A door opened and closed, and my hands went to my sword—

I looked up to see a large, balding man standing over us.

He looked familiar, though at first, I didn’t recognize him. Then it hit me: the man from the apartment building. The one who was always asleep at the desk.

My mouth opened, but I didn’t know what to say—whether to snarl at him to stay away or beg him for help. No disguises today. We were so obviously vampires. So obviously helpless.

A million possibilities ran through my mind as to what a human would do when faced with two stranded predators.

The man spoke before I could. “I’m no fucking fool. I know who you are.”

He approached, then paused when I visibly flinched away, positioning myself between him and Raihn.

His eyes were... kinder than I’d expected. “You got nothing to be afraid of. Neither of you.”

He nudged past me, knelt down, and grabbed Raihn’s left arm. “You take the right,” he said.

He was helping us.

Goddess, he was actually helping us.

I did as he said, supporting Raihn’s right side. Between the two of us, and Raihn using the last of his strength to assist us, we got him into the apartment building. The keeper kicked the door shut behind us, yanking the curtains closed with his free hand.

The moment the sun was gone, Raihn let out a sigh of relief.

“Better,” he managed. “Much better.”

“Sh,” I said. I didn’t want him wasting his energy on words when there was still a staircase to tackle.

But without the sun, he immediately had more strength, mostly able to get himself up the stairs, even if he had to lean on us for support. When we made it into the apartment, he immediately sank onto the bed.

The human man stood in the doorway, arms crossed.

Raihn lifted his gaze to him. “Thank you.”

But the man just held up a dismissive hand. “This place has changed. Don’t think that people here don’t know why.” He glanced between us. “I don’t know what happened here, but—it’s none of my business. Let me just say, I hope that things continue the way they have been. And if getting you up here helps make that happen…” He shrugged and stepped back from the door. “I’m gone for the day and locking up behind me. If anyone asks, I didn’t see a thing.”

And with that, he shut the door, leaving Raihn and I alone.

I glanced at Raihn. His throat bobbed, but then he collected himself and turned to me, surveying me up and down. I was holding my abdomen. The wounds that I was in too much of a frenzy to pay attention to before were now far more noticeable. But they wouldn’t kill me.

Raihn stood and hobbled across the room.

I jumped to my feet.

“Where the hell are you going?”

“Ix’s tits, princess. Just across the room. I’m fine. Just the sun that was getting me.”

That wasn’t true. Though, at least he could move. That was something.

He shot me a bemused look as he opened a desk drawer, rummaging through it. “Sit down and stop glowering at me like that.”

“Why?”

He laughed. “Is that really too much of a command?”

I sat, reluctantly, as he returned and sat beside me. His breath was heavy and rattled slightly. Blood stained the bedspread already—mine, his.

He undid his coat an extra button. It was now ripped and stained, his hair wild around his face, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows. My once-fine dress was torn and soaked in blood.

Everything refined about our appearances from earlier tonight had been washed away in bloodshed.

“Thank you,” he said softly. “Thank you for coming for me.”

My throat was tight. I didn’t like when he talked like that. Reminded me too much of the way he thanked me after I’d let him drink from me. Too genuine.

“Simon talked about you like you were—” My lip curled. “Like you were nothing. Fuck him.”

A brief smile ghosted over Raihn’s lips, a little pained, because we both knew that my distaste for Simon was not the only reason why I had saved Raihn. But he didn’t push me.

“I have something for you,” he said, and held out a small, unassuming package, wrapped in plain fabric.

I didn’t take it.

“It’s not going to bite you,” he said. “I’ve owed you a wedding gift for quite some time.”

“And you think this is the time for gifts?”

The corner of his mouth tightened. “I think this is the perfect time for gifts.”

I wasn’t sure why I still hesitated. Like that little twinge in his voice made me think that whatever this was, it was going to hurt.

I took the package, laid it in my lap, and unwrapped it.

A time-stained notebook and a loose pile of parchment fell free.

With a slightly shaky hand, I took the top paper and unfolded it, revealing a scribbled portrait in faded ink—a woman with dark hair, gazing off into the distance, face partially tilted from the viewer. It was old, the ink blotchy, a few drops of water damage blooming on the page. It reminded me of another faded ink drawing—a ruined skyline in a city far away from here.

“What—what is this?” I asked

“I think,” Raihn said softly, “this is your mother.”

A part of me already knew it. And still, the words cracked open my chest, releasing a wave of emotion I wasn’t prepared for.

Vincent had drawn this. It was his hand—I recognized that drawing style.

Vincent had drawn her.

I set aside the portrait gently. Beneath it was a tarnished silver necklace with a little black stone charm. I held up the necklace and placed the stone next to my hand—next to the ring I wore on my little finger. A perfect match.

My chest ached fiercely. I set down the necklace on top of the portrait. The notebook remained in my lap, unopened.

“How?” I choked out.

I couldn’t bring myself to look at him.

“Slowly, that’s how. The castle held hundreds of years’ worth of records and notes. Vincent wrote a lot down, but not much of it made sense.”

That sounded right. Vincent had liked to write, but was also paranoid about sharing information. Whatever notes he would have left behind would have been intentionally vague, difficult to understand by anyone other than him.

“I took everything that was from around twenty-four years ago,” Raihn went on. “Tackled a little of it every day. Just me. No one else knows.”

Mother, the time that must have taken. Combing through all those hundreds or thousands of notes himself.

My eyes stung.

I picked up another piece of paper. This one was a letter—or an incomplete piece of one. It wasn’t Vincent’s handwriting, which I knew now by heart. This was messier and softer, the letters upright and looping.

“Who—” The word was strangled, so I had to stop and start again. “Who was she?”

“I have more questions than answers, too. I think her name was—”

“Alana.”

My fingers traced the name at the bottom of the letter. And yet, I felt its familiarity in my bones, too, from some time before that. Like I was remembering the echo of it being said in a little clay house, decades ago.

Then my hand drifted to the top of the letter. To Alya, it read. Vartana. Eastern districts.

Goddess help me. A name. A place. Vartana was a small city, east of Sivrinaj. The letter itself meant little to me, something that looked to be about healing spells and rituals from a magic I didn’t understand, but—names.

“From what I gathered,” Raihn said, “she lived in the castle for a while. I don’t know how long. At least a year, based on the time differences here.” He tapped the date at the bottom of the ripped-up letter, then the earlier one on the paper beneath it. That one appeared to be a journal entry of some kind—a list of ingredients. Plants. Some I recognized, some I didn’t.

“I think,” he went on, “she was a magic user. A sorceress.”

My brow furrowed. “Of which god? Nyaxia?”

Even when I asked the question, I knew the answer. My mother was human. Some humans could wield Nyaxia’s magic, but none of them became especially skilled in it, certainly never more than vampires.