“How did you get out?” I asked.

“The world he had built was collapsing under its own weight. All that cruelty was catching up to him. I saw it happening, and I knew it was the only chance I’d have to get out. I begged Nessanyn to go, too. Begged her to save herself. But she refused.”

I couldn’t fathom this. “Why?”

“You’d be amazed what people can be loyal to.”

“She would rather die with the man who tortured her than live?”

“She was a dreamer. Kind, but soft. She’d rather escape to the world she dreamed of than fight for this one.” Then he winced, as if offended on her behalf by the harshness of his own words. “It isn’t that simple. But in the end, she died in the rubble of his world right alongside him. I got out, and she didn’t.”

“Did you ever go back to find your wife? Your—your child?”

He brushed the scar on his cheekbone. The upside-down V. “I tried. It didn’t go very well. Seventy years is a long time. I didn’t consider myself a vampire, but I wasn’t human anymore.”

I disliked how familiar that felt. I had human blood and a vampire heart. He’d had a human heart and vampire blood. The world left no room for either.

“I spent a long time traveling. When I was human, I became a guard so I could see the world. That and… well, look at me.” He gestured to himself with a half-smile. “What else was I going to do with myself? I could choose between blacksmith and soldier, and only one of those didn’t require me to stare at horses’ asses all day.”

“You could’ve been a chef,” I countered, and when he laughed—an actual laugh—the sound of it loosened something in my chest.

“Maybe I should have. Just spent my whole life fattening up a simple, happy wife and having a simple, happy family, and I’d be long in the ground getting much more rest than I do now.”

It did seem nice. It also seemed… smaller than him.

“But the truth is, I didn’t even get to travel much when I was human,” he went on. “So when I was free, I went everywhere. The whole of the House of Night. All the islands. The House of Shadow, House of Blood—”

House of Blood? No one went to the House of Blood.

“It was about as morbid as you’d expect,” he said, at my raised eyebrows. “I even traveled the human lands. Realized I could pass, if I was careful. But… after awhile, I think I realized I was running. They were with me everywhere. Him reminding me of everything fucked up about the world. Her reminding me of all the good I had abandoned in it. And then, when I came back to Obitraes, I found Mische.”

Those words held so much more weight now that I understood his background. “Oh.”

“Mische reminded me of her, in some ways. The good, and the flaws. Both of them saw so much beauty in the world. But they also both had that… that fucking naiveté. That willful ignorance of what it takes to actually make that kind of reality.”

He paused for a long moment of thought.

“Those seventy years with him had been… bad. But I met a lot of good people who were suffering, too. People that Nessanyn was trying to care for, even when she was drowning. Rishan people, who were now more trapped than ever. And I should have fought for them when it all collapsed, but I didn’t. I didn’t know how—or maybe I did and wished I didn’t.”

I thought with new horror of the hundreds of wings pinned on the wall. Thought of the ashes of Salinae.

“So you came here.”

“I didn’t think those responsibilities were mine for a long time. Mische disagreed. She forced my hand. Entered the Kejari first. Knew I wouldn’t let her do it alone.”

My brows leapt. Entering the Kejari just to force him to do it… to call it extreme was an understatement. She very well could have been sacrificing her life.

I must have made a face, because Raihn let out a dark, humorless laugh. “I was ready to fucking kill her myself. Stupidest thing she possibly could have done. And mark my words, I would have found a way to get her out. One way or another.” His face softened. “But that’s Mische. Impulsive as shit. But always, always well-intentioned. More than she has any right to be, after all she’s seen. Sometimes foolishly so. I love Mische like a sister, but… I worry about her. The world isn’t flowers and sunshine. She doesn’t realize—”

“—that you have to fight hard enough to leave a mark,” I finished. “That it isn’t easy to clean.”

His eyes fell to me. The familiarity of them, like a mirror, struck me deep. “Exactly.”

The world was not easy or straightforward. Goodness was never pure or simple.

When I first met Raihn, I thought we would never understand each other. But now, for the first time, I felt like someone was really seeing me—seeing the world as I did.

I became aware of the warmth of his skin under my palm, the thrum of his heartbeat. If I were to kill him, I would need to put my blade right there. Replace this caress with a strike.

And maybe… maybe I couldn’t do it. Maybe I didn’t want to. Raihn had people to save. Mine were gone. Who deserved this more?

I couldn’t voice this. But I had never been able to hide my darkest thoughts from him, not even when I needed to the most. He saw right through me.

“But then,” he said softly, “I met someone who still managed to find defiance where I thought it didn’t exist anymore.”

My throat tightened. Defiance. He made it sound so noble.

“A stupid dream,” I choked out. “As if gutting a few vampire scumbags in the alleys means anything. As if it changes anything.”

“Stop.” The word was a sharp rebuke. “You found a way to defend your world when everyone told you that you shouldn’t. Do you know how fucking hard that is? How rare? I wish I had fought the way you do. That is strength.”

Was it strength to lash out against a steel wall? Or did that make me just another naive dreamer?

“I don’t know why I’m doing any of this anymore.” My hand wandered to the pile of my clothes on the other end of the bed, fingertips playing at the hilt of my blade. I withdrew it, observing the dark steel in the lantern light. Orange dripped along the swirls etched into its length.

I’d been so honored to wield this weapon. But how many like it had been used to murder people with blood like mine?

How badly did I have to injure myself, I wondered, for Nyaxia to accept my withdrawal?

Raihn could defeat Angelika. He could certainly defeat Ibrihim. And he could seize that wish and use the goddess’s power to help those who needed him.

As if he could hear my thoughts, he grabbed my hand, tight.

“Look at me, Oraya.”

I didn’t want to—I would see too much, he would see too much—but I did anyway.

“You are more than what he made you,” he said. “Do you understand? That isn’t the strength. The shit he tried to carve out of you is. You have every reason to keep going. Now more than ever. And I say this knowing—knowing how stupid it is for me, of all people, to say it.”

He wasn’t talking about the Kejari. He was talking about something bigger. And his fingers clutched mine, trembling, as he hissed, “So don’t you fucking dare stop fighting, princess. It would break my damned heart.”

My eyes stung.

I wouldn’t admit it. But it would break mine if he did, too.

“Then you’d better not, either,” I said. “Swear that to me. We’re in this now. We knew what we were getting into. Nothing has changed.”

Everything had changed.

But Raihn paused, then inclined his chin. “Deal. If we fight, then we fight to the end. Whatever end that may be. Whoever’s blood needs to spill to win it.”

I thought I would feel better, like we had restored some piece of our relationship to what it was before.

I didn’t. We hadn’t.

I glanced to the curtain-draped windows. The light beneath them was now scarlet.

“The sun’s going down,” I said. “Don’t you want one last look?”