Page 96 of The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

“Getting stitched up or getting tortured?”

“The questioning. You didn’t break.”

Jesmine’s methods were… thorough. Honed to perfection for their intended purpose, and that purpose was getting information out of unwilling participants.

“I wasn’t lying,” he said. “I wasn’t responsible for the attack on the Moon Palace.”

I peered over my shoulder and shot him a flat look.

He huffed a laugh. “I guess I’ve earned that face. But I’d come too far to let one woman with a knife bring me down.” Then, after a pause, “Well.Thatwoman with a knife. Met another one who was a whole different story.”

I bit my lip as he applied another well-timed dab of medicine, but the pain was a welcome distraction.

“So has it been worth it?” I asked. “Being the Nightborn King.”

His hands paused. Then resumed.

“Does it count as bad bedside manner if you’re the one in bed? Trying to make us both equally uncomfortable?”

I shrugged and immediately regretted the way the movement jostled my wings.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll keep it interesting for you, since I know you need the distraction. Was it worth it? I saved the Rishan people from two centuries of subjugation. I took back what was rightfully mine. I got revenge upon the man who killed thousands of my people. I even get to wear a crown in front of the pricks who once treated me as a slave.”

All things I expected him to say. All things that I knew were true.

“That’s what I would say to anyone else who asked,” he said. “But it’s not anyone asking. It’s you. And you deserve the truth, if you want it.”

He moved on to another wound. I barely felt it.

I’d regret it if I let him keep going. I knew that whatever he said to me would hurt. Would be complicated.

And yet, I said, “One honest thing.”

“I don’t know if it was worth it.” The words came fast, low, in a rough exhale, like they’d been pressing on the backs of his teeth for far too long. “The night Neculai lost his throne, I just wanted to burn it all down. I never wanted... this. Feels like it’s all cursed. This crown. Maybe the only way to survive as a ruler of this place is to become just like the ones who came before you. And that—that terrifies me. I’d kill myself before I let that happen, and I hope that if I couldn’t, you’d do it instead.”

It was more of a confession than I expected. I had to force the lightness into my voice as I said, “I already did that, remember?”

He laughed humorlessly. “I told you that you should have let me stay dead.”

“And what about that? Would that have been worth it?”

Another question I immediately knew I shouldn’t have asked. Another wound, another stab of pain.

“To die, rather than killing you?” he said quietly. “Yes. That would have been worth it. Even I had to draw a line somewhere. And you’re the line, Oraya.”

Mother, I was a fucking masochist. Asking questions with answers I didn’t know what to do with.

He cleared his throat, as if to scrape away the uncomfortable sincerity of those confessions. “I need to adjust your wings. Can you lift them a little?”

I tried to do so, wincing. What I’d intended to be a stretch became an awkward lurch, and the bed creaked as Raihn’s weight fell back.

“Careful, princess. You’re going to take my eye out.”

“They don’t listen to me,” I snapped.

“You’re just adjusting to having two new, giant limbs stuck to your back. When I first got mine, I could barely even walk properly. Just kept drifting to the sides because the weight threw me off.”

I couldn’t help it. That image made me chuckle.

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