The Serpent and the Wings of Night (Crowns of Nyaxia, #1)

by Carissa Broadbent

The king did not know then that his greatest love would also be his ruination—nor that either would come in the form of a tiny, helpless human child.

Hundreds of years later, historians and scholars would look back upon this moment. This decision that, one day, would topple an empire. What a strange choice, they would whisper. Why would he do this? Why, indeed. After all, vampires know better than anyone how important it is to protect their hearts. And love, understand, is sharper than any stake.

Death isn’t frightening when weighed against an insignificant existence.”

“They’re dead, little human,” the voice said again. “And if you go after them, so are you.”

So I stabbed the bastard.

And Raihn looked like he was probably very good at sex.

“Nothing matters but this, Oraya. Nothing. Step over temporary barriers. Once you win, the world is yours. That is the time for dreaming. But this? This is the time for conquering.”

And as if he knew—as if he sensed my fear—Raihn’s thumb traced a circle over my back in one gentle, wordless reassurance.

No, this was the beginning of something horrible. A bloody birth of a bloodier monster. One that could devour us all.

And then I realized. I realized that fear, when embraced, hardens and sharpens. That it becomes rage. That it becomes power. I would not die here.

Raihn. He was on his knees, staring up at me. And that—the way he looked at me—was the first thing that felt real. Real, and raw, and… and confusing. Because he looked at me in sheer awe—like I was the most incredible thing he had ever seen. Like I was a fucking goddess.

And then so fast that I didn’t have time to react when he closed the space between us in several long strides—and then he was all around me at once in a firm embrace, and my feet were off the ground, and my arms were around his neck, and I was allowing him to hold me. Allowing myself to cling to him. Allowing myself to bury my tear-streaked face in the warm space between his chin and throat.

And suddenly not a single thing—not the audience, or the arena, or the arch, or the Nightfire, or Nyaxia herself—existed except for this.

“You worried me for a minute there,” he murmured against my hair, his voice rough. “I...

“Don’t be so quick to throw away your humanity, Oraya,” he said. “You might find you miss it once it’s gone.”

“I’ve lived through some injustices in the last couple of centuries. Seen some fucking travesties. But one of the biggest, Oraya, is that anyone taught you that you should become anything other than exactly what you are.”

He knew it. I knew it. We both knew the other knew it.

I could kill him right now. It would take so little. I would plunge the blade right there, right in the center of that perfect expanse of skin. His blood would probably be warmer than the others I killed—I didn’t know why I thought that, only that I was almost positive it would be true. I wondered if he would clutch me as it ended. How his final breath would feel over my face.

Our bodies were nearly flush. The smell of him surrounded me. It hit me, what that element of it I hadn’t been able to place was.

He smelled like the sky. He smelled the way air felt as it rushed around you, freeing and terrifying and the most beautiful fucking thing you’ve ever experienced.

I’d envied vampires my entire life. But now, for the first time, I felt a sharp pang of sympathy for them. Because suddenly, I understood what it was like to be hungry.

And it was there, in his eyes, that I found the truth that should have broken me. Yes, we could kill each other here. We were offering ourselves to each other. But neither of us would.

“You might destroy me anyway.”

I saw it here, in this moment. Want. Desire. And I knew what it was for vampires to desire someone like me. I knew it so well that it should have sent me running. But even more frightening than his desire was mine. I felt that call echoing in my own pulse. It was so strong that when he finally released me—when I finally backed away from him and turned away without another word—I had to resist the urge to lick his touch from my fingertips. Maybe it would taste as metallic and hot as blood.

“That wasn’t how I’d imagined making you come for the first time,” he remarked.

One day, when Raihn was asleep, I had an idea. I pulled the huge mirror from my bedchamber out into the sitting room, propping it up a bit precariously against the couch. I eyed it, fussed with the curtains, checked my angles and then checked them again. When Raihn woke up at sundown and came out to see the mess I’d made of the living room, he halted. “Oh,” he said. “Well, it finally happened. You’ve lost your mind.” I scoffed and offered no explanation. Not until the end of the night, when the sun began to rise and Raihn went to take his usual spot near the curtains. Then, I called him back into the living room. “Watch,” I said, pointing to the mirror. And then I went into my bedchamber and threw open the drapes. He flinched, shrinking back. But the sharp corner of the hall shielded him from the rays of sunlight—while the mirror still offered him a full view of the sky. “I tested it,” I said. “As long as you stay back here, even at high noon, the light won’t flood into this room. But you can still see the sun in the mirror. It’s… it’s nice in the middle of the day. The sun reflects off the church spires.”

“Careful, princess,” he said at last, his voice rough. “Someone might think you’re actually nice.”

But his words mattered so much less than the persistent tug of the smile across his lips. And every day after that, he dragged a chair to that turn of the hallway, and he watched the sun rise and fall over Sivrinaj as if it was the most precious gift in the world.

“Oraya.” He said my name like it was the answer to a crucial question. His voice was thin and hoarse. I could have wept for it.

And I tried not to notice that he clearly noticed all these things, too. That the muscles of his throat, so close now, flexed with a swallow. That his hands fell to my waist immediately, like they had already been waiting for me.

I’d thought I was prepared for this, but I wasn’t prepared for how gentle the movement was. Like he was cradling something precious.

“You’re safe,” he whispered against my skin. And then he bit.

“You don’t even know, Oraya.” The corner of his mouth, where a little smudge of my blood remained, curled as he shook his head. “The things I’ve thought about. ‘Want’ doesn’t even fucking cover it. I have a list.”

“You are the most stunning thing I’ve ever seen, Oraya.”

Strange, that girls are so often told that the loss of their virginity marks a threshold between girlhood and womanhood, as if it fundamentally alters them in some way. It was not the sex that changed the girl forever. Not the blood that spilled between her thighs that shaped her. The blood that spilled over that marble floor, though… Those are the stains on one’s innocence that never fade.

I ached for him. And I was so, so tired of loss. I wasn’t sure what I intended to do or say when I approached him. But I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him.

But then his free hand cradled my cheek. His next kiss was different—gentle. It reminded me of the way he had kissed my throat in the cave. Like he cherished me.

“We’ll probably die tomorrow,” I said. “Show me something worth living for.”

“A lot of thinking about you.” Another kiss. “What I would do to you.” Another. “What you might sound like.” Another—and his fingers again stroked the yearning at the apex of my thighs. “I have all kinds of experiments to conduct.”

“I would beg,” he murmured. “For you, I would. You have fucking destroyed me, Oraya. Do you know that?”

I would beg for him, too. Break for him. Cut myself open like an animal for dissection. He held me open that way, not just my body but my soul, too.

You have destroyed me. He had destroyed me, too. Perhaps it was good that we would die tomorrow. Because I didn’t know how to remake myself after this.

“Oraya of the Nightborn,” he murmured. “I give you my body. I give you my blood. I give you my soul. I give you my heart. From this night until the end of nights. From daybreak until our days are broken. Your soul is my soul. Your heart is my heart. Your pain is my pain. I bind myself to you.”