His eyelids fluttered. Lust. Pure lust.

He cradled my hand, placing his palm beneath mine. His skin was too smooth, too cold—exactly the same temperature as the rest of the air.

“Ah, this is far better,” he purred.

I could not fucking believe I was doing this. My other hand crept to my weapon. Rested there.

Just in case.

I said, “Drink.”

The moment I closed the door of our chambers, I collapsed onto an armchair. My wrist stung, the pain burning up my arm. I’d offered the right one—my non-dominant hand—but it was the same hand that my Nightfire wound was on, making that entire arm now a mangled mess of pain. My head was fuzzy, senses venom-smeared.

Raihn had still not returned, which I did not like.

I slumped further into the armchair and looked across the room. Mische slept, but even unconscious, little twitches of pain spasmed across her face.

I made a pragmatic decision.

If Mische died, Raihn would never be able to compete. And I couldn’t tell Vincent that I wouldn’t kill her without earning—perhaps rightfully—his doubt. I did the only thing I could do.

I told myself this as my vision faded around Mische’s sleeping form.

Told myself it even though I knew, somewhere deep inside, that I wouldn’t have been able to thrust that knife into her chest.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“…called and called and he didn’t come.”

I blinked away the remnants of my dream. My neck hurt fiercely, wedged at an awkward angle against the arm of the chair.

Across the room, a broad silhouette sat before Mische’s bed, backlit by the lanterns.

“Why didn’t he come?” she whimpered, over and over. “I can’t get him to answer. I can’t, I—”

Raihn murmured, “Don’t worry about that right now.”

“How can I worry about anything else? How can I—”

“Worry about getting better. Just rest. Can you do that?”

“I—”

But the silhouette shifted, his hand going to her face—perhaps using magic—and Mische went silent.

I struggled to fight the haze of sleep. Vampire venom was a sedative. The Ministaer’s, old as he was, hit me hard.

I ignored the spinning room and pushed myself upright. Raihn rose, very slowly. Something was odd about the movement, but I couldn’t place what. He turned, just enough to show me the profile of his face. He raised a finger to his lips, then nodded to the door to the next room.

When I stood, the floor tilted so sharply I was sure I’d topple over. Somehow I managed to follow Raihn into the adjoining bedroom. When I closed the door behind me, the shock was enough to jerk me from the remnants of my haze.

The back of Raihn’s shirt, once white linen, was soaked through with blood. The stains bloomed over his back like flowers—some patches of dry near-black, some streaks of stiffening burgundy, some blotches of fresh dark crimson. It covered the full expanse of his form, plastering the fabric to his flesh and dousing the tips of his hair.

“Fuck,” I whispered.

He let out a light scoff, then seized, as if the expression had hurt. “Yes.”

“I—what—what happened?”

What a stupid fucking question. As if I didn’t know exactly what would happen to the Rishan in questioning.

Raihn kept his back to me. His arms lifted, the movement stiff and stilted.

“How is Mische?” he asked.

“She’s been—”

As if he hoped the answer would distract him, he yanked his shirt off over his head.

“—the same.” The words deflated.

Raihn’s body went rigid with pain for several long seconds.

“Fuck,” I whispered.

“Fu-u-u-u-ck,” he agreed, in a ragged hiss.

There was so much blood on his back that at first, I couldn’t even tell what I was looking at. Only the harsh side-lighting of the lanterns cut through it, orange light defining the borders of the brutal wounds. The two gashes were symmetrical, running down each side of his back from the curve of his shoulder, over his shoulder blades, all the way to the dips at the base of his spine. They were deep, the flesh split in layer-by-layer—deep enough that I could have sworn I saw the movement of muscle as his back shifted.

Not a single strike. Nothing quick. No, the skin had been carefully flayed away, a fine network of wounds fanning out in all directions from the cuts.

Another mark ran down the center of his back, too—a large diamond-shaped patch of mottled flesh over his shoulders, which then continued down his spine. The blood covered so much that I wasn’t sure if it was a part of his fresh injuries or something older.

I was speechless, even though I shouldn’t have been. It wasn’t the first time I had seen the results of torture. I knew that the Nightborn Guard was relentless. Trained to wield pain as just another weapon.

And yet, a dizzying bolt of rage speared me at the sight of it. Rage, and strange betrayal, and a single sentence: I told him not to break him.

And Vincent had looked me in the eye and agreed.

How old were the freshest of these wounds? How many had been inflicted after I had spoken to him? Did he know he was lying to me when he said it?

These questions shook me, hard, one after the other like arrows. Immediately, the voice in the back of my head smoothed over the sharpest of their accusations—he has a million other things on his mind; he had nothing to do with it; he had to do what was right for his kingdom.

But deep, deep inside my heart, somewhere I wouldn’t look at too closely, I could feel it. A crack.

“Your wings,” I choked out. “Are they—”

Raihn gave me a weak smirk over his shoulder. “This happened because I refused to reveal my wings. Made the right choice, don’t you think?”

The relief at this was short-lived.

He still had his wings, yes. But conjuring them with these wounds, right where they would connect to his body… it would be agonizing, if not impossible, until they healed.

I swallowed thickly.

“That needs to be treated,” I said.

“Mische has a pouch of supplies in her pack.” He started to turn, then winced and gave me an apologetic look. “Could you—”

I nodded and went to the next room, grabbing Mische’s bag and returning. Raihn was exactly where I left him, like moving even slightly was too much for him.

“Could you—could you kneel in front of the bed, maybe?” I said. “You could lean on it.”

“You implying I can’t keep myself upright, princess?”

I wasn’t implying anything. The minute I started stabbing, I was certain he’d double over and rip all the stitches out. Even if he had the pain tolerance of a statue. Statues would fucking crumble at that.

Apparently my face had changed, because he rasped a laugh. “I concede. Fine. You got me. You’re right.”

“I could try to find some alcohol,” I offered.

“I’ll be sending you off into the human districts to bring me some of that piss beer after this.”

“You’d have earned it,” I said, and meant it.

He chuckled again—Mother, I almost felt bad for making him do that—and slowly turned around.

The torture, it seemed, had been limited to his back. A small mercy for him. There wasn’t a scratch on the front of his torso, though little scars nicked his skin, clearly much older than tonight. Warm light cascaded over the swells and valleys of his flesh—illuminating the landscape of his muscular form and highlighting every raised or pitted scar.

In any other moment, I might have wished I could freeze time there. He looked like a painting. Beautiful, but also interesting, every expanse of skin whispering of another story, another past.

The strange, irrational, overwhelming urge to step closer—to touch him—hit me in a wave, crashing and then mercifully subsiding.

I swallowed and pushed away those thoughts. “Kneel there. I’ll sit behind you.”