idea. It was shortly after… after. Those days were a blur of grief and pain. But I could still remember exactly how she had looked that day—so uncharacteristically serious, so worried. She had taken my face in her rough hands, pulled me so close I could smell the cigar smoke on her breath, and looked directly into my eyes. “You don’t have to live this way, my love,” she had said. “I made this choice, but you didn’t. You can choose another life, in another world, where you’d be just a person.”

I had only stared at her blankly before turning away.

The thought was incomprehensible. Where else could I possibly exist but the House of Night?

“I don’t want to leave,” I said.

“I see that now, after watching you here. You don’t see yourself as human at all, do you? So why would you leave to go live with them?”

I didn’t like that tone at all. “There are problems that need to be solved here. I’m not running away from that. This is my home. Maybe it’s a home that hates me, but it’s my home.”

This kingdom was a part of me, and I, whether it wanted me or not, was a part of it. I was the daughter of its king, blood or no. The bones of my parents were buried in this country. No matter how many times the House of Night bruised my skin or my heart, I would stay. Just as all the humans who lived here—who did not have a choice but to live here—would stay.

This was where I belonged. Here. Not some foreign human land half a world away.

Raihn examined me, a thoughtful expression on his face. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen that look, and every time, it made me uncomfortable. Like he was letting a facade drop for just these few rare, quiet moments, and revealing just how much he analyzed the world around him, typically hidden beneath violence and swagger.

I didn’t especially like being the subject of that analysis.

“You have balls, princess,” he said. “I will give you that.” Then he leaned across the table—so small compared to his frame that even that slight movement put him right in front of me.

“Here’s the other thing I have never understood about you. Vincent.”

I drew back, already defensive, every muscle tensed at the mere mention of his name.

“You’re just some human girl,” Raihn went on. “And the King of the Nightborn, well-known to be a cold, ruthless bastard, just… has a moment of compassion and decides to take you in? Why?”

His brow furrowed, and his eyes searched my face, like he was really looking for an answer to this question—and like he was already concerned on my behalf for what that answer might be. I glimpsed something in that expression, the faintest edge of something strangely familiar, gone in seconds.

“Of course,” he continued, “I know some vampires have a taste for human sex, but—”

“Vincent is my father,” I cut in, disgusted.

“Right. At least if he was fucking you, I could make sense of it. But by all accounts, including yours, he’s not. So…”

If I wasn’t so offended, I would find it a bit funny that Raihn had the exact same thought about me and Vincent that I’d had about him and Mische.

“Mische is your family, even if she isn’t your blood. It shouldn’t be so hard for you to understand that.”

“I understand it. I just didn’t think our oh-so-great-and-powerful divine king did.”

“Because you know him so well.” I scoffed. “Of course you think poorly of him. You’re Rishan. He unseated your people from the throne.”

“I’m sure the two dozen extended family members of his that he executed to take that throne feel somewhat strongly about his commitment to familial bonds, too.”

Oh, please. As if every vampire king didn’t have to kill to get that power. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was reality.

“And how many people are you about to kill to fulfill those ‘responsibilities’ you talked about?” I smirked at him, gesturing to myself. “And you still took in a human stray, didn’t you?”

He finished the last of his beer.

“Oraya, there is nothing stray about you. I think you know precisely where you’re going, even when you don’t know you do.”

And I was about to ask him what, exactly, that was supposed to mean—

—But then the floor shook in an abrupt lurch, and the crowd drew in a sudden gasp as the explosion rang out loud enough to make the world tremble.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

A shiver tore through my entire body. The sound was distant, and yet it silenced the room immediately. The ground shook once, violently—over so fast that if plates and glasses hadn’t all toppled to the ground in that moment, I might have questioned if I’d imagined it.

Maybe I had been wrong about these humans being carefree, because they all sobered right away, their hushed fear rising to the surface like it had never really left.

Raihn and I were already on our feet, running outside. When we stumbled onto the street, I stopped short.

“Fuck,” I breathed.

A plume of shimmery silver smoke rose from the distant Moon Palace, floating up through the night sky and blotting out the moon. The puffs of white nearly consumed the Palace’s silhouette, but when a gust of wind thinned the fog, it revealed that one of the towers was simply missing. Just… gone. Lightning-bright cracks radiated up through the base of the building, visible even from across the city. Bursts of light clustered around the castle’s foundation.

My stomach dropped.

Mische.

Mische was in the Moon Palace.

I whirled to Raihn, who had gone pale. All his masks and performances had been abandoned, leaving only bare, gut-wrenching terror.

“We’ll get her,” I said. “She’s going to be alright. We’ll get her.”

I touched him without thinking, my fingers digging into the muscle of his forearm. He had to visibly fight that fear from the surface. Still, his voice shook a little as he said, “I’m flying.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“You’ll be a liability.”

“You know damned fucking well that isn’t true, and you don’t know what you’re about to find, Raihn.”