Perhaps the look on my face betrayed my horror, because he smiled, a humorless twist of his lips. “The most useful they’ve been in years.”

The Ministaer stood in eerie stillness, four of his acolytes behind him with their heads bowed.

“Welcome, Oraya of the Nightborn and Raihn Ashraj,” the Ministaer said. “Our Mother of the Ravenous Dark is pleased by your service. You have progressed to the final trial.”

I had imagined that I would feel more when I heard those words. Instead, they were met only with a numb sense of dread.

“There has been a change,” the Ministaer said. “The New Moon trial will not take place in three weeks. It will take place tomorrow.”

My brow knitted. What? That was unheard of.

“Tomorrow?” Raihn repeated.

“Why?” I croaked. My fingers dug into his arm. I hoped I was hiding how heavily I was leaning on him.

“It is very important that the Kejari concludes,” the Ministaer replied, simply, as if that answered our question.

Raihn said, “Well, of course. But why—”

“Nyaxia recognizes there is no certainty that Sivrinaj will exist in three weeks.”

The Ministaer’s face lifted in the faintest hint of a nod to the distance.

We turned to follow it.

The gates of the colosseum were wide open, revealing a grand tableau of the city. My eyes rose to the upper stretches of the colosseum walls and the skyline of Sivrinaj beyond them.

“Fuck,” Raihn breathed.

I couldn’t even bring myself to speak, not even to curse.

I knew what Sivrinaj looked like. I’d memorized every shape of this landscape in a million mournful moments at my bedroom window. And though I never forgot that this was a city—a kingdom—of brutality, I never thought that my lethally beautiful home could become… this.

The city of Sivrinaj had always been as sleek as a weapon, but now, the blade had been drawn, and it was covered in death.

Bodies lined the colosseum walls, propped up on stakes. Some still twitched in their final death throes, the life draining from them for Mother-knew how long. There were hundreds of them. So many they stretched into the distance, too far for me to make out the shape of their bodies. But my father did not start anything he could not finish. I knew they would continue for the entire length of the walls, even when I could not see them.

And pinned below each stake, stretched out in garlands of death, were their wings—countless feathered wings, staked through ancient stone. Red-black blood dripped down white marble in deceptively elegant rivulets, glistening in the torchlight beneath a rainbow of brown and gold and white and gray and black feathers.

We had been locked up in the Moon Palace, isolated, for weeks. More than long enough for the war against the Rishan to escalate. Still, the sheer scale of this was staggering. Sickening.

I’ve had three hundred years of practice, Vincent whispered in my ear. It is always important to be decisive and efficient.

“You may want to rest while you have the opportunity,” the Ministaer said, as if nothing of note was happening here. He gestured to another door, which offered a glimpse of the Moon Palace’s great room. “Much has changed.”

INTERLUDE

The wounds on the young woman’s neck had not yet healed.

Two days ago, the boy she thought loved her tried to kill her.

Today, her father came to her room.

“I have a gift for you,” he said. “Follow me.”

The king often gave the young woman gifts, though he rarely called them so. Right now, she was heartbroken. She felt hurt and foolish and stupid. She was not in the mood for gifts. But she was not in the mood for arguing, either, so she went with her father.

He led her to his throne room. It was a stunning place, a sea of marble tile in red and white and black, the Nightborn throne looming over it all. The king closed the double doors behind him and ushered his daughter inside.

She froze.

The room was empty, save for a single figure at the center of that expanse of smooth red marble—a handsome young man, kneeling, his hands bound behind his back. He looked up at her with the same eyes that she had dreamed about. Uttered a frantic apology with the same mouth that had tried to tear open her throat.

The girl could not move. The mere sight of her lover seized her heart, too many feelings thrashing in too many directions.

The king strode across the room and stood behind the boy, hands resting upon his shoulders. He turned to his daughter and said, “Come here.”

She did. Up close, she could see that the boy was trembling in sheer terror. This was strange to her. She had not yet seen that vampires, too, could be just as frightened as she was.

“Look at him,” the king commanded.

She did. She did not want to. Looking into those too-familiar green eyes was agonizing.

“He’s afraid,” the king said. “As he should be.”

The boy gazed up at his lover. He tried to apologize, tried to say that he didn’t know it would be that way, that he would feel that way—

The king shushed him. He reached to his belt, unsheathed a dagger, and held it out.

“Take it.”

A command. The young woman could not disobey her father’s orders. She had done so only once, and now look at what had happened.

So she took the dagger.

The king had trained her for years. She knew how to handle a weapon. Her fingers fell into place immediately, now second nature. But this was the first time she had held one so close to another living being. The light from the lanterns bounced on the blade, casting sparks of green in the boy’s frantic eyes.

The king said calmly, “I told you the night I brought you here that I would teach you how to wield your teeth. And I have upheld that promise. But now it is time that I teach you how to bite.”

The young woman kept her face still. But inside, panic seized her.

“The heart is the easiest way,” the king went on. “Straight through the chest. Slightly to the left. You will need to be forceful. Quick. It will be easy right now. But other times, they will try to run or fight. Do not give them the chance.”

Everything had gone numb.

The dagger was heavy in her hands.

Her lover looked up at her and begged.

“I am so sorry, Oraya. I—I’m so sorry. I didn’t know, I didn’t mean to, I don’t even remember—”

There are moments in one’s life that remain permanently distilled in memory. Some wither within minutes, and others are carved forever into our souls.

This image, of the boy she loved begging her for mercy, would follow her for the rest of her life.

Years later, when the girl was a grown woman, she would decide that the boy did not mean to hurt her that night. That he had not yet understood his newly Turned vampire impulses. It did not change what he did. It did not make it any less unforgivable. It only made vampires more dangerous. They could love you, and still kill you.

But in this moment, the girl did not know what to believe.

I can’t. The words lingered on the tip of her tongue. Shameful words. She knew better than to say them to her father.

The king stared at her, unblinking. Expectant.

“One strike. That is all.”

She started to shake her head, but he snapped, “Yes. You can. You will. I warned you long ago that you were never safe with anyone but me. I warned you. This is the consequence, Oraya.”