Raihn jerked backwards, his arm flying up to shield his face, and that was enough to yank me from my trance.

Awareness of my body crashed back into me. My panting breath. Burning lungs. Screaming muscles. Just as quickly, the Nightfire withered.

I stumbled to the ground as Raihn raised his sword in a yield.

He was panting, too. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “That,” he said, “is impressive. Seems like it comes to you a lot easier than it did before.”

Thank you didn’t feel like the right answer. I inspected my blade, polishing it with my sleeve.

“Did you do that on purpose?” he asked.

It was the kind of question that was really a statement, and that annoyed me.

“When I first got my Heir Mark,” he said, “everything just… rearranged. I still can’t describe how different I felt afterwards. And then, when Nyaxia…” He flinched. Shrugged. “It just changes a lot. It was like I didn’t know what my own body was capable of anymore.”

His words rang uncomfortably true. But he didn’t ask me if I felt that way, too. Maybe because he already knew the answer.

“You’re half vampire, Oraya,” he said quietly. “Not just half vampire, but an Heir. Have you thought about what that might mean?”

I lifted my gaze to meet Raihn’s, steady with that open question, and with that look, I had to acknowledge all the other things it meant.

It meant I no longer knew anything about myself. My magic. My lifespan. My blood. The limits of my own flesh.

It meant that my entire life had been a lie.

I didn’t say anything, and Raihn—to my relief—did not push. Instead, he offered me his hand. I didn’t take it and pushed myself up on my own.

He huffed a laugh and shook his head as he turned away. “Never change, Oraya. Come on. Let’s go.”

“I wasn’t done.”

“You look like you’re about to collapse. You can come break yourself again another time.” He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Maybe you’re due for a trip to the human districts? You look like you need to kill something.”

“Oh, I need to kill something,” I muttered. But as much as I wanted to argue with him, I was exhausted. So I followed.

“What’s so important?” I asked, as we walked down the hall.

“I found your bodyguard.”

“Bodyguard?”

Ugh. Just when I’d gotten freedom for the first time in my life?

He chuckled. “Even I have bodyguards, princess. You think I’d let you wander around this pit of beasts alone?”

“You sound like him,” I grumbled, and tried not to notice how Raihn’s smile disappeared at that.

He led me all the way back to our rooms. He opened the door to his chambers and beckoned.

“Meet your bodyguard.”

The words weren’t even out of his mouth before Mische was pushing past him, the grin on her face bright enough to light up the darkest corners of the castle.

And Goddess damn me if I didn’t find myself returning it.

Raihn put his hand—gently—on her shoulder, as if to physically restrain her from throwing herself at me. But she caught herself at the last minute anyway, stopping short of hugging me and instead offering me an enthusiastic, if awkward, wave.

“I missed you!” she blurted out.

Honestly?

I’d missed her, too.

Raihn was, to my genuine relief, mostly exaggerating when he said that Mische would be my “bodyguard.” She wouldn’t be shadowing my every move, but if I accepted, she’d be given the other bedchamber in my apartment and accompany me on trips.

“I don’t need to be watched,” I grumbled.

At that, a little wrinkle of concern had formed over Mische’s brow.

“If you want me to go somewhere else,” she said, “I can.”

I glanced at Raihn. “I don’t think it’s up to me.”

He replied simply, “It is up to you. Tell her to find another place, and she will.”

Ugh. That seemed so… cruel.

“Why doesn’t she stay with you?” I asked.

“I snore.”

Mische sighed. “He does. He really, really does.”

I knew he did, because I’d heard those snores every day for months, myself.

“Besides,” Raihn said, “if it’s not Mische, then I’ll have to find another guard for you. One of Ketura’s, if you’d prefer that.”

I glared at him, and he half-shrugged, adding, “Act of war, and all that.”

Mische stared at me like a stray puppy begging to be let inside.

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Fine,” I muttered, as Mische grinned and started dumping her clothing into the drawers.

17

ORAYA

“Lahor.”

Raihn tapped the map again. “Lahor.”

I stared at the city at the tip of his finger—a little ink drawing of broken stone. A single, tiny sigil was inked above it—a taloned claw holding a rose.

The last two weeks had passed in an uneventful blur. Sleeping. Training. Waiting for the next move.

The next move, apparently, turned out to be Lahor. One night, after training, Raihn pulled me into his chambers and dragged an extra chair to his desk, which was covered with maps and papers. He’d pulled out a heavy atlas of the House of Night, and pointed at a city on the far eastern shores.

Now, I stared at it.

“Alright,” I said, in a tone that said, Why the hell are you showing me this?

“You’re familiar with it?”

“Of course.”

I’d memorized this map when I was a small child and these ink lines were all I’d had of the outside world. Lahor had always interested me, because its crest matched the one that Vincent bore on some of his clothing.

The thought of Vincent came with the obligatory stab of grief, and then, shortly after, a wave of realization.

“You’re asking, I assume,” I said, “because it’s Vincent’s homeland. But he didn’t talk about it much.”

I’d rarely asked about Vincent’s past. I learned quickly that he didn’t like to talk about it, and I wasn’t in the business of saying things that Vincent did not like.

“It was a very long time ago that I lived there,” he had told me. “It’s not my banner anymore. All of the House of Night is mine.”

I’d accepted that. After all, it had taken me years to see Vincent as a person who had existed beyond the walls of his castle—as a fallible being with a history. Hell, maybe right up until the end, I hadn’t seen him that way.

“If Vincent had needed to hide something,” Raihn said, “and he needed to put it somewhere where only he could find it, do you think that’s where he’d go?”

I didn’t answer for a long moment, my chest tight.

At first, I wanted to say no. Vincent hadn’t wanted to even acknowledge his past before his reign. But then again, just because Vincent didn’t want to acknowledge something didn’t make it any less true. The lie of my own blood was more than enough proof of that.

“I don’t know,” I said at last.

I knew so damned little of my father.

“Septimus wants us to go there,” Raihn said. “He thinks that Vincent hid something there. Something to do with the god blood.”

“And why does Septimus think this?”

A dark laugh. “I wish I knew how that man knows half the things he does.”

I felt that, too. Especially since I had my own secrets to protect.

“I have to admit,” Raihn said, “it does seem like the perfect hiding spot. Right there on the eastern tip of the House of Night. No one needs to go there for anything. Inaccessible as fuck. Overrun with hellhounds and demons. And Vincent had kept some odd trinkets from there in his chambers, which seems unlike him. The place, from what I hear, is little more than ruins now. Fallen into some disarray since Vincent left it two hundred years ago.”

My brow furrowed in thought. “I think his niece lives there. Or… niece once removed. Twice removed.”