“Vincent was a very cautious person,” she said. “Especially when it came to weapons. If he had it, he never would have left it accessible by a single key, no matter how well-hidden that key was. And even still, I think he would have multiple failsafes. Split it into multiple locations, for example.”
Goddess, I hoped so. At this point, I wasn’t even holding out hope of finding this god blood—if it existed—myself. I just wanted to make sure Septimus didn’t have it.
“Here’s hoping he hid it well,” I muttered, and Jesmine laughed bitterly.
“Men and their secrets,” she said. “We spend a lifetime trying to unravel them, and once they’re gone, we’re still at their mercy. Yes. Better hope Vincent hid his well.”
In-fucking-deed.
51
RAIHN
I could not fucking wait for a bath. It was hard to play the convincing role of the confident Rishan king to a bunch of my greatest enemies while coated in two-week-old shit.
Jesmine’s second, a straight-backed, wary-eyed woman who looked like she was debating whether to stab us with every step, showed us to the springs. It was amazing that such a thing could exist out here in the desert—I had to admit that the House of Night, for all its many faults, was a place of great natural wonder. The springs were located deep in the tunnels, where the dry air turned damp and steamy. The water was a perfect teal blue, illuminated by shocks of bright light running up the cave walls—which seemed far too beautiful to just be minerals and algae. The caves separated down here, running into many little offshoots. Convenient for privacy, which I think everyone was glad for after so much nonstop travel together.
“Well,” Mische sighed, the moment our guide left us, “this is amazing.”
She stretched out her arms, as if already imagining diving in.
I watched her out of the corner of my eye. I knew Mische, and I knew that something had been wrong since we left Sivrinaj. Hell, I could tell from the moment I saw her in the dungeons—those big eyes practically bursting with tears. Not a hint of those, of course, during the journey. It would be easy to mistake Mische’s outgoing attitude for emotional openness. She may be chatty, but she was damned good at hiding all the things that mattered.
Oraya had told me about the Shadowborn prince—that Mische had been the one to kill him. It was a diplomatic headache, but one I could put off dealing with for a while. I was more concerned about what Oraya didn’t tell me. And I knew there was something. Her stilted, “You should talk to Mische, when you can,” said that well enough.
But Mische made sure I never got that chance. We had been moving so fast that I’d barely gotten a private moment with her since we fled, and every time I tried, in our rare moments of rest, to speak to her alone, she’d run off with some harried, half-baked excuse.
Now, I turned to her. “Mische, before you go—”
“Later,” she said, without so much as looking at me. “Bath now.” And she was gone into one of the caves before I had time to argue with her.
I wished I could say I was surprised.
Ketura and Lilith excused themselves immediately too, clearly just as eager to wash themselves off. Vale, though, lingered for a long, awkward moment as I gathered the clothes our guide had brought.
I peered over my shoulder.
“If your goal is to make this as uncomfortable as possible,” I said, “you’ve achieved it.”
Vale’s jaw tightened. He still said nothing. Still didn’t move, either.
Amazing. The man’s wife was off naked in some hot water after a week of travel and zero privacy, and he was still standing here. I dreaded to think what this would be about.
“What, Vale?”
“I wanted to—” His gaze slipped away, examining an apparently fascinating pile of rocks. “I appreciate the rescue.”
So this was what a noble looked like when they had to say “thank you.”
“You’re more useful to me out here than you are in there,” I said, hoping this was the end of that conversation.
But he still lingered. His eyes snapped back to me. “I’m no fool. I know that you must have wondered. But if you need confirmation of where my loyalties lie, I hope finding my wife in that prison cell gave them to you.”
Ah. Now I understood.
I straightened and turned to him. Vale’s chin raised slightly, all traces of his earlier uncertainty now gone. Even covered in shit, he was every bit the Nightborn noble.
Sometimes, vampires’ agelessness seemed like a cruel joke. Two hundred years had passed since my time under Neculai’s control. And yet I looked the same, and Vale looked the same. Every time I looked at him, I saw him as he was then. I saw him just watching as it all happened. Maybe if he’d had lines to his face or gray hair or aging eyes, I might’ve found it easier to forget that this was the same person.