The Serpent and the Wings of Night

“Vincent had carved these lessons into me. Never trust. Never yield. Always guard your heart. And when I had disobeyed, I had paid for it dearly. But not with him. Never with him. […] I spent my entire life afraid, forever conscious of my weakness and inferiority, but at least I had a single safe harbor.”

The imagery of Vincent “carving” lessons into Oraya demonstrates the harmful nature of his particular brand of affection. Her apparent idealization of him in the later half of the novel highlights her dependency on Vincent and the depth of her loyalty to him: a connection that will be confronted and challenged throughout the novel.

“A pang rang out in my chest. I didn’t like to openly acknowledge my own hopes. It made me feel […] stupid. Childish. Even more so to hear Vincent reference them aloud.”

Oraya is ashamed to admit her own desires aloud to Vincent. Whereas a healthy father-daughter relationship should be based on mutual respect and unconditional love, Oraya only feels comfortable sharing with him the things she knows he’ll approve of. In this moment, Oraya speaks of her desire to find her remaining family members, if they exist. This implies that Vincent isn’t supportive of this desire, or of her finding a sense of community and belonging among them, which is what she later reveals as her reasoning behind locating them.

“I didn’t remember them. Maybe that was why I missed them so much. A dream could be whatever you needed it to be, and maybe the twelve-year-old version of myself needed saving them to be the missing piece that would finally make me feel whole.”

Oraya’s confession reveals her own lack of belonging among vampires and among the humans she sees in the human districts. She also experiences a lack of identity, as Vincent does his best to rid her of her humanity in order to protect her from vampires who might prey on it. The only people she believes that she may truly belong with are the lost human family members she dreams of rediscovering.

“Ilana became my little rebellion. I cultivated a friendship with her, finding comfort in all the ways she was like me and all the ways I wished I could be more like her. She had made a tiny, tiny part of me believe that there was another version of a human life than the one I lived.”

Ilana’s friendship is an example of Oraya disobeying Vincent and proving that there are others worthy of Oraya’s love and trust despite what he has led her to believe. Oraya admires Ilana’s ability to live without fear and seek out her desires, all of which Oraya wishes are possible for herself. When Ilana dies, Oraya’s belief in the existence of a fulfilling human life is temporarily shattered.

“I had always assumed that the ugliness of Sivrinaj was confined to the human districts. It had never occurred to me that perhaps the inner city was rotting in its own way, too.”

Oraya notices the ugliness of Sivrinaj after forming her alliance with Raihn and Mische. Through exposure to other perspectives outside Vincent’s own, Oraya is able to see past the filter she’s been trained to see the world through. She’s able to see that the problems within the House of Night are much more widespread than she originally believed them to be.

“The last time he sounded this way, he left my room and did not speak to me again for a week. I was a little ashamed of the sudden, desperate panic that seized me at the idea of him withdrawing like that now.”

Despite his many flaws, Vincent is the only safe space and source of love that Oraya has. As a result, she’s overly reliant on him and becomes desperate in situations where his presence might be taken away from her. This desperation prevents her from doing or saying things that might provoke his anger—including voicing her dissent in this moment.

“It was the closest I’d ever get to an apology. I had never seen Vincent apologize to anyone for anything, ever. But one had to learn how to hear what lingered in between words. Just like he never told me he loved me, but I heard it in every stern instruction. And now, even though he did not say he was sorry, I heard it in the slightly lower cadence of his voice in that single sentence.”

Vincent never apologizes for his wrongdoings or voices his love for Oraya. Instead, she has to search for evidence of this love within his more abusive behaviors, and she often projects loving messages into his silences and subtext—whether her perceptions are accurate is open to interpretation. Healthy affection should be given freely, without room for interpretation, and the fact that Oraya must interpret meaning from ambiguous signs—such as gifting her swords or a lowering of his voice—is evident of the unhealthy nature of their relationship.

“Yes, maybe the Pantheon took her lover. But Nyaxia also took back her own power. I could imagine far too clearly how good that must feel after a lifetime of weakness. I was a bit ashamed to admit the things that I would be willing to sacrifice for it, myself.”

