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June 4 - June 10, 2024
Now, as the possibility of losing Ilana seemed suddenly far too tangible, fear clenched my heart and refused to relinquish it.
I forced myself to steady my breaths. Panic quickened the heart. A quickening heartbeat meant rushing blood. Rushing blood meant I became even more of a target than I already was.
Grand mosaics covered the floor. The tiles were sharp, as if they had been shattered rather than cut. Some were bleached shades of ivory. But most were red… bloodstained. Burned brown a century old, and deep black even older.
From up there, the streams were serene and peaceful, like elegant winding streaks of paint through the city. Up close, it smelled like piss.
Death was everywhere in the House of Night. Parents killed their children. Children killed their parents. Lovers took each other’s lives in the night, gone too far in the throes of passion. Even the stories of our gods were vicious, lesser deities frequently murdered for little more than sport. The Nightborn forged their people and their blades from steel, hard and cold and unforgiving.
“Never make deathbed promises, Oraya. Always bites you in the ass.”
The muscles drew taut around his mouth, but it was a twitchy, uneven movement. Fitting for someone who hadn’t known humanity in two millennia.
His eyes searched my face, unblinking. They looked redder than ever in the firelight, reflecting the orange of the lanterns behind me. He didn’t believe me, but he didn’t say so.
“I am a wartime king leading my people through dark times,” he said. “And Jesmine is a general who knows how to do whatever it takes to protect her kingdom. And sometimes those tasks require unpleasant actions. I won’t deny that.”
“I can’t take credit for everything that you’ve become, Oraya. Even if sometimes I wish I could. But if I’m responsible for just one small piece of that, it will have been the greatest accomplishment of my life.”
We had a nice vantage point to watch the streets while remaining hidden from prying eyes. Maybe all our hard work had paid off, because it seemed like people were actually living their lives out here. Or maybe I had just learned to appreciate it more. Humans left little marks of their lives everywhere. Flowers in window boxes, toys left in yards, a series of shoes on the doorstep that painted the image of a family.
“I didn’t want you to see me that way,” he went on. “So I pretended that version of myself didn’t exist. It does. And I’m—I don’t like people to see it. I didn’t want you to see it.”
The line between anger and sadness is so thin. I had learned that fear can become rage, but rage can so easily shatter into devastation. The fractures spiderwebbed across my heart.
How, exactly, had I not noticed that its elegant scent of rose was just a little rancid? How had I not noticed that it masked the sour smell of rotting blood, like the whole damned building had been soaked in it? The flowers that adorned every table were withered at the edges, the wallpaper stained with faint death-brown blooms of old blood, the plaster cracked with the stress fractures of a kingdom that had gotten too heavy.
“Family. What does that word mean? That you were yanked from between human legs? You don’t even remember them. If they had lived, they would not remember you. Perhaps they’d be grateful you were gone. What would you have been to them? Another unwanted child to keep alive? Or maybe another lost one to grieve, when the world inevitably crushed you.”
“You think I pity you? I don’t pity you, Oraya. I just think you deserve better.”
His kiss slowed, deepened, shifting from frantic to tender.
“We’ll probably die tomorrow,” I said. “Show me something worth living for.”
And as I had watched him sleep, I couldn’t help but see Ilana’s face float through my mind. There were so many things I hadn’t asked her, too. And when she died, I had to bury myself in broken, incomplete shards of her life, because it was all I had.
“To have such a thing stolen from you is a great loss indeed.” Lightning faded as they turned back to me. “But perhaps, too, it is a blessing, my child. Such a pure love, distilled forever in its innocence. A flower frozen in bloom.”
“I was ready to let it all go for you,” he murmured. “Do you know that, Oraya? I was ready to let my kingdom fall for you. You should have let me stay dead.”
