Page 52 of The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

I’d missed her. No, that was an understatement. She was my only family, blood or no. There were two people alive right now who, I felt, for better or for worse, really knew me. Oraya and Mische. When Oraya looked at me, it was all accusation—I see what you really are.But when Mische looked at me, it was affection. And I’d missed that, but it was also uncomfortable. Was always harder to play the roles I needed to play when Mische was around, knowing me too well.

“It was boring as shit out there. Besides, did you really think that I would just leave you here alone?” A wrinkle deepened between her brows. “Or her?”

Her. Oraya.

Despite it all, it warmed my heart a bit to know how fond Mische had grown of Oraya. It was like she’d known, right from the beginning, how important she would become. I’d always wondered if Mische had a bit of mind magic in her. Just a touch of it. Those things weren’t in the domain of Atroxus, but her empathy was a bit uncanny.

I felt like I needed Mische, and I hated that. But maybe Oraya needed her even more than I did, right now.

“Mm,” I said, vocalizing none of this.

“Things are bad?”

I thought of Oraya’s ragged sobs in the middle of the day, when she thought no one could hear her. Thought of the empty nothingness on her face for weeks.

Thought of her voice—I do hate you.

“Yes,” I said. “Things are bad.”

The concession was bitter with regret.

I’d long ago given up on some image of myself as a morally decent person. I’d killed hundreds with my own hands over the years. Thousands indirectly, as a result of my actions in the last Kejari or this one. I’d done what was necessary to survive. I tried not to beat myself up about it.

But I would always regret this. Breaking Oraya. That was a sin that I’d never be able to atone for.

A long silence. Then Mische said, softly, “I’m just… really, really glad that you’re not dead, Raihn.”

I laughed a little, but she snapped, “Not a joke. I mean it. What were you thinking?”

I wasn’t sureIwas glad I wasn’t dead. When Oraya had killed me, I’d felt certain that I was doing the right thing. Giving Oraya the power she needed to seize her potential. Giving the House of Night a clean start. No messy alliances with the Bloodborn. No complicated pasts.

That had seemed worth dying for in that moment. The dying, after all, wasn’t the hard part. The coming back was where all the mess started.

I just said, too casually, “I wasn’t really doing much thinking,” even though it was a blatant lie.

Her brow furrowed. “But you worked so hard for this.”

I had to clench my jaw to keep from saying the truth.

For this? No.

I’d entered the Kejari because Mische had. Because she’d forced my hand. Because one day, when we were traveling, she’d caught me on a particularly bad night, and I’d told her all of it—the truth of who I was and the scar on my back, the things I’d never uttered aloud to another person.

Every emotion painted over Mische’s face, and that night, I’d watched her sadness for me, and then her confusion, and then, the thing that actually hurt: the excitement.

“You,” she’d breathed, eyes lighting up, “are theHeir of the Rishan lineand you aren’t doinganythingabout it? Do you have any idea what you coulddo?”

That had fucking killed me. Thehope.

We’d gotten into a fight that night—one of our worst, even after years of constant companionship. The next night, Mische had disappeared. I’d been beside myself by the time she returned, nearly at daybreak, and she’d showed me her hand: her blood offering scar.

“We’re entering the Kejari,” she had said, smugly. Like she’d just signed us up for a painting class or a city tour.

I hadn’t been so angry in years. I did everything I could trying to find a way to get her out of it. But in the end, I ended up there right beside her, just like she knew I would.

After my initial outburst that first night, I never told her how I felt about that. I held that discomfort in a tight knot in my chest, buried deep.

It was hard to be angry at Mische.

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