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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

T he hours wore on fast. I could move, albeit slowly and a bit painfully. My headache was far worse than my wounds. I followed the direction of the healer, attending to those she couldn’t get to quickly enough. My healing magic was weak, especially for vampires, but I could ease pain until she arrived.

I did not stop working. When the sun rose, we moved to tents and continued our work. When the sun set again, we moved outside once more.

With every body I leaned over, every soldier who, in the throes of delirium, asked about their wife or husband or child, with every suffering person who knew their death was near, with every one who slipped away despite our best efforts, the steady beat of rage beneath my skin grew louder.

Eventually, after countless hours—Weaver, countless days—I turned to the healer and asked, “Who’s next?”

She wiped the blood from her hands. “No one.”

At first, I didn’t understand what she meant.

“No one is left,” she said. “We’ve done all that we can do. Now we wait.” She went to the tent flap and opened it. “Sleep. That’s what I’m going to do.”

I did go back to my tent, because where else would I go? But immediately, I knew I couldn’t stay there, no matter how exhausted I was. The idea of sitting alone with the pained echoes in the threads was sickening.

So I stripped off my blood-and-sweat-drenched clothes, and threw on a fresh dress. I didn’t even consider my bedroll before I went outside.

It was very late—nearly dawn. The air was damp with humidity, though cold. The mists seeped into the sky, tinged rosy with the faintest hint of distant, oncoming dawn. It was unnaturally, eerily still. Like nature itself was holding its breath. The smoke from the last of the funereal pyres had risen into the sky, melding with the mists, the scent fading into the salty smell of the ocean. By tomorrow, both would be gone. The only traces of those who had died would be the ashes, which Atrius’s men would cast into the sea.

But the people who remained behind would be marked by that grief forever.

I didn’t realize fully how much the way I looked at the vampires had changed until this moment—until I realized how they bore the scars of loss just as strongly as humans did.

I stood at the entrance to my tent for a long time. Then I began walking.

I wasn’t sure how I knew Atrius was not in his tent, even long before I was close enough to feel his presence. Nor why I wasn’t surprised when I reached the beach to find him standing by the shore, staring out to the horizon.

For a moment, a sharp stab of mournful regret rang out in my chest—regret that I no longer had eyes to see what it must have looked like in sight alone, with all its intangible imperfections. I could imagine it, though—his silhouette dark against the silver waves, his hair like a waterfall of moonlight. Maybe, if I could see him that way, I would have felt the overpowering urge to draw him, the way I had once felt the urge to draw the sea.

When you see the moon rise, he had said to me once, some might say there’s something more to it than coordinates in the sky.

I’d thought he was just mocking me then. But right here, I understood it.

I took my shoes off once I hit the sand, leaving them abandoned behind me. There was something grounding about feeling the damp sand against my toes. Atrius didn’t move as I approached. Didn’t look away from the sea.

A breeze blew, stealing strands of my hair and Atrius’s toward the sea. His nostrils flared. I took a step closer, which made his gaze snap to me.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

In his presence, a twinge of hunger rang out—subtle, and yet, I knew that whatever he was allowing me to sense was only a fraction of what he truly felt.

Atrius, I knew, was starving in a way that went far beyond physical hunger. I could feel that in him, vicious and yearning, making the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

But I only said, “It’s where I want to be.”

I didn’t realize until the words left my mouth exactly how true they were.

His jaw tightened.

“You shouldn’t be near me.”

True , a voice whispered in the back of my head. But the danger wasn’t him. The danger was myself—or maybe something even bigger, the natural tension of oil and fire inching closer.

I didn’t dignify that with an answer this time. Instead, I took another step.

It was answer enough.

We stood there beside each other for a long, silent moment, acutely aware of each other’s presence and saying nothing. And yet, saying everything—because just standing here, next to each other, our shoulders inches away, felt thick with meaning.

“It was stupid of you to put yourself, bleeding, next to a bunch of injured vampires,” he said at last.

“You have a funny way of saying thank you.”

A beat. A glance. And then, more quietly, “Thank you. For helping them. ”

“Thank you for saving my life.”

“I wasn’t sure if I had, at first.” The statement came with a strange chill, gone before I could feel it too closely.

Then he added, beneath his breath, “Too many, I couldn’t.”

His voice made me think of Erekkus’s screams. The kind of sound that followed a person for the rest of their life.

I said, “I looked, but I couldn’t find Erekkus.”

