My blade was at his chest. His hand gripped my wrist, hard. His lips curled into a smirk.

And he whispered, “There she is.”

All at once, I realized what he had been doing.

He had been baiting me, just like he had baited the man in the feast all those months ago. He had been fighting me so hard to make me fight back with just as much strength.

I had told myself I would do it.

I had work to do. People to help. Power to gain. I could do none of that as a human constantly struggling to survive.

A trickle of blood at the tip of my blade. My hand shook.

“End it, princess,” Raihn murmured.

End the danger and the fear and the violence.

End it, end it, end it—

No. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

But Raihn’s hand tightened.

Look them in the eyes as you slide the blade in, Vincent’s voice whispered.

No. I squeezed my eyes shut. I thought I was pulling away.

But maybe Raihn yanked my wrist. Maybe he drove that blade into his own chest.

Or perhaps my vampire heart won the battle, after all.

Because I felt the blade slip, slip, slip. Felt the breastbone part. Felt the muscle tear. I felt that blade go into my own heart as it slid into Raihn’s.

The crowd erupted into wild, gleeful wails. Warmth covered my hands. The weight below me slackened.

I opened my eyes.

I had won.

Raihn was dead.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

No.

My Nightfire withered away.

Raihn’s head had rolled back into the sand. His eyes were half-open, staring sightlessly to the crowd. That stupid little smile still clung to his lips.

I had just gotten everything I’d ever wanted. All my greatest dreams fulfilled.

And all I could think was, No.

No, he wasn’t dead. I hadn’t done that. I knew I hadn’t—I hadn’t pushed that blade in. My mind grasped desperately at those last few crucial seconds.

He couldn’t be dead.

He couldn’t.

Distantly, as if in a whole other world, the Ministaer’s voice echoed through the arena.

“The twenty-first Kejari has its victor!”

The delirious cheers of a bloodthirsty populace thrilled by their blood-soaked victor filled the colosseum.

I didn’t move.

I had to force my fingers to relinquish their grip on my blade. They ghosted over Raihn’s lifeless face. His skin was still warm. My thumb swept that curl at the corner of his mouth.

“Raihn,” I choked, half expecting him to answer me.

He didn’t.

He didn’t move.

I had killed him.

I had killed him.

Oh, Mother, what had I done.

I gripped his face with both hands. My breath came in deep, painful gasps. My vision blurred.

I didn’t cry when Ilana died. I hadn’t cried since the last time I stabbed my lover. I swore to myself—and to Vincent—that night that I never would again.

But I had been wrong. I had been wrong about so, so much. The world had just lost an incredible force. And my presence here was not enough to make up for that.

In this game, only one of us would win. And it shouldn’t have been me. It shouldn’t have been me.

Nothing existed except for him and the light I had just snuffed out of this world.

Not even the sounds of the crowd. Not the Ministaer’s voice, reverberating through the stands, as he said, “Rise, victor. Rise to greet your goddess.”

No, I heard none of that.

I only raised my gaze when it all went silent. A shiver passed over my skin. I looked up—up to the sky. It was clear and bright, stars stark against the velvet night. My sight was so blurry with tears that they flared like little supernovas.

Or…

My brow furrowed.

No. It wasn’t my tears. The stars did indeed brighten, as if fed with fresh kindling. Silver wisps, like torn scraps of gossamer, swirled in the sky above the colosseum. The air grew very, very still, like every breeze had been stolen for the breath of a greater being.

A greater being like the Goddess of Night, of Blood, of Shadow herself. Heir to the Crown of the Dead.

Mother of vampires.

The hair rose on my arms.

“Bow,” the Ministaer whispered. “Bow for our Mother of the Ravenous Dark, Nyaxia.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

I did not need to bow. I was already on my knees, and I couldn’t bring myself to stand.

I felt her before I saw her.

I had always been a bit of a skeptic when it came to the gods. As much as everyone in Obitraes liked to moon over Nyaxia and her incomprehensible power, I wondered if perhaps some of it was exaggeration or myth.

In this moment, those doubts disappeared.

Because the entire damned world bowed to Nyaxia. Not just the people, but the air, the sky, the earth. The sand shifted beneath my palms, as if inching to get just a little closer to her. The night writhed, as if aching to be in her lungs.

Every part of me called to her. Turn, turn, turn, the wind whispered.

Still, I could not tear myself away from Raihn.

“Look at me, my child.”

Her voice was a million shades of a million sounds, painted over each other in exquisite layers. History, power, grief distilled.

I forced myself to let go of Raihn’s face, allowing him to slump to the sand, sickeningly lifeless.

Numbly, I rose. Turned.

Nyaxia stood before me.

She was not a person. She was an event.

My mind emptied of thought, my lips parting. She floated just above the ground, delicate bare feet pointed to the sand. Her hair was long and black, tendrils of night floating around her as if carried by an ever-present breeze. Stars glinted in its darkness—no, not just stars, but every infinite shade of the sky. Dappled streaks of distant worlds. Purples and blues of galaxies. It was nearly to her knees, a curtain of night around her. Her skin was ice-white, her eyes midnight-black. Her naked body looked to have been dipped in melted silver, a thousand shades of platinum playing across every dip of her form. Shadows caressed her curves with dancing fragments of darkness.

Her mouth was bright red. As she smiled, a drop of blood dripped down her elegant pointed chin.

I ached to touch her skin. Ached to lick the drop of blood from her mouth. I had learned long ago that vampire beauty was dangerous, a trap set with silver teeth. Their allure was made to draw in prey.

Nyaxia’s allure dwarfed it, and it terrified me.

I recognized this, and yet in this moment, when the full force of her presence hit me, I would have died for her. I would have killed for her. I would have shivered in ecstasy if she had offered me agony by those stunning blood-dipped fingertips.

I struggled to steady myself. The rawness of my grief had opened me, the tear it had cut in my armor too wide to patch.

Nyaxia stepped to the sands, each footfall silent. She bent down and cradled my face in her hands. Her eyes, all black, held the waning glow of a dying sunset, revealing a different shade of the sky every time she turned her head.

“Oraya.”

She said my name the only way it was ever meant to be said.

A smile twisted her lips. She looked over her shoulder.

“She has your eyes,” she laughed.

Vincent. She was looking at Vincent. I tore my gaze away from her. He had pressed up against the rail, unblinking. Pride and anticipation warred over his face. His eyes shone.

“My daughter, Oraya of the House of Night,” Nyaxia said. “You have fought hard and fought well. Tell me, my champion. What might I grant you as your gift?”

Champion.

Fought.

Those words destroyed the temporary haze of Nyaxia’s presence. The reality of where I stood—of what I had done to be here—crashed down around me.

The grief was unbearable. A million jagged edges of a million decisions I could have made differently. The burn of Raihn’s blood on my hands.