“I have so much to explain to you,” he said, “if you’ll let me. Oraya—stop fighting me.”

“Why?” I shot back. “To make it easier for you to rape me?”

Another wince.

“I said what I had to say to save your life,” he hissed.

To save my life.

Like I had saved his.

I had chosen him over my own father, over my own power, and now Vincent was dead and the Hiaj had been overthrown and the fucking House of Blood was in Sivrinaj—

I had fucked up. I had fucked up so, so badly. And I wanted to claw Raihn’s eyes out for that. Mother, I wanted it more than anything.

But I wanted answers more.

I gritted my teeth. Lowered my chin.

Raihn eyed me warily.

“If I let you go,” he said, “will you attack me?”

I genuinely could not bring myself to promise that I wouldn’t.

“I’ll try not to.”

“I made sure that every single thing that could possibly be used as a weapon had been removed from this room.”

“I’m sure you missed something.”

The smile that twisted the corner of his mouth seemed more mournful than amused. “Glad to know you’re still in there, princess.”

He let me go.

I scrambled to my feet, putting several strides between us. I noticed him watch the distance widen. I wondered if he was thinking the same thing I was—of how I used to move that way every time we were in the same room together.

I wondered if I imagined that he looked a little sad.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel a pang of it, too. Because the person I had trusted was Raihn. This man… I didn’t even know who he was.

His gaze lingered on me. Lingered on my throat.

“How?” he said softly.

It seemed almost shameful to say that I didn’t know. I didn’t want to admit aloud how little I knew about the two men who had become so close to me.

“You first,” I said.

“I never lied to you.”

He spoke so quickly, like he’d been waiting for days to say this to me.

What a fucking joke.

“What does that even mean?” I sneered. “That you chose your truths so fucking carefully? That you picked each word to shield the things you wouldn’t say to me?”

He raised his palms, as if to say, Fair enough.

“I wasn’t ready to confront any of this, either. Trust me.”

“Say words that actually mean something,” I snapped.

“Everything I told you was the truth,” he said. “There was just… more.”

“What does that—”

“The man who Turned me was Neculai Vasarus. King Neculai.”

My jaw snapped shut.

The Rishan king. The king that Vincent had murdered and usurped.

“I betrayed him,” Raihn bit out. “The day that Vincent won the Kejari. I arranged for Vincent to get the keys to the strongholds. Handed over everything he needed to destroy the entire fucking kingdom in exchange for the safety of the innocents. He never met me in person. Never knew my name. Never saw me. But I knew it was all already going to fall apart. I just thought… maybe I could pour some oil on the fire. Burn it faster, and keep it from taking all of us with it. I hated it all that much.”

I couldn’t speak.

“But I should have known better,” he said. “I got the fuck out before Neculai could figure out what I’d done, thinking I’d arranged for the safety of those who needed it. I tried to get Nessanyn to come with me. She wouldn’t. So I left her behind. I left all of them behind. Trusting Vincent’s word.” His face went hard, hateful. “We know how that worked out.”

Rape her the way he raped our queen, Raihn had said.

Bile rose in my throat. Vincent was no saint. But surely he wouldn’t—he couldn’t have—

“Did he—”

Raihn seemed to know exactly what I was thinking. “I don’t know. All I know is that Nessanyn was one of the last to die.”

I was going to throw up.

By some miracle, I didn’t. I kept my face perfectly still.

“I was far away by the time I saw this.” He touched his back—his Mark. “It never occurred to me that it could happen. I wasn’t Neculai’s blood relative, of course. Not Born. Turned. I thought Heirs could only be Born, and I was content to let the entire bastard line of them die out. But in the absence of a Born Heir, apparently, a Turned one counted.” His mouth twisted into a wry, disgusted smile. “How fucking poetic. The Turned nobody, handed the power of an entire kingdom by the man who enslaved him.”

A chill ran up my spine.

“I wanted no part of it. The first thing I did was try to get rid of the Mark. Nearly killed myself burning it off. I didn’t want to rule this place. And I certainly didn’t want to take his title.” He looked around, a wrinkle forming over his nose—I wondered if he was seeing a different version of this room, from two hundred years in the past. “I didn’t even want to come back to this castle. Too many bad memories. So Vincent sealed away the Rishan line’s power, and he ruled, and I ran.” His eyes fell back to me. “Until.”

Until it caught up to him. His guilt over those Nessanyn had wanted him to protect. Mische, and her desire to use his power to build something better.

All this bloodshed over a fucking fairytale.

“So the Kejari was to you what it was to Vincent,” I said. A path to steal a crown.

Raihn, to his credit, did not deny it. “Yes.”

“And me?” I choked out. “Is that what I was, too?”

He looked as if I had struck him. “No, Oraya. No.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“What do you want me to tell you? That I didn’t choose you as an ally because of your relationship with Vincent? Yes. I did. And everything else I told you was true, too. That I thought you would be easy to kill after. That I would learn from you, and then get rid of you after the Halfmoon, and it would all be easy. As if I shouldn’t have known from the minute you stabbed me that nothing would be easy with you.”

He let out a sound that was a shade of a laugh. “Maybe that was why I picked you, too. Because right away, I liked you, princess. I was curious about you. You reminded me of me. Someone different. After a few hundred years, everyone seems the same. Not you. Not from that first night. So no, no part of that was a lie, Oraya. Trust me, it would be simpler if it was.”

My chest hurt so much.

I wanted him to be lying. It would be easy if he was lying. Easy to hate him if our friendship, our… relationship, had been nothing but a performance.

But I knew it wasn’t, even before I asked. It had all been real.

“Why is the House of Blood within our walls?” I asked.

Raihn did not want to answer this question. I knew how he looked, by now, when he was ashamed of something he was about to say.

“It takes manpower to win a war,” he said. “Heir or no. The Hiaj were never going to go down without a fight, even if I killed Vincent. And he knew that, too. He’d been careful to whittle down the Rishan population over the last couple of centuries. If I was going to do this, I needed warriors. Many of them. Septimus knew that.”

My palms were cold and sweaty.

“I resisted,” he said. “I don’t even know how he found out who I was. I don’t know how he knew what I was planning. I ripped apart my own inner circle looking for whoever the source was. And he was insistent that the House of Blood could help. One favor, he told me, and the full force of the House of Blood was mine. I told him to go fuck himself. I thought we would have enough. But then…”

Then the strike on the Moon Palace. So neatly blamed upon the Rishan. Giving Vincent full permission to kill them indiscriminately.

“The attacks.”

Raihn nodded. “Once Vincent was set loose on the Rishan, it was over. Before it would have been difficult, but maybe—maybe—possible. After that? There was no way.”

“Did Septimus—”

“Frame the Rishan?” His face hardened. “I can’t prove it. But I think the bastard created a problem he would be the only solution to. I tried every other way. Everything. And even when every other option was exhausted, I still told him no. Until…”