Page 79 of The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

He spoke with such raw, vulnerable concern, voice low, comforting. That concern twisted a knife in my stomach.

I swallowed my next sob and only half-succeeded.

“How did you know?”

I wouldn’t lift my head, wouldn’t look at Raihn or allow him to look at me. The words were so disfigured I didn’t know how he even understood them.

“What?” he asked, softly.

“How did you know I could do that?”

“I just… knew. You’re half vampire, and a powerful one. You’re made for flying. And I’ve seen over and over again what you’re capable of. It was just…”

Obvious.

He didn’t need to finish. I understood him.

Raihn, someone who had known me for less than a year, had seen that potential in me. And it was him—my enemy, someone who had every reason to cage me—who opened the door for me to seize that power.

The truth I didn’t want to look at now stared me in the face, impossible to ignore, no matter how tightly I squeezed my eyes shut.

In the darkness, I saw Vincent the night of the Halfmoon ball, when we had danced together. He’d been so uncharacteristically sentimental that night. So affectionate.

I had asked him why he never took me flying.

And I remembered now, as clearly as if he was standing in front of me all over again, what he had said:

The last thing I wanted was for you to thinkyoucould and start throwing yourself off of balconies.

I choked out, “He knew.”

He knew. He always knew.

It wasn’t about protecting me. He didn’t want me to jump because he didn’t want me to find out I could catch myself.

That night, he had been so sentimental because he knew he was about to order the slaughter of Salinae. He knew he was about to kill any hope I had of finding any family I had left.

He knew, and he knew he was about to lie to me, and he knew he was going to lose me for it.

He knew all of it.

“He knew.” The words ripped from my throat, shaking with tears and jagged sobs. “He knew, and he never—he never told me, he never—why?”

Raihn murmured, “No one can answer that question.”

In a fit of rage, my head snapped up, my anger strong enough to drown out my self-consciousness. I probably looked like a wild animal, face ruddy and tear-streaked, mouth twisted into a snarl.

“Don’t fucking pity me,” I hissed. “Give me one honest thing, Raihn Ashraj. I want to hear someone say it.”

I was tired of performances and lies. Tired of dancing around the fucking truth. I craved honesty the way a flower craved sunlight. I even craved the pain of it, driven deep into my heart.

Raihn’s face shifted.

For all his faults, he didn’t pity me. He didn’t hide the truth.

“I think Vincent was very afraid of you, Oraya.”

“Afraid?” I let out a choked laugh. “He’s—he was the Nightborn King. And I’m just—”

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