“Get better, alright?”

“Alright,” she said into his shoulder. “Be safe. Kick their asses.”

“You know it.”

I shifted awkwardly, averting my gaze. It seemed like the kind of moment I shouldn’t intrude on.

Then Raihn pulled away, kissed her on the top of her head, and bid her one more goodbye before going to the door. I choked out an uncomfortable goodbye of my own and went to follow him when Mische said, “Oraya.”

I turned.

“You too,” she said softly. “Take care of yourself, alright? Stay safe.”

Guilt twinged in my chest—because I had just watched Raihn make the same promise to her, and soon, the two of us could not both keep it. Watching him with her, it was hard not to wonder if perhaps he deserved it more.

“Of course,” I said.

“Thank you for coming. It… really meant a lot to me.” She gave a tiny smile. “It meant a lot to him, too.”

She held out her hand. It wasn’t a hug—maybe she knew that would be a step too far for me. Still, I found myself reaching back. Her fingers were warm for a vampire, her touch soft and gentle. She squeezed my hand.

A lump rose in my throat.

“I hope you feel better soon,” I said. “I’m just… I’m glad you made it out.”

“Me too.”

She released me, gave me a little wave, and I closed her door behind me. When I reached the top of the stairs, I paused. Hushed voices rose from below. Serious voices.

I couldn’t help myself. I told myself I wasn’t eavesdropping, exactly. I was just… failing to announce myself.

I moved very, very slowly down the steps, staying near to the wall to keep them from creaking under my weight. I stopped just out of view of the door to the dining room. I could just glimpse the shape of Raihn’s shoulder at the edge of the doorframe.

“Vale is on his way now,” Cairis was saying. “Even bringing his new wife, if you can imagine that.”

He sounded like a gossiping housewife.

“Wife?” Raihn seemed surprised. “From Dhera? Who—”

“Human. Or was, at least.”

Cairis said it in a tone of voice that implied a pointed look and a long sip of tea.

A long silence. I could barely see Raihn, and yet I knew he stiffened at that. His disapproval wafted thick as smoke.

“Interesting,” he said dryly.

“Interesting, indeed,” Cairis chirped. “Don’t you think so, Ketura?”

Silence.

Then, so quietly I barely could hear it, “She should not be here.”

“She’s a friend,” Raihn said.

“No, she isn’t.”

“She is a friend, Ketura, and you need to remember that.”

My brow twitched. That was something I’d never quite heard in Raihn’s voice before—command.

“Do you know what he’s doing out there right now?” Ketura hissed. “You should see it, Raihn. What he’s done to Genra and Isca. You should see how many people he’s killed.”

My mouth went dry. Genra and Isca—Rishan cities. One was even close to the district I had been born in, Salinae. The one that might still hold some of my bloodline, if anyone from my old life had survived the night Vincent had found me.

Cairis and Ketura were Rishan, then. I didn’t need to see their wings to know it from the way they spoke.

“I’m aware.”

“And yet you still walk through that door with her? Bringing Vincent’s human whore to—”

“Do not,” Raihn said sharply, “speak about her that way.”

Immediate silence.

“I apologize.” She did not sound very sorry at all.

I took one more step, and the floorboard groaned, giving away my presence. All three sets of eyes turned to me: Raihn’s pleasantly casual, Cairis’s blatantly curious, and Ketura’s razor-edged.

I cleared my throat and hurried down the rest of the stairs.

“We need to get back,” Raihn said to me. “Make sure we don’t get stuck on the wrong side of the Moon Palace when dawn comes.”

Then, to Ketura and Cairis, “Give Mische the food. I’ll be back sometime soon.” And he offered nothing else before he ushered me out the door, scooped me up in his arms, and launched both of us into the sky.

We flew in silence for some time.

“You were listening to all of that, weren’t you?” he said, at last.

Of course he knew. I didn’t bother denying it. “You made it easy.”

“Ketura is worried and angry. Like many people are, right now. So she’s a bit… sensitive.”

He sounded like he was choosing his words very deliberately.

“If I got all upset about being called Vincent’s pet, or whore, or whatever else they want to call me, I’d have no one to blame for it but myself. Hell, you called me that.”

Raihn was quiet for a long moment. We both knew he couldn’t argue.

“Ketura’s wife is in Salinae,” he said. “She’s scared for her. These are uncertain times.”

Salinae. The mention of the name made my chest ache—sympathy, followed by something more bitter.

I, too, worried for Salinae.

“I’m from there,” I said. “Salinae.”

“You are?”

“That’s where Vincent found me. In the human districts there. It was when he was putting down a rebellion. I’d like…” I paused. I’d never voiced this aloud before. Not to anyone other than Vincent. Not even Ilana got this naive, fragile little dream of mine.

I rubbed the ring on my little finger.

“I’d like to go back one day,” I said. “See if anyone that knew me then is still there. Family, or… whoever. I don’t know.”

A momentary silence. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. “What?” I said. “You think it’s a fairytale?”

Fairytale. Just like I had said about his hopes for the little girl he had saved, the one who reminded me so much of myself.

“No,” he said. “I think whatever family you have left would be damned lucky to have you.”

My cheeks tightened. But I shrugged away from the uncomfortable compliment.

“Who are they?” I asked, changing the subject. “Cairis and Ketura?”

“Friends,” he said.

I craned my neck to give him a skeptical look, which he must have felt, because he returned it. “What?”

They weren’t “friends.” I knew that right away. At first I wasn’t sure why, until I realized that I now knew what Raihn looked like when interacting with people he considered friends. Mische. Even… even, maybe, me.

At my flat stare, he chuckled.

“Alright, fine. They’re… maybe a better term would be old colleagues. I wouldn’t want to drink a beer with them, but I do trust them.”

That, I believed. I couldn’t imagine him sending Mische off in such a vulnerable state to anyone he didn’t trust absolutely.

Still… colleagues. Was that the right word? Ketura had apologized so quickly, even when she clearly was begrudging it.

“Did you command them?”

Raihn seemed a bit startled by that, and I found it satisfying. It was nice that I could still surprise him the way he continued to surprise me.

“Yes,” he said. “I did. You’re good, princess.”

“When?”

“Long time ago. We were… ah… private guards of a sort.”

Now that was an interesting thought. I knew many vampire lords who had their own personal military forces. They went everywhere trailed by a series of stone-faced, hulking warriors. I could hardly imagine Raihn as one of them. They were so blankly generic, and he was so… not.

“Of a sort?” I pressed.

“Closest term I have for it,” he replied, in a way that shut down any further questioning.

We lapsed into silence. I watched the dunes and tiny towns roll by beneath us, glistening silver under the caress of the moon.

Eventually, Raihn said, unprompted, “I don’t think that about you anymore.”

“Hm?”

“That you’re Vincent’s pet, or whore, or whatever. Maybe I did in the beginning, but not anymore. I just… I want you to know that.”

My throat thickened a bit.

Such a stupid thing, yet it was oddly validating—oddly comforting—to be defined by something other than my relationship to Vincent. And I knew, for better or worse, that Raihn meant what he said.