“He’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“He needed to be alone. I’m in no position to stop him.”

“How old was his little one?”

“Ten.”

An ache in my chest.

“Young.”

“And yet what kind of life did she have for those ten years? All of it spent...”

Atrius’s voice trailed off.

Then he whirled to me, eyes bright, mouth twisted into a sneer.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said again.

But I just stepped closer again. Pressed my hand to the center of his chest, over his sweat-stained cotton shirt. Far beneath my touch, his curse writhed.

I didn’t want to give him sympathy. I barely even considered it. When Naro and I clawed our way to survival through the worst of the Pythora Wars, we lost so much. In the beginning, when our parents were killed, people used to say, I’m sorry . And then the years passed, and the bodies piled higher, and no one said they were sorry anymore. The loss was just another unfair part of life. No one needed platitudes. When my sister died, people gave us bread instead. It was much more useful.

I felt so alone then. Now, as an adult, I knew that the reason why people were distant was not because they didn’t feel our loss, but because they felt it too much. They had no room for more. I thought perhaps one day, I’d stop feeling it, too. Perhaps one day, it would fade. The Arachessen promised me it would.

It never did.

Maybe the Sightmother had lied to me. Maybe I was just never good enough to be an Arachessen. But the truth was the truth. Fifteen years had passed, and now here I was, as angry as ever. Angrier. And tonight, I felt Atrius’s loss just as strongly as my own.

And I just couldn’t anymore.

I. Just. Couldn’t.

“Why?” I said. “Do you think I’m afraid of this? Afraid of you? As if I don’t feel the darkest parts of you every night. As if I don’t recognize?—”

“You recognize it because you feel it just as much.” His words were hard. All sharp-edged accusation. Strange, though, that such cruel words held such tender affection beneath them. Like he was challenging me to meet him at this most difficult terrain, somewhere that hurt, somewhere that was just as angry and broken as we were.

It was wrong of me.

But I wanted it, too.

His hand touched my chest, too, mirroring mine on his, my heartbeat strong and fast beneath his skin.

“In the beginning I doubted you,” he breathed, his words close to my face. “I doubted why the Arachessen would let you leave. But now I see why they didn’t want you. Because you’re just like us. Just as cursed by the past. And that curse just keeps fucking taking, doesn’t it?”

“You’re right.” My mouth twisted into a sneer without my permission—my teeth gritted against my words. I thought I’d feel shame to admit it to myself. I didn’t. I felt so blissfully free. “I understand you. I’m just as broken. Just as angry. I hate them just as much. Nothing will make that alright. Nothing. Once I thought a goddess could. But I was wrong.”

I fought the urge to take the words back as soon as they left my lips. But that was out of guilt. Not because I didn’t feel they were true.

Beneath my palm, the curse inside him pulsed, as if struck.

“But I think you know that, too,” I murmured. “All about goddesses and broken promises. Don’t you? ”

He laughed, vicious as torn flesh. “You want to see the truth, Sylina? Do you have room in your heart for another dark story?”

He was taunting me. Like his jeering tone could chase me away. He was wrong.

I thought of the fragments of his vision, still burning in my memory and throbbing in his chest. The snow. The cold. A young vampire man’s head in his hands. And Nyaxia, cold and cruel and drenched in hate.

“I live in dark stories. And I’ve been living in yours for nearly four months. If you’re going to invite me in, invite me.” I pushed against his chest, hard. “I already see you, Atrius. I’m not afraid.”

So quick I wouldn’t even sense the movement, his other hand clutched my hair, tilting my head back toward his. I could feel his words over my lips when he spoke again, low like shifting gravel.

“You want my confessions, seer? Fine. Once, a long time ago, just like you, I thought my goddess would save us. And I gave her everything. Everything.”

The walls, all at once, shattered. And the wave of pain, of rage, of darkness and fear that rolled over me threatened to sweep me away. I had been reaching deep into Atrius’s presence—now, his emotions, such perfect mirrors of my own, surrounded me.

Far in the threads, I sensed an old memory—a city of white and red, powerful spires and moonlit crimson glass windows, framed against mountainous peaks.

“Do you see that?” His mouth came to my ear, breath hard and ragged. “That was my home once. A long time ago. My cursed, damned home. The House of Blood. When I was young, I met a man who was an idealist. A prince. My prince. And some wretched seer’s prophecy said that he would save the House of Blood from itself, and I believed in him.”

His voice sounded like glass breaking, all pain and anger. It poured through my threads, mingling with my own.

