He didn’t have to tell me twice. I didn’t bother bidding the woman a goodbye as I strode after him, more than grateful to leave this pit of claws and teeth.

Still, I found myself casting one more glance back to that painting. The man was gone. The fallen Rishan just grasped at open air, abandoned once again.

CHAPTER FOUR

I never drank. Vampire alcohol was incredibly strong for humans, and that aside, it was dangerous for me to dull my senses. Vincent rarely did, either—probably for the same reasons as me. So I was surprised when he brought the wine to my chambers. We took tiny sips and then set it aside, leaving it untouched as we sat in silence, listening to the crackling of the fire.

Finally, he spoke. “I think you are as prepared as you possibly could be.”

He sounded like he was mostly trying to convince himself.

“The others will underestimate you,” he went on. “Use that. It’s a powerful weapon.”

He was right. I had learned long ago that the best weapon I had was my own weakness. I used it to kill almost every night in the slums. Right now, it didn’t feel like enough.

I swallowed past the lump in my throat. I watched my father as he looked to the fire, red light playing over the pale, hard angles of his face. Had he been this nervous the night he offered himself to his own Kejari?

“Is that what you did?” I asked. “Let them underestimate you?”

He blinked, taken aback. I rarely asked him about his time in the Kejari. I rarely asked him about his past at all. Maybe that sip of wine, or my nearly-inevitable impending death, made me a little bold.

“Yes,” he said, after a moment. “And it was likely why I won.”

It seemed laughable now that Vincent was ever someone who could be underestimated. But two hundred years ago, he had just been a young, lesser Hiaj noble. The House of Night was under Rishan control then and seemed like it would remain that way for centuries more.

“Were you nervous?”

“No. I knew what I had to do.”

At my visible skepticism, he lifted one shoulder in an almost-shrug. “Fine,” he admitted. “I was nervous. But I knew the Kejari was my only path to a life worth remembering. Death isn’t frightening when weighed against an insignificant existence.”

An insignificant existence.

Those words hit me unexpectedly hard. Because what existence was more insignificant than this? Living in constant fear, hobbled by my own blood and my own human weakness? I could never be anything this way, fighting so hard to survive that I could never do anything. Could never be anything of worth to… to the people who had nothing but me.

My jaw clenched so hard it trembled. I grabbed my glass and took another sip of wine, mostly because I was desperate to do something with my hands. I could feel Vincent’s eyes on me. Could feel the softening of his gaze.

“You do not have to do this, my little serpent,” he said softly. “I realize only now that perhaps I never told you that.”

It would be a lie to say that I wasn’t tempted to run away—tempted to hide in the space between the dresser and the wall, just as I had when I was a small child. A part of me still always was hiding, because I was never going to be anything other than prey.

No, that was not a life of significance. It wasn’t even a life at all.

“I’m not backing out,” I said.

I looked down to my hand—to the delicate silver ring on my right little finger. A simple band with a black diamond so small it was no bigger than the band itself.

I’d had it in my pocket when Vincent found me as a child. I liked to think it belonged to my mother. Maybe it was just some worthless trinket. I would probably never know.

Absentmindedly, I rubbed it. Not even that tiny movement escaped Vincent’s attention.

“I would have found them for you, if I could,” he said. “I hope you understand that.”

A pang rang out in my chest. I didn’t like to openly acknowledge my own hopes. It made me feel… stupid. Childish. Even more so to hear Vincent reference them aloud.

“I know.”

“If I ever had an excuse, if there was ever a rebellion—”

“Vincent. I know. I know you can’t go there.” I stood and frowned at him, and his eyes fell to the fire, avoiding mine.

Fuck, it was strange, to see Vincent look something close to—to guilty.

Twenty years ago, Vincent pulled me from the wreckage in the wake of a horrible Rishan rebellion. The city I left behind, or what remained of it, was deep within Rishan territory. The only reason why Vincent had entered it at all decades ago was because the uprising had given him license to, but now? That territory was protected by Nyaxia. A Hiaj king could not breach it outside of wartime between the clans, and though it was ridiculous to call this eternal tension “peace,” my father had no reasonable excuse to invade and find my family.

If any of them had survived. Likely not. Whoever had been in that house when Vincent found me had not survived. But had there been others? Did I have anyone out there searching for me?

I knew the logical answer. Human lives were so fragile. Yet it still didn’t stop the dark corners of my mind from wandering. Wondering where they were. Wondering how they had suffered. Wondering if any of them remembered me.

I didn’t remember them. Maybe that was why I missed them so much. A dream could be whatever you needed it to be, and maybe the twelve-year-old version of myself needed saving them to be the missing piece that would finally make me feel whole.

“Soon,” Vincent murmured. “Soon you’ll be strong enough to go.”

Soon.

No, Vincent couldn’t act, but I could—if I was something stronger than human. I would need to be stronger, even, than most vampires.

I could do it if I was as strong as Vincent himself.

This would be my wish from Nyaxia, if I won the Kejari: to become Vincent’s Coriatae. His heart-bound. A Coriatis bond was a powerful thing—verging on legendary—only granted a handful of times in history, and only forged by Nyaxia herself. It would strip away my humanity, making me a vampire without the risks of Turning, which ended in death more than half of the time. And it would bind my soul to Vincent’s, his power becoming mine, and mine becoming his. Not that I had much to offer him, of course. It was a testament to his love for me that he was willing to offer me such a gift at all.

As his Coriatae, I would be powerful enough to save the family that had birthed me and to become a true daughter to the man that raised me. I would be one of the most powerful people in the House of Night. One of the most powerful people in the world.

And no one would ever underestimate me, ever again.

“Soon,” I agreed.

He gave me a faint smile, then rose. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.” But the word was ash in my mouth.

I had attempted to pray to Nyaxia many times over the years. I never felt much of anything—maybe because, as a human, I wasn’t truly one of her children. But as Vincent brought the bowl and the jeweled dagger, as he slit my hand and let my weak, human blood roll into the hammered gold, the hair prickled at the back of my neck. Vincent whispered prayers in the ancient tongue of the gods, his thumb pressed to my wound to squeeze drop after drop into the offering.

His eyes flicked up to meet mine.

“Nyaxia, Mother of Ravenous Dark, Womb of Night, of Shadow, of Blood. I give you Oraya of the Nightborn. She is the daughter my heart gave me, just as my heart made me your son. Her presence in the Kejari is the greatest gift I will ever offer you.” Perhaps I imagined that his voice had thickened, ever-so-slightly. “Save, perhaps, for her victory.”

Fuck. I was not expecting that this would be so difficult.

No, I wasn’t much of a devotee. But now I felt the Goddess here, taking the offering of my blood and promising me only more blood in return. I wondered if she might just keep taking, and taking, and taking, until my poor mortal veins had nothing left to give.