Oraya’s viewpoint highlights the intensity of her desire for power, even if it means sacrificing her humanity. She even believes Nyaxia’s sacrifice of her husband is worth the power she receives in return. Oraya’s views will change as her feelings grow for Raihn. When she has the opportunity to make the same sacrifice for her own power, she ultimately declines, having realized that her love is too great a sacrifice.

“I didn’t look at him, didn’t respond—waited for him to add a correction, or a diminishment. But he didn’t. He just made the straightforward compliment, and let it stand. It felt strange.”

Oraya expects Raihn’s compliment to be followed up by a deprecating comment or a criticism, and her expectation reflects the degree to which she expects to be abused in every interaction. Given that Vincent is her only other source of affection, this instinctual expectation highlights the negative impact of Vincent’s emotional abuse, which masquerades as a warped version of love.

“‘I’m—’ Human. I so rarely spoke that word to him. Never said it aloud. Like it was some dirty term that neither of us wanted to acknowledge.”

Oraya’s inability to call herself human illustrates her deeply ingrained shame and loathing of what she is. The fact that she is especially hesitant to mention it to Vincent makes it apparent that he disapproves of it and doesn’t wish to be reminded of it. That her father does not love this part of her is harmful toward Oraya’s perception of herself.

“Rage, and strange betrayal, and a single sentence: I told him not to break him. And Vincent had looked me in the eye and agreed. […] These questions shook me, hard, one after the other like arrows. Immediately, the voice in the back of my head smoothed over the sharpest of their accusations—he has a million other things on his mind; he had nothing to do with it; he had to do what was right for is kingdom. But deep, deep inside my heart, somewhere I wouldn’t look at too closely, I could feel it. A crack.”

Vincent’s betrayal of his promise to Oraya is the first instance of broken trust. This creates a fissure within her relationship with him that’ll continue to fracture when he betrays her trust further by decimating Salinae, where her potential remaining family members are thought to reside. The desire to defend him, even against her own anger, illustrates her other struggles between her loyalty to him and her loyalty to herself.

“My stomach turned in a way that surprised me. I should have been grateful—with this much available, I was as safe as I ever would be surrounded by so many vampires. And I was no stranger to what vampire feasts often looked like. So why did this bother me? Why did I find myself thinking so much more about where it all might have come from?”

The trials have opened Oraya’s eyes to the extent of the atrocities that humans face at the hands of vampires. Prior to the Kejari, she was far removed from the brutality of it, and only felt relief when the predatory attention was anywhere but on her. Through witnessing the horrors firsthand, and seeing how easily the victimized humans could have been her, her relief turns to anger and disgust in vampires.

“I had never even considered that it was possible to do such a thing. Vincent’s expectations were the mold I was poured into—there was nowhere for me to go, nothing for me to be, but what he made me. I understood young that the harsh words and the strong hands were necessary. He was trying to keep me safe, and one mistake would be all it took to destroy my fragile mortal life.”

This passage illustrates how Vincent shows his love for Oraya in unhealthy ways. In order to protect her, he changes her. By making her more like him, he strips away her identity and fosters her deep-seated hatred for her own fragile mortality.

“Before, he had looked at me like I was a goddess, and I had thought I couldn’t feel more powerful than I did in that moment. I was wrong. Because now he looked at me like I was more than that—like I was human. Somehow, that meant more.”

This moment hints at the first change in Oraya’s values. For so long, she has fought in pursuit of power, and when she achieves that by controlling her Nightfire, she’s looked at as a goddess and revels in it. However, at this point, being looked at as human means more to her, illustrating how her value of her humanity is growing more important.

“Such a stupid thing, yet it was oddly validating—oddly comforting—to be defined by something other than my relationship to Vincent.”

For the majority of the novel, Oraya is seen as Vincent’s “pet,” and her identity cannot be separated from his. Through her relationship with Raihn, she’s able to carve out her own identity separate from her father.