“So I followed. I built his army. I led his warriors. People who trusted me. And together, we journeyed to places no mortal, human or vampire, should go.”

The images melted, reformed. I couldn’t even make sense of the next fractured memories—buildings floating in the night sky, shadowy figures walking on misty nothingness, bodiless faces peering through the darkness. All of them too distant, too quick, to capture.

“We were to earn back the love of Nyaxia. We would prove to her that the House of Blood was worthy of her. The things we did?—”

A ragged breath. His threads pulsed like a quickening heartbeat, as if horrified and terrified by the memories, even now, even all these years later. Goosebumps rose on my arms.

“No mortals,” he breathed, “should do what we did. We committed acts worthy of fucking gods. Great things. Terrible things. All in Nyaxia’s name. All to prove our love to our goddess. For decades. ”

His jaw tightened there, shook against the silence. Every part of his presence railed against this exposure. He was trying to reassemble his defenses, reel in what had broken free.

But I whispered, “And?”

One word. A beckoning hand. An open door.

Why? Why did I want to know, even if it hurt? Even if it made it harder—perhaps impossible—to rebuild my own walls?

He let out a shaky breath. He was trembling, every muscle taut.

“And we went back to her,” he whispered, slowly, between clenched teeth. “My prince and I. We gave her every head she asked for. Every artifact. Every slain monster. Everything . And then we went to our knees to ask for our salvation.” A single, enraged tear slid down his cheek. “And I will never forget the sound of her laugh .”

And as if I had been there with him, I could hear it too, floating through the past to the present, as beautiful and terrible as funeral hymns.

“She said we were fools,” he spat, “to think that our ancestors’ disrespect could ever be forgiven. She left me with two gifts that night, and two commands. The first gift was the head of my prince, and the first command was to carry it back to the House of Blood to present to the king and queen. The second gift...”

His throat bobbed. His hand fell over mine, over his chest, where the curse pulsed .

He didn’t need to say it. I knew.

“And the second command?” I whispered.

A long pause. Like he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“She wanted a new kingdom conquered in her name,” he said. “I offered that to her, with my own life as collateral.”

And suddenly, it all clicked together.

“My people would not be allowed back home after being scorned by Nyaxia. The king and queen saw us—all of us—as complicit in their son’s death. They still wanted to believe a prophecy existed. Still wanted to believe that their goddess could save us.” His face hardened, like cut stone. “They had followed me to the ends of time. They had nowhere left to go. I was desperate to save them, even if I couldn’t save myself. So I made a deal with the very goddess who had forsaken us.”

I swallowed past the lump in my throat. His pain surrounded us both, scalding, and I knew it had been burning for years, decades, centuries.

I understood it so painfully well. The desire to believe that something larger than you could save you, even after it struck you down again and again.

“And now here we are,” he ground out, lip curling. “The innocents I was trying to protect, slaughtered. The warriors I was trying to save, now dying at the hand of a human tyrant. All for a goddess who spited us already. All in the name of blind fucking hope .”

Another tear glided down his cheek, the silver damp pooling in all those stone-cut lines of utter fury.

His fingers tightened in my hair.

“Tell me I’m a fool.”

He was shaking with rage, so thick I could taste it in his exhale against my lips.

I shook my head. “No.”

He let out a choked breath, his forehead leaning against mine.

“Tell me to stop.”

Four words that could mean so much. Tell me to stop— stop this war, stop the search for redemption, stop the quest for vengeance, stop this , whatever dangerous thing was about to happen in this moment, inching to inevitability.

I didn’t want him to stop any of it.

I wanted Atrius to destroy the Pythora King. I wanted him to do it slowly, painfully, relishing revenge. I wanted him to let me help. I wanted him to save his people. I wanted him to earn Nyaxia’s respect.

I wanted to burn it all down with him.

I murmured, “No.”

Another wordless sound, a choked groan. “You shouldn’t be here.”

This time he spoke against my mouth—not quite a kiss, but the promise of one.

I whispered, “Why?”

“Because you make me ravenous.”

You make me ravenous.

Those words buried in my soul. I felt the truth of them. Felt, somewhere innately, that he had said them to me once before—in Obitraen, the night he kissed me.

And I understood it. The hunger for revenge, for salvation, for blood, for sex, for death, for life, for all the things we’d been denied.

I felt it all.

“Good,” I whispered.

And the word was swallowed up between us as his mouth crashed against mine.