The Heir Mark on his back was nearly identical to the one I now bore on mine. The phases of the moon spread across the top of my back, spears of smoke running down my spine.
We looked at each other. The reality of what we’d done—of what had changed—settled over us both.
Nyaxia and Acaeja had both warned us that a Coriatis bond would mean the end of the Rishan and Hiaj Heir lines, combining them into one.
We’d altered the course of the House of Night forever.
I felt a little dizzy, and not from my injuries.
A wrinkle formed between Raihn’s brows. The corner of his mouth twitched in an uncertain almost-smirk. “Regrets, princess?”
Regrets?
The answer was easy and immediate. “Fuck, no.”
The smirk became a full-on smile, and if I’d had any regrets, that smile would have erased them, anyway.
“Good,” he said. “It looks better on you than it does on me, anyway.”
I glanced at Raihn’s muscled back and wasn’t sure that I agreed.
I jumped a little as the door burst open.
“Gods!”
I looked up to see Mische whirling around, nearly dropping the tray in her hands in her hasty effort to cover her eyes.
“I leave you two alone, unconscious, for five minutes and you’re already in here tearing each other’s clothes off? At least lock the damned door!”
77
RAIHN
I thought it would be more of an adjustment than it was. The Coriatis bond, it turned out, was the easy part. Yes, it was a little odd to get used to. It wasn’t as if I could read Oraya’s mind, or communicate without speaking, or feel everything she felt—and hell, what fun would that be, anyway, to take all the mystery out of things? It was more that I was now constantly, innately aware of her. A biological attunement to her presence, her state, her emotions.
Right now, though, I didn’t need any kind of magical goddess-gifted heart bond to know that Oraya was pissed.
She was wearing that a-cat-is-pissing-on-my-leg-and-you’re-the-cat face. My favorite of the diverse library of Oraya faces. Her arms were crossed over her chest, her foot tapping impatiently. We were in the meeting room, me leaning back in my chair, Oraya bolt upright in hers. Ketura, Vale, Lilith, Jesmine, and Mische sat scattered around the table. Mische was half-slumped across the desk, Lilith was eternally thoughtful, Ketura and Vale were both visibly annoyed, and Jesmine was, of course, ever the ice queen.
“He has to be somewhere,” Oraya said.
“I’m sure he is somewhere,” Jesmine said, pursing her lips. “Snake that he is. But that somewhere is not in the House of Night.”
“Did you check—”
“We checked everywhere,” Ketura said, throwing her notes down. “Everywhere.”
Ketura’s frustration, I knew, wasn’t with Oraya. It was with herself. She hated losing.
“He must have retreated with the rest of the Bloodborn,” Jesmine said. “Was quick about it, apparently.”
None of this surprised me.
I wanted Septimus in captivity as much as anyone else. But I was under no illusions that he was about to let himself be caught easily. He was far too smart for that, as much as I hated to give him the credit.
These last few weeks had been a blur, establishing the fragile legs of our new kingdom and eliminating the final parasites of the old one. The Bloodborn, at least, had been easy to get rid of—the minute the goddesses showed up, they apparently knew nothing good was happening and began their retreat. By the time the fighting had stopped and Jesmine and Vale had retrieved Oraya and I, most of the Bloodborn troops were already on their way out of the kingdom.
No one objected to letting them go. Good riddance.
The only one we wanted was Septimus.
But he, it seemed, had been the first to leave. Though Jesmine and Vale both gave orders to have him detained immediately, before Oraya and I had even awoken, he had simply disappeared. And these last few weeks had been no more fruitful, not even as our guards tore through all potential strongholds and searched fleets of departing Bloodborn soldiers.
Septimus was long, long gone.
Vale let out a sigh and rubbed his temples. “Let him slink away with his tail between his legs. If that’s how he needs to deal with his defeat, so be it. We have plenty of other traitors to prosecute, and at least those won’t start a war.”
He tapped the parchment in front of him, black with dozens—hundreds—of names.
“Another war,” Jesmine corrected, and Vale sighed again.
“Yes. Let’s avoid another war. Especially one with another House.”