CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
T he next night, the doors to the Moon Palace were locked from the outside.
Vincent was traveling, so in lieu of his gifts, I had intended to go out into
the city to find some extra poison for my blades, just in case. But when I attempted to leave, the front door did not so much as rattle. So I tried another, and another. No door would open. No window, either.
When I returned to the apartment so soon after leaving, Raihn, who was cleaning his sword, gave me a questioning look.
“Everything’s locked,” I said. “Doors. Windows.”
His face hardened. Then he sheathed his sword and left the apartment. He returned a few minutes later with a single carafe and a basket of fruit and bread.
“Feast hall’s empty,” he said, “except for this.”
The bread and fruit, plus what we had stored in this apartment, would at least be enough to get me by. But the blood? The carafe held less than a single glass.
He and I exchanged a glance, clearly thinking the same thing. If the Moon Palace had locked us in, it meant that it intended to starve us. And starvation was terrifying to both of us for very different reasons.
“You have more, right?” I said, nodding to the carafe. He and Mische had been hoarding blood since the beginning of the tournament, but… I wasn’t sure how much of it had survived the attack.
“Enough,” he said tightly. “We lost some of it in the fire but… I have enough. If I ration.”
My shoulders lowered in relief. At least if Raihn had enough blood to get him by, I wouldn’t be locked up in an apartment with a predator. Still, being confined to a castle with nearly a dozen more of them didn’t feel much better.
Most of the trials were held in equal intervals, exactly three weeks apart. But the Crescent trial was sometimes—not always—an exception. Some years it was a longer trial, spanning several days, and occasionally held at a location outside the colosseum.
If Nyaxia was going to starve us until the Crescent, that could be as long as three weeks, or as little as one. Either was dangerous. Some of the vampires here had not had any blood since the feast four days ago.
Raihn moved a dresser in front of the door that night.
T
in daylight, the way no one but me could see it. Until now.
Raihn was quiet for a long time.
“Careful, princess,” he said at last, his voice rough. “Someone might think you’re actually nice.”
But his words mattered so much less than the persistent tug of the smile across his lips. And every day after that, he dragged a chair to that turn of the hallway, and he watched the sun rise and fall over Sivrinaj as if it was the most precious gift in the world.
In times like that, it was too easy for me to forget the grim reality of our situation.
But the darkness of it slipped through, anyway.
O
asked if he had enough, he told me he did. And I had taken him at his word without even questioning it.
Raihn was hungry, and not only hungry, but on the verge of starving.
And I had barricaded myself in a room with him.
Why had it been so hard for me to confront the reality of those two things?
It wasn’t that I was afraid of him. It was that I wasn’t, and I should be. I should be. That was nature, and that did not change because of whatever I may have come to feel.
You have been making so many mistakes, Vincent whispered in my ear. I hadn’t noticed how long it had been since I’d heard him.
“I should go somewhere else,” I said. “A different apartment.”
I leveled my voice, but I had to try harder than I expected. And I could tell that Raihn had to try just as hard to keep his face neutral, and didn’t quite succeed.
There was a slight twitch to the muscle in his jaw, like he had to dampen a flinch from a blow.
I felt that blow, too. Like I had just slapped him across the face.
“Why?” he said tightly.
“Why?” I motioned to the empty glass. The cracks had grown. Now Raihn’s fisted grip was the only thing keeping it from shattering. “Raihn, don’t be a—”
“There’s no reason to.”
He was not going to make me say this. He couldn’t possibly be so naive.
“Yes, there is. You know there is.”
“I told you that—” He paused. Took a breath. Let it out. “I hope you know by now that you don’t have to worry about that.”
“I always have to worry.”
You are never safe, Vincent whispered.
“Not with me.”
“Even with you.”
Especially with you, because you make me feel at ease.
And this time, he did actually flinch. The glass shattered.
“After everything, you’re still afraid of me? I’m not a fucking animal, Oraya,” he said, words so low and rough that they did, indeed, resemble a growl. “Give me a little more credit than that.”
Something hardened in my heart, prodded by the hurt I felt on his behalf.
“You aren’t an animal,” I said. “But you are a vampire.”
“I wouldn’t hurt you,” he snapped.
No. That was a lie. It was a lie the last time someone had said it to me. It was a lie even if Raihn completely believed it was the truth—and if he did, maybe he was
more of a fool than I realized.
Hell, maybe I was, too.
We were finalists in the Kejari. We would need to hurt each other. And that was even if we made it that far.
“What are you so offended by?” I shot back. “That I’m stating the obvious aloud? You are a vampire. I am human. Maybe we don’t like to say those things, but they’re true. Look at yourself. You think I don’t see right fucking through you?”
I was upset. My heartbeat had quickened. A muscle feathered in his cheek. His nostrils flared. Even now, I could see it. The hunger lingering beneath the hurt.
“Our dream world is nice, but it’s not real,” I said. “And I don’t want to be woken up from it by you tearing open my throat.”
I regretted my words immediately. But I regretted them because they were cruel, and because the terrible, childlike hurt on Raihn’s face made my soul ache.
I didn’t regret them because they weren’t true. They were.
Did he think he was the only one who wanted to pretend otherwise? In this moment, I wanted nothing more than to live my entire life the way we had been over these last few weeks. Building something like a home in this shitty, dark Palace.
I wanted it so much that I even… even considered if I might be able to help him. Even though it was a foolish thought. Even though a human offering themselves to a vampire deprived of food for this long would mean near-certain death, no matter how good their intentions were. And yet, when I saw that look on his face, that desperation, I was willing to consider it.
Stupid, naive, childish.
But Raihn had already backed up, his back straight, knuckles white at his sides.
He had taken several steps away, as if, even in his anger, he recognized that I needed him to put more space between us.
“Fine,” he said coldly. “You’re right. We’ve been stupid. If you want me gone, I’m gone. You shouldn’t be anywhere near that hallway. I’ll go.”
I already wanted to take it back. The familiar grip of fear had begun to tighten around my heart. Not fear of Raihn, but fear of being without him, and the things I might feel once he was gone.
“Alright,” I said, against every instinct.
Neither of us seemed to know what else to say.
So he went to his room, gathered his belongings, pushed aside the bureau in front of the door just enough to slip through, and then turned to me.
A million words hung there.
He just said, “Push this back when I’m gone. I—”
He bit down on whatever he was about to say.
I knew that feeling, because I found myself doing it, too. Swallowing down, Don’t go’s and I’ll miss you’s and I’m sorry’s.
This is fucking silly, I told myself. He’s just going to a different room, and it’s the only thing that makes sense.
But I knew—we both knew—that once Raihn left, once he became just another contestant in the Kejari, something will have changed between us irreparably.
“I—” He tried again, gave up, and said, “I’ll see you at the next trial.”
And he was gone before I could say another word.
