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

by Carissa Broadbent

red—nearly black—and fell across his shoulders in rough waves. An unusual length, neither the flowing nor cropped styles favored by the House of Night’s court.

Hes not like other girls

Still, I found myself casting one more glance back to that painting. The man was gone. The fallen Rishan just grasped at open air, abandoned once again.

My heart in my throat, I ran to the window, thrust my head through the open frame, and— —nearly toppled backwards as a streak of tan and black soared up from below with enough force to send my hair whipping around my face. Raihn’s wings were spread, looking as if they were made of the night itself, a million variations of purple and red and black and rust. Almost pretty enough to distract from the sheer fury on his face. “You,” he breathed, “are being a shit about trusting me, and yet you’ve been hiding that?”

I longed to go to the human districts and bury this sense of helplessness with a blade in some vampire piece of shit’s chest. It had been years since I’d gone so long without it. I hadn’t even realized how reliant I was upon that release. The first time I killed there, it had been an accident, and now, I could barely function without it.

Now, I felt nothing when I killed but the satisfaction of a job well done. A mark etched upon the world. That was worth something, to a mortal living amongst immortal beings. A way for me to tell this place, You think my life is worth nothing, but I can still leave a stain on you that can’t be washed out.

throat. His wasn’t the refined elegance of vampires, perfect cheekbones and perfect lips and perfect, glittering eyes. No, it was rougher, more lived-in. More alive. Suddenly all those features that had seemed like so much—that carried the marks of a life, unlike vampire perfection that sanded them away—were magnificently captivating.

No really hes not like other girls

It was true. 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.

I, once again, barely returned to the Moon Palace in time for dawn. By the time I made it back to our apartment, the sun was already peeking over the horizon.

Why is she always cutting it so close??

The thought dizzied me. A lifetime of fear and caution, and finally, the opportunity to leave my mark on the world, not with broken fingernails but with teeth that could bite just as deep as theirs.

The truth. His anxiety was just as strong as mine. Different—a rolling undercurrent rather than staggering waves—but every bit as powerful.

“She was a person,” I said, between my teeth. “Not prey. Not a game. She was—” Fuck, what wasn’t she? She was silk and cigar smoke and a short temper and a million contradictions; a full life of a thousand other thoughts and dreams and desires for the future—and someone whom I loved, deeply.

and the sliver of daylight that slipped between the gaps in the curtains—distinct warm and cool shades highlighting every hollow and ripple of bare muscle. He slept with every limb sprawled in a different direction, and yet it still managed to look somewhat poetic, like a master’s sculpture—albeit one that snored loudly.

Salinae. The mention of the name made my chest ache—sympathy, followed by something more bitter. I, too, worried for Salinae. “I’m from there,” I said. “Salinae.” “You are?”

We lapsed into silence. I watched the dunes and tiny towns roll by beneath us, glistening silver under the caress of the moon.

I’m not a fucking animal, he had spat at me yesterday. And suddenly the anger in his voice then sounded so similar to the shame in it now. I didn’t like feeling things. Emotions were ever-shifting and devoid of logic, and they gave me no way to sink my blade into them.

Maybe I should have been surprised when his fingertip gently caressed my throat, not in hunger, but in sadness—at the scar there, those two little jagged white lines.

Offering myself to a starving vampire was more than dangerous. Practically suicide. And yet… I trusted him absolutely.

still gripped between us. 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.

He smelled like the sky—he tasted like falling. His

“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.”

Years later, when the girl was a grown woman, she would decide that the boy had not meant to hurt her that night. That he had not yet understood his newly Turned vampire impulses. It did not change what he did. It did not make it any less unforgivable. It only made vampires more dangerous. They could love you, and still kill you.

did. Perhaps she would carry a little fragment of that hatred for the rest of her life. But she also loved him for it. Because he was right. He was forging her. If she had listened to him before, none of this would have happened.

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.

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.

“You cannot possibly be this naive. Giving you his power and taking yours. Making a deal with a goddess so you can never hurt him. Never act against him. And sending you into this depraved cesspit to do it. What a saintly, loving father—”

I knew this. There was nothing Raihn could say to convince me that he didn’t. Vincent’s love was truth like the moon was truth.

But maybe I’d mistaken brutality for strength and stagnancy for agelessness.

Long tables were set up below, dotted with overflowing plates. Most of the plates were untouched, though. Because instead, the warriors fed on the humans.

I made you better. I gave you teeth and claws. I made your heart steel. Do not pity them. They are less than you.”

I thought of Raihn, who had been a vampire for more than two hundred years and yet still so clearly mourned his humanity with every heartbeat.

I disliked how familiar that felt. I had human blood and a vampire heart. He’d had a human heart and vampire blood. The world left no room for either.

“I didn’t think those responsibilities were mine for a long time. Mische disagreed. She forced my hand. Entered the Kejari first. Knew I wouldn’t let her do it alone.”

And maybe… maybe I couldn’t do it. Maybe I didn’t want to. Raihn had people to save. Mine were gone. Who deserved this more?

What ppl ??

I called and called and he wouldn’t come. I only heard Mische’s sobs over the abandonment of the god to whom she had given her life.

He had one chance to gain the power he needed to help those he left behind. I had one chance to become something more than a human left to die in a world that despised her. Neither of us could afford to sacrifice those things—no matter how much we might want to.

This was agonizing. Agonizing. I needed it to hurt more everywhere else, so it hurt less in my heart.

Blisters opened over his skin like decaying roses.

And Jesmine gave me no time to tell her anything else before she disappeared into the night, scaling the castle walls with the ease of someone who had centuries of experience slipping through the locked windows of powerful men.