Everything went numb and cold. The expression on his face… the way he stared down at the empty glass now… it told me all I needed to know. I felt like a fool.

“So,” I said, emerging from the hallway. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Hm?”

Mother. I was so fucking stupid. Raihn was so far gone that he didn’t even have it in him to convincingly feign ignorance. I thrust my palm to the empty glass, still in his hand. “You told me you had enough.”

“I—” He avoided my gaze. Swallowed. “I did have enough.”

“That doesn’t look like enough.”

“The Crescent trial will be happening any day now. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

He set down the glass a little too hard, and a crack spiderwebbed up its side. If he noticed, he didn’t show it. His knuckles were white.

Something about that sound—the sound of the glass cracking—cracked something open in me, too. All at once, all those signs of hunger that I hadn’t wanted to see struck me. It was everywhere. How had I not noticed? Whenever I asked if he had enough, he told me he did. And I had taken him at his word without even questioning it.

Raihn was hungry, and not only hungry, but on the verge of starving.

And I had barricaded myself in a room with him.

Why had it been so hard for me to confront the reality of those two things?

It wasn’t that I was afraid of him. It was that I wasn’t, and I should be. I should be. That was nature, and that did not change because of whatever I may have come to feel.

You have been making so many mistakes, Vincent whispered in my ear. I hadn’t noticed how long it had been since I’d heard him.

“I should go somewhere else,” I said. “A different apartment.”

I leveled my voice, but I had to try harder than I expected. And I could tell that Raihn had to try just as hard to keep his face neutral, and didn’t quite succeed. There was a slight twitch to the muscle in his jaw, like he had to dampen a flinch from a blow.

I felt that blow, too. Like I had just slapped him across the face.

“Why?” he said tightly.

“Why?” I motioned to the empty glass. The cracks had grown. Now Raihn’s fisted grip was the only thing keeping it from shattering. “Raihn, don’t be a—”

“There’s no reason to.”

He was not going to make me say this. He couldn’t possibly be so naive.

“Yes, there is. You know there is.”

“I told you that—” He paused. Took a breath. Let it out. “I hope you know by now that you don’t have to worry about that.”

“I always have to worry.”

You are never safe, Vincent whispered.

“Not with me.”

“Even with you.”

Especially with you, because you make me feel at ease.

And this time, he did actually flinch. The glass shattered.

“After everything, you’re still afraid of me? I’m not a fucking animal, Oraya,” he said, words so low and rough that they did, indeed, resemble a growl. “Give me a little more credit than that.”

Something hardened in my heart, prodded by the hurt I felt on his behalf.

“You aren’t an animal,” I said. “But you are a vampire.”

“I wouldn’t hurt you,” he snapped.

No. That was a lie. It was a lie the last time someone had said it to me. It was a lie even if Raihn completely believed it was the truth—and if he did, maybe he was more of a fool than I realized.

Hell, maybe I was, too.

We were finalists in the Kejari. We would need to hurt each other. And that was even if we made it that far.

“What are you so offended by?” I shot back. “That I’m stating the obvious aloud? You are a vampire. I am human. Maybe we don’t like to say those things, but they’re true. Look at yourself. You think I don’t see right fucking through you?”

I was upset. My heartbeat had quickened. A muscle feathered in his cheek. His nostrils flared. Even now, I could see it. The hunger lingering beneath the hurt.

“Our dream world is nice, but it’s not real,” I said. “And I don’t want to be woken up from it by you tearing open my throat.”

I regretted my words immediately. But I regretted them because they were cruel, and because the terrible, childlike hurt on Raihn’s face made my soul ache.

I didn’t regret them because they weren’t true. They were.

Did he think he was the only one who wanted to pretend otherwise? In this moment, I wanted nothing more than to live my entire life the way we had been over these last few weeks. Building something like a home in this shitty, dark Palace.

I wanted it so much that I even… even considered if I might be able to help him. Even though it was a foolish thought. Even though a human offering themselves to a vampire deprived of food for this long would mean near-certain death, no matter how good their intentions were. And yet, when I saw that look on his face, that desperation, I was willing to consider it.

Stupid, naive, childish.

But Raihn had already backed up, his back straight, knuckles white at his sides. He had taken several steps away, as if, even in his anger, he recognized that I needed him to put more space between us.

“Fine,” he said coldly. “You’re right. We’ve been stupid. If you want me gone, I’m gone. You shouldn’t be anywhere near that hallway. I’ll go.”

I already wanted to take it back. The familiar grip of fear had begun to tighten around my heart. Not fear of Raihn, but fear of being without him, and the things I might feel once he was gone.

“Alright,” I said, against every instinct.

Neither of us seemed to know what else to say.

So he went to his room, gathered his belongings, pushed aside the bureau in front of the door just enough to slip through, and then turned to me.

A million words hung there.

He just said, “Push this back when I’m gone. I—”

He bit down on whatever he was about to say.

I knew that feeling, because I found myself doing it, too. Swallowing down, Don’t go’s and I’ll miss you’s and I’m sorry’s.

This is fucking silly, I told myself. He’s just going to a different room, and it’s the only thing that makes sense.

But I knew—we both knew—that once Raihn left, once he became just another contestant in the Kejari, something will have changed between us irreparably.

“I—” He tried again, gave up, and said, “I’ll see you at the next trial.”

And he was gone before I could say another word.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

That night, for the first time in a long time, I dreamed of the moon absent from the sky.

The bed, rickety and cheap as it was, was still enormous compared to my tiny body. I nestled deep under the covers, pulling them up to my nose. Jona and Leesan were asleep, or pretending to be. Momma was whispering hurriedly—Get that lantern off right now, you knew they’d come, you knew—

I was scared, too. But I thought, I should never be afraid, and slipped from the covers. I walked very, very softly to the window. I was barely tall enough to reach the sill. I gripped the splintering wood and peered into the sky.

Once I saw a dead worm with so many ants all over it that it turned into one big wiggling mass of black. Now the sky looked like that. Just a pulsating blanket of darkness.

Except it wasn’t ants in the sky. It was wings.

Oraya!

My momma said my name in that way she did when she was frightened.

Oraya, get away from—!

The air hit my lungs too hard, like a gulp of salt water. But worse, because it seemed like it was eating me from the inside out.

The coughs seized my entire body. I had barely gained consciousness before I was on the verge of losing it again, rolling over onto all fours as I convulsed. My eyes were dripping, my stomach aching, my vision so blurry I heard, more than saw, the string of vomit fall to the ground. I blinked rapidly in a poor attempt to clear my vision.