Page 60 of The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

The king pulls the goblet away.

“That’s enough for now,” he says, with a thick accent, patting the man’s shoulder and setting the cup aside.

The man wipes the mess from his face with the back of his hand and blinks down at the smears of red left behind, confused.

He does not understand yet, you see, what happened to him.

He puts aside his hand and his confusion. His family, he thinks. How long has he been here? Time blurs. The ship seems like a lifetime ago.

“Thank you,” he chokes out. “Thank you for your hospitality. But I need to go.”

The king smiles and says nothing.

Perhaps he didn’t understand him, the man thinks. He is far from home. What country had he ended up in? He knew once, but now—

It doesn’t matter. The man doesn’t speak any language but the commoner’s tongue he’d grown up with.

“I need to leave,” he says again, speaking slowly, each word enunciated, pointing to the window—the window that overlooks the sea.

The king still does not answer. His smile broadens slightly, revealing the tips of his pointed teeth.

Those teeth—the sight brings with them the memory of the night of his almost-death—

Do you want to live?

Dread rises. The man ignores it.

“Please,” he says.

But the king just strokes the back of his head. “You have no more home,” he says, somewhat pityingly, words serrated with the thick tang of his accent. “You exist only here.”

Years later, the man will remember little of this conversation. But those four words will remain, even when the specifics of the rest are long lost:You exist only here.

It will become the truth. The king has given the man a new life, but the catch is that this life belongs solely to him.

This is the moment that the man understands how much his life has just changed.

He shakes his head, trying to get up, but the king pushes him back to the bed easily. The man is too tired and dizzy to fight, though he claws through it with every bit of his remaining strength—

But when the king offers him his wrist, the scent dazes him.

“It will not be so bad,” the king says, as he guides the man’s head to his skin.

18

RAIHN

Ipractically skipped out of that castle.

Weeks out of that place. Weeks away from those stone walls, and those people, and that musty incense smell that reminded me far too much of two-hundred-odd years ago. It was every gift I’d ever gotten rolled into one. Better than any birthday.

Cairis would stay behind to manage the affairs of the Crown, and Vale, to continue directing the battles across the House of Night. He seemed a little relieved to have an excuse to remain.

Ketura and a few of her most trusted soldiers would come with us. I tried to talk Mische out of it, but this, of course, was futile. She made it about two sentences before she cut me off and said, “Do you want me to let you finish this before I tell you I’m not listening? I’m abodyguard, remember?”

Then again, maybe it was for the better. Better to be out there with us than to be in this place, alone.

Septimus—of course—insisted on coming himself, too, bringing his second and a small force of Bloodborn guards with him.

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