Evelaena? Something like that.

“Right. Another reason why this will be complicated. I don’t think she’ll be very happy to see us.”

To see us?

“We’re going?”

“What did you think we were going to do? Send a couple of servants to go search for us?”

At my flat stare, Raihn laughed. “My, how you’ve adjusted to royal life, Your Highness.”

“Fuck you,” I muttered.

But then the truth of his words sunk in. Complicated. That was right. No Hiaj would welcome the Rishan king at their gates. Not even accompanied by me. Perhaps especially not accompanied by me, because this was Vincent’s only living relative—who probably thought she would be Heir when Vincent died.

“That was the face I made when I thought about it, too,” Raihn said.

“Tell me we’re taking an army with us.”

“Right, with all those loyal warriors that I have to spare.” He raised his brows at me. “What about you? You plan on calling in some loyal and cooperative Hiaj soldiers to escort us? Or are they all too busy trying to kill my people?”

My face answered his question.

“Exactly,” he said.

“Wouldn’t it be smarter if you stayed here? A king shouldn’t leave his castle unguarded.”

“A king shouldn’t leave his queen unguarded, either, especially not one as prone to getting into trouble as you.” He gave me a sly grin. “Besides, if you think I’m going to miss the chance to get out of this damned place and go get my hands dirty, you don’t know me at all.”

I thought he would say that.

INTERLUDE

Turning is a fate worse than death. It is death, in a way—death of a version of yourself that you will never see again. Born vampires cannot possibly understand, nor are they usually especially inclined to. To them, the turmoil of the Turned is a sign of weakness. A snake, after all, does not mourn its skin.

What they will never understand is how much that skin takes with it.

The man clings to his humanity through every second of his transformation. It must be ripped away from him, stitch by stitch. Turning is a terrible process. It nearly kills him. He loses weeks, months, to illness, taken in an onslaught of delirium. Dreaming of his home. Dreaming of his mistakes. Dreaming of the family he does not yet know he would never see again.

He barely remembers the aftermath of the shipwreck when he emerges from this haze.

The king is beside him, perched at the edge of his bed, watching him with the kind of detached interest that one affords a new pet.

He offers a goblet, and the man gulps it down frantically, liquid spilling down his chin. He has never tasted anything so wonderful—so sweet, so rich, so—

The king pulls the goblet away.

“That’s enough for now,” he says, with a thick accent, patting the man’s shoulder and setting the cup aside.

The man wipes the mess from his face with the back of his hand and blinks down at the smears of red left behind, confused.

He does not understand yet, you see, what happened to him.

He puts aside his hand and his confusion. His family, he thinks. How long has he been here? Time blurs. The ship seems like a lifetime ago.

“Thank you,” he chokes out. “Thank you for your hospitality. But I need to go.”

The king smiles and says nothing.

Perhaps he didn’t understand him, the man thinks. He is far from home. What country had he ended up in? He knew once, but now—

It doesn’t matter. The man doesn’t speak any language but the commoner’s tongue he’d grown up with.

“I need to leave,” he says again, speaking slowly, each word enunciated, pointing to the window—the window that overlooks the sea.

The king still does not answer. His smile broadens slightly, revealing the tips of his pointed teeth.

Those teeth—the sight brings with them the memory of the night of his almost-death—

Do you want to live?

Dread rises. The man ignores it.

“Please,” he says.

But the king just strokes the back of his head. “You have no more home,” he says, somewhat pityingly, words serrated with the thick tang of his accent. “You exist only here.”

Years later, the man will remember little of this conversation. But those four words will remain, even when the specifics of the rest are long lost: You exist only here.

It will become the truth. The king has given the man a new life, but the catch is that this life belongs solely to him.

This is the moment that the man understands how much his life has just changed.

He shakes his head, trying to get up, but the king pushes him back to the bed easily. The man is too tired and dizzy to fight, though he claws through it with every bit of his remaining strength—

But when the king offers him his wrist, the scent dazes him.

“It will not be so bad,” the king says, as he guides the man’s head to his skin.

18

RAIHN

I practically skipped out of that castle.

Weeks out of that place. Weeks away from those stone walls, and those people, and that musty incense smell that reminded me far too much of two-hundred-odd years ago. It was every gift I’d ever gotten rolled into one. Better than any birthday.

Cairis would stay behind to manage the affairs of the Crown, and Vale, to continue directing the battles across the House of Night. He seemed a little relieved to have an excuse to remain.

Ketura and a few of her most trusted soldiers would come with us. I tried to talk Mische out of it, but this, of course, was futile. She made it about two sentences before she cut me off and said, “Do you want me to let you finish this before I tell you I’m not listening? I’m a bodyguard, remember?”

Then again, maybe it was for the better. Better to be out there with us than to be in this place, alone.

Septimus—of course—insisted on coming himself, too, bringing his second and a small force of Bloodborn guards with him.

Lahor was one of the most remote cities in the House of Night—all the way at the tip of the eastern shores, surrounded by water on three sides. Truly in the middle of nowhere. The journey alone took almost two weeks. We moved quietly, taking advantage of our limited forces to move swiftly, days spent in unassuming inns where no one would ask questions or in makeshift camps on the road. The winged among us flew, while the Bloodborn followed on horseback. I carried Oraya, which was about as awkward as it had been last time. It was impossible to focus on anything with her quick heartbeat throbbing in my eyes and her steel-sweet scent in my nostrils and her body stiff and uncomfortable next to mine—all these distracting reminders of what we’d been to each other before and just how far away that was now.

We traveled over rolling desert sands, smooth swells of pale moonlight-drenched gold. When I’d first come here, after I’d made it through the worst of my Turning sickness, I still remembered so clearly stumbling to the window in my room in Neculai’s castle. I’d staggered against the glass, eyes glued to those distant dunes.

I had thought, This place has no fucking right to be so beautiful.

I’d never seen the beauty in all the typical trappings of vampire allure. Their physical appearances, their gold and silver, their fashion.

But as much as I wanted to hate those dunes, I couldn’t.

For days, we flew over the deserts—sand and sand and sand, interrupted by occasional cities and townships and the rare lake or river surrounded by scattered greenery.