The sailors do not have a chance.
Most of them are killed immediately, when the ship—too small for such a perilous journey—smashes upon the unforgiving rocks of Nyaxia’s beckoning hand. They drown in the salty seas, bodies broken over the rocks or impaled on the remains of their own ship.
But this man, despite his unremarkable upbringing, knows one thing above all:
He knows how to fight.
He is thirty-two years old. He is not ready to die. His body has been mercilessly shattered in the violent impact of the ship. Still, he swims to shore, muscles straining against the churn of the surf. He drags himself onto the beach.
When, barely conscious, he forces his head up to look at the sight ahead of him—the silhouette of a city the likes of which he had never seen before, all ivory curves and moon-cold light—he thinks he has never witnessed anything so beautiful.
The man is so close to death that night.
The gods love to take credit for fate. Is it fate that saves him? Or is it the fickle hand of luck, rolling dice that land in just the right way? If it is the gods’ hands at work, then they are laughing to themselves tonight.
He crawls as far as he can, one inch after another, the sand beneath his hands turning to rock, then soil. He can feel death following him, can feel it bubbling in his every bloody breath. The man once thought himself brave. But no mortal is brave in the face of an untimely death.
Death would have taken him if fate, or luck, had not saved him—or damned him.
The king happens across him at just the right moment.
This king was in the habit of collecting souls, and the young man’s soul is exactly the kind he enjoys. He flips over the half-conscious man, assessing his beaten but well-formed face. Then he kneels beside him and asks him a question that the man will spend the rest of an endless life replaying:
Do you want to live?
The man thinks, What a stupid question.
Of course, he wants to live. He is young. He has a family waiting for him back home. He has decades ahead of him.
No mortal is brave in the face of an untimely death.
The man’s answer is a plea:
Yes. Please. Yes. Help me.
Later, he will hate himself for this—for begging so pathetically for his own damnation.
The king smiles, and lowers his mouth to the dying man’s throat.
8
RAIHN
From the first moment I had seen Septimus, I’d hated him.
I’d known exactly who he was, and even if I didn’t know him by reputation, his appearance—which screamed Untrustworthy Bloodborn Royalty in every way—would have given it away quickly.
When he’d sidled up to me during the Kejari, I’d wanted nothing to do with him. But he was like a virus, or an unpleasant odor. The fucker just kept coming back.
It was casual enough, at first. He would linger too long wherever Mische and I happened to be, in the days immediately preceding the Kejari. In the beginning, I’d thought he was doing what most Bloodborn nobles did during the tournament: taking advantage of the fact that they were actually allowed to interact with the other Houses, and figuring out where they could exert their influence.
Easy enough to dismiss.
But then, maybe the third or fourth time he cornered me, I began to get suspicious. And I’d already decided I didn’t like him by the time he had pulled me aside and told me, I know who you are.
That was enough to spook me. I’d ripped apart my own inner circle trying to figure out how he knew—still, to this day, I didn’t know how he had found out. But that was when the pressure began.
You can’t do this by yourself. The Rishan aren’t strong enough. Doesn’t matter if you win.
You’ll need help.
Let me help you. Let us help each other.
I told him to go fuck himself. I never considered taking the deal. I’d learned a long, long time ago the danger of someone offering you everything you’ve ever wanted.
But then he noticed Oraya.
And I still remembered the exact moment I knew he understood he could use her against me: that moment at the Halfmoon ball, when he’d called her by Nessanyn’s name.
I denied him right up until the end. Right up until he was dangling Oraya’s life in front of me. And then I broke.
When you’ve lived through certain things, you know how to recognize someone who’s desperate. Septimus, I knew, was desperate—in a dangerous kind of way, the kind he was very good at keeping far away from the surface. He’d do absolutely anything to get what he wanted, and what scared me was, I still wasn’t entirely sure what that was.
Desperation made for a terrible deal.