This is the moment when the slave becomes a king.
He turns away from the Goddess, flying off into the night. Later, safely holed up in a little village where no one would ever think to look for him, he will stare in shock at the red ink on his back. He will pay some starving beggar without a tongue all the money he has to help burn his back, burn it so brutally he nearly kills himself, until the scars are so bad, they swallow the Mark.
He is no king, he tells himself. He is no Heir. He is just a free man, for the first time in nearly a century.
But just because one tells themselves something, understand, that does not make it true.
This is only the first night of thousands the Turned king will spend lying to himself.
It will be two hundred years before he would accept the truth.
61
ORAYA
I opened my eyes.
Some innate part of me expected to see the cerulean of my chamber’s ceiling at the castle. Smell the familiar scent of rose and incense.
But no. The ceiling was old, haphazard wooden boards. The room smelled like lavender and the burnt wood of a fireplace.
So unfamiliar, and yet… so recognizable, in a way I couldn’t place. Like the scent called to a version of myself I’d long ago forgotten.
I turned my head and was greeted with a wave of truly agonizing pain.
But—I was alive.
I was actually alive.
As pieces of the battle came back to me—Simon’s monstrous face leaning over me—that seemed like a fucking miracle.
My eyes focused. I was in a tiny bedroom, lying in an old, beaten-down bed, covered with a quilt that was obviously homemade. Before me was a closed, slightly crooked wooden door, with a little wooden chair sitting beside it.
And in that chair—that tiny, rickety chair, comically overflowing it—was Raihn.
He snored slightly, his head tipped back against the wall, skewed at a painful-looking angle. His arms were crossed over his chest. He wore plain cotton clothes that looked within one sneeze of bursting open at the seams. Dark, dried bloodstains marred the cream fabric, and his forearms were wound in tight bandages.
My eyes prickled. I stared at him, the image growing slowly blurry. My chest was so tight. I didn’t think it had anything to do with my injuries.
I sniffed, and Raihn had been sleeping so lightly that that sound was enough to send him jerking awake with comical verve, nearly throwing himself off the chair as he reached for the sword that wasn’t there.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. The sound was horrible—a gasping rasp.
Raihn barely managed to right himself. Then his gaze fell to me.
He went utterly still.
And then, with a single swift movement, he was on his knees beside my bed, hands cradling my face like he wanted to make sure I was real.
You’re alive, I wanted to say, but all I could choke out was, “Did I scare you?”
I was smiling, laughing a little, though the sound was almost a sob. And soon Raihn was laughing too, and he kissed my face—my forehead, my brows, my nose, and finally, my mouth, leaving the taste of tears on my lips.
“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” he said. “Never fucking again.”
The door opened.
A woman stood in the frame, holding a mortar and pestle in one hand, like she’d rushed over so fast she hadn’t even had the time to put down what she was doing.
“I heard—”
But then her eyes found mine, and the words died.
I couldn’t speak either. Nor could I look away. Because Goddess, she looked so familiar—so familiar that everything else fell away. Those green eyes reminded me so much of someone I used to know.
She let out a long breath.
“You’re awake,” she said, at the same time that I said, “I know you.”
Those eyes crinkled with a sad smile.
“I didn’t think you would remember me.”
I didn’t know if I did remember her, exactly. It was more like… recognizing an innate familiarity.
“I… you’re…”
My words trailed off. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say, or how to name what I was feeling.
She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.
“I’m Alya,” she said. “I’m your aunt.”
Alya, brusque and businesslike, insisted upon examining me before we talked about anything more. So while she checked my pulse and re-dressed my bandages, Raihn answered all the questions he already knew I would ask.
We hadn’t been here long, he told me, only a day. The others had retreated to the rendezvous point outside of Sivrinaj, in one of the cities that the Hiaj had managed to maintain control of, but it was just a matter of time until Simon would go after them there. They were licking their wounds, too, and would fall back farther to the cliffs when given the command.