“But the edge of his words was just as cutting, just as lethal, as the edge of the blade he handed her. Now she understood. This was more than just a lesson. It was a punishment. She had disobeyed her father’s tenets. She had allowed someone else into her heart. And now, he would force her to carve it out and lay it at his feet. [...] Perhaps another teenage girl would have hated her father for this moment. And perhaps this one, in some ways, 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.”

This passage illustrates the ways in which Vincent’s harmful forms of affection hide in plain sight. Through phrases such as his words being “cutting” and “lethal, as the edge of the blade,” Oraya is subtly mentioning the damaging effects of his love. The fact that she both loves and hates him because of what he forces her to do illustrates The Complexity of Love that she’ll later struggle with when coming to terms with his two identities: Father and King.

“He’s making you do this, Ilana had told me. I was so, so angry at Vincent. More angry than I had ever been. Yet, so quickly I jumped to his defense, like every attack against his character struck me, too.”

The identity fusion that Oraya experiences is a result of How Intense Loyalty Erodes Identity. Often, she becomes angry on Vincent’s behalf, as if an insult to him is seen as an insult to her by extension. The continued presence of his voice in her mind, overpowering her own inner voice, is an example of this identity fusion.

“How, exactly, had I not noticed that its elegant scent of rose was just a little rancid? How had I not noticed that it masked the sour smell of rotting blood, like the whole damned building had been soaked in it? The flowers that adorned every table were withered at the edges, the wallpaper stained with faint deathbrown blooms of old blood, the plaster cracked with the stress fractures of a kingdom that had gotten too heavy.”

Oraya begins to see the hidden horrors that she’s somehow overlooked while growing up in the Nightborn Castle. As she begins to form her identity, which brings her closer to the human species than before, she becomes more aware of the crimes against her fellow humans.

“Vincent wanted me in the Kejari, wanted me to become his Coriatae, because it was the only way to turn me into something acceptable for him to love. My father loved me. I knew this. But he loved me in spite of what I was. Loved the parts of me that he could make like him.”

Vincent’s love is conditional, which has negatively impacted Oraya’s sense of self since childhood. In contrast, Raihn’s appreciation of who she is, humanity and all, is a welcome reprieve from Vincent’s bias.

“I was so ready to hate him. I wanted to hate him. I could hate Vincent the king, who had slaughtered whatever family I had left, who had overseen the torture of my people, who had relentlessly killed and destroyed. But how could I hate Vincent, my father, who looked at me that way? My anger made everything certain and easy. My love made everything complicated and difficult.”

Oraya struggles to come to terms with the two versions of Vincent: Father and King. While she loves her father, she is unable to love Vincent in his role as the Nightborn King, whose decision to destroy her hometown of Salinae has devastated her and shattered her trust in him.

“Fear is a collection of physical responses, I told myself. Fear is accelerated heartbeats and rapid breaths and sweaty palms. Fear is a doorway to anger; and anger is a doorway to power.”

This passage is the moment in which Oraya realizes The Power of Fear and uses it to her own advantage. By harnessing her fear and using it to fuel her anger, she’s able to access the depths of her inherent magical power.

“My father who taught me how to survive, how to kill, how to feel nothing. Perhaps I didn’t share his blood, but I was his child in every other sense of the word, and he loved me the only way he knew how. At the edge of a blade.”

The Complexity of Love is shown through Oraya’s reaction to Vincent’s death. Though she acknowledges the harmful impact of his love, she also acknowledges all that he has done to protect her from harm over the years. Her conflicting feelings turn his passing into a bittersweet ending.

“I scrambled to my feet, putting several strides between us. I noticed him watch the distance widen. I wondered if he was thinking the same thing I was—of how I used to move that way every time we were in the same room together.”

This moment represents a regression in Oraya’s relationship with Raihn, back to when they first formed their alliance. She put distance between them when she didn’t trust him to be near her, and by putting that same distance between them now, she’s showing that she no longer trusts Raihn in any capacity.