Move, Vincent roared. Move now!
One chance. One opening.
Fear is the fucking key to it, Oraya, Raihn had screamed at me, during the Halfmoon trial.
He had been right. The key was all the ugliness, all the weakness I refused to look at. Everything the sword had pulled up in me. Everything that had hurt me.
I reached deep.
Deep into my heart and my past and the memories.
My rage, my grief, my confusion, my betrayal. I took all of it. I ripped it all open inside myself.
Beneath it all was sheer power.
The brightness of the Nightfire seared my vision. Evelaena’s screams were so loud, so constant, they faded to a distant din beneath the blood rushing in my ears. Her form was difficult to make out around the fire, but she was stumbling, unable to control herself, still clutching the sword.
I leaned forward, ignoring the pain as the nails tugged at my wings, and grabbed her.
She was half limp. She turned to me, wide-eyed, and in that split-second, I saw exactly what she must have looked like as a five-year-old child, the night that Vincent had driven his blade through her chest.
For a moment, she looked at me like I might save her.
I didn’t. I pried the sword from her hands.
The moment my own closed around its hilt, the pain took me. I thought I couldn’t feel pain anymore, compared to what had been done to my wings. I had been wrong. This was deeper than flesh. Deeper than nerves.
For a moment, I wasn’t here anymore. I was in a dozen different places at once.
I was in a ruined tower in Lahor.
I was in Sivrinaj, in a colosseum full of screaming spectators, kneeling before a goddess.
I was in the Nightborn castle, sitting at my desk.
I was in my private training arena in the castle, training with my daughter, my daughter who needed to be better than this if she was to have any hope of surviving this world.
I was lying in the sands, my daughter holding me, death looming over her shoulder.
Stop.
But the images kept coming—more than images, sensations. I lost my grip on the world around me. The tide swept me away.
STOP STOP STOP STOP—
Focus, Oraya.
It wasn’t Vincent’s voice in my head this time. It was my own.
You have one chance. Right now. Take it!
I barely managed to claw myself back to awareness. The sword hurt to hold, but I refused to let it go.
I cut through the ropes binding my legs and stumbled forward. Pain flooded me as my full weight pulled against my wings.
The Nightfire had overtaken the room. Several of the children now climbed up the debris on the side of the walls, trying to stay away from the flames. Evelaena had pushed herself to her hands and knees, crawling toward me, a sword clutched in her burned-up hands.
No time to figure out how to get rid of my wings.
I pushed off against the wall and screamed as the delicate flesh ripped free.
I flung myself at Evelaena, pinning her to the ground. Her sword went sliding across the floor.
She reached for me. “Cousin—”
I didn’t let her speak.
I drove Vincent’s sword into her chest, right through the scar he had left two hundred years ago—straight into her heart.
She went slack beneath me, her eyes filling with betrayal before going vacant.
My breath was labored. The Nightfire still clung to the corners of the room.
I tried to get up—
Someone struck me from behind. I went toppling to the ground. The little girl, the same one who had been staring at me, leaned over me, red dotting her face.
She lifted her knife in both hands over her head, ready to bring it down.
I tried to counter, tried to—
A blast rocked the room. My vision blurred, dimmed.
A moment or minutes or hours passed.
I forced my eyes open.
Raihn leaned over me, brow furrowed with concern.
I was hallucinating, clearly, or dreaming again. Someone pried my hands free and I let out a choked cry.
“It’s alright,” Raihn murmured, leaning close to me.
I hated these dreams, the ones where I dreamed of the way Raihn had once looked at me, when we fought together in the Kejari. Like his heart was outside his body.
Made it hard to reconcile all he had done to me, when he looked at me that way.
“You’re safe,” he whispered, as he gathered me in his arms, and I faded away.
27
ORAYA
I opened my eyes from a mercifully dreamless sleep. My head was throbbing, and my body hurt even worse.
Coarse linen rubbed against my cheek. I was in a plain little bedchamber. A desk, a chair, a crooked table. Behind me, someone was moving around. I could hear the snap of a fire, and the hiss of something boiling, and the smell of something delicious.