The Serpent and the Wings of Night

At this point in the trial, 11 contestants remain. Ibrihim is the last to pass through the gate after killing his own partner, and once he does, the contestants are returned to the Moon Palace. The Ministaer greets them and announces that they’ll meet at sundown for a feast. Back in the privacy of their shared apartment, Raihn tells Oraya how magnificent she is, but the interaction is stilted. He and Oraya are unsure how to navigate their alliance, for it was only needed for the Halfmoon trial. Afterward, allies usually turn on one another. Raihn and Oraya know that eventually, one of them will need to kill the other in order to win the contest. He offers to get ready in a different apartment, and the subtext of this suggestion is that he does not intend to make any moves to kill her yet.

Just as the Ministaer said at the beginning of the Kejari, the Moon Palace caters to the contestants’ needs; in this moment, it provides Oraya with an opulent gown for the feast. Staring at her reflection, Oraya cannot “remember the last time [she] had seen [her]self in clothing created to be beautiful” (276). Despite not feeling entirely comfortable wearing the dress, she admires it and realizes that the color perfectly matches Ilana’s silk scarf. She ties the scarf around her throat and straps her daggers to her body.

Oraya arrives at the feast and looks for Raihn but instead finds Vincent approaching her. She cages up her anger at Vincent for breaking his promise about Raihn and allows him to pull her into a dance. Afterward, Oraya walks out to the patio in search of Raihn. In the garden, she discovers Angelika, Ivan, and Septimus speaking. She is unable to glean anything from their conversation before Septimus dismisses them and heads for her. Up close, she realizes that he is a Bloodborn vampire. She immediately dislikes him and is relieved when Raihn appears. Raihn addresses Septimus by name, revealing that the two vampires know each other. When Septimus leaves the garden, Raihn reveals that Septimus is one of the House of Blood princes and is the reason why so many Bloodborn contestants have entered the Kejari. Having lost Nyaxia’s favor after becoming scornful of her original gifts, the Bloodborn had been cursed by her and scorned by other vampire factions, so winning the Kejari is a Bloodborn’s only chance at regaining the goddess’s favor. When Raihn suggests going someplace else, Oraya agrees.

Raihn and Oraya sit on an abandoned rooftop in the human districts. Oraya can’t help but admire Raihn’s appearance, and she feels Raihn’s gaze linger on her, too. However, they each avoid acknowledging the other’s interest. Asking about Oraya’s plans for what to ask of Nyaxia, should she win, Raihn is disappointed to hear that she would request to be Turned into a vampire. Oraya believes that being Turned will give her the power she needs to change things for the better. Raihn cautions her against throwing away her humanity and emphasizes that she is perfect as she is. The tender words break down Oraya’s walls even further, and she doubts her ability to kill him when the time comes.

On their return to the Moon Palace, Raihn gives Oraya the opportunity to kill him if she wishes to. Instead, she places her hand on his chest and only desires to touch him more. He asks if she is afraid, but the only thing she finds terrifying is the fact that she’s not afraid of him at all. He asks if she’s going to kill him and when she says, not yet, he admits, “You might destroy me anyway” (301). Oraya pulls away, but she does not miss the hunger of her desire for him.

When they return to the Moon Palace, there’s an unspoken agreement to stay together. For days, they share their apartment, falling asleep on the couch beside each other or sleeping with their bedroom doors open—blatant, foolish acts of trust, yet neither makes a move to kill the other. Instead of daydreaming about ways to kill Raihn, Oraya finds herself daydreaming about much more intimate activities. One day, Oraya enters the kitchen to find Raihn cooking vegetable stew for Mische. Oraya can’t get over how good it tastes, and Raihn jokes, “That wasn’t how I’d imagined making you come for the first time” (305). The implications of the joke create a heavy tension in the air, but Oraya ignores it. Oraya pleases him by asking if she can come along to visit Mische.

Raihn flies them to the farmstead where Mische is staying. The owners, Cairis and Ketura, greet Raihn with warmth and Oraya with hostility. During the visit, Oraya overhears Raihn speaking with Cairis and Ketura. When Ketura implies that Oraya is not welcome, Raihn commands her to back down. In response, Ketura mentions that the Nightborn King is currently killing his way through Isca and Genra, Rishan cities that Oraya notes are very near to her own birthplace of Salinae. Their conversation ends as Oraya makes her presence known, and Raihn suggests they return to the Moon Palace. On the flight back, Oraya tells Raihn that she is originally from Salinae and that she’d like to return to find what remains of her family. She finds herself leaning into his embrace for the remainder of the journey.

The next night, the Moon Palace refuses to let candidates leave. When Raihn scopes out the feast hall, he comes back with human food and nothing else. The Moon Palace is no longer providing blood and aims to starve the remaining vampire candidates. Raihn plans to ration his remaining blood. Two weeks pass, and vampires begin to pace outside the apartment, drawn by the scent of Oraya’s blood. She and Raihn ignore them, training inside to prepare for the Crescent trial. Oraya positions a mirror so that Raihn can watch the sun rise each day.

On the third week, Raihn’s blood runs out, leaving him short-tempered as he struggles to keep control of his growing bloodlust. He becomes defensive and angry when Oraya implies that she should leave, accusing her of not trusting him. Even though he claims that he’d never hurt her, and she trusts him never to hurt her intentionally, she knows that in this moment, his profession of complete self-control is “a lie even if Raihn completely believed it was the truth” (323). When she harshly tells him that she doesn’t want to wake up with him at her throat, Raihn reluctantly agrees to leave.

Oraya wakes in the forest, where the Crescent trial has begun. The starving contestants rip into forest animals and subsequently behave erratically, ripping themselves apart. Oraya realizes that the animals are poisoned and runs in search of Raihn. She finds him fighting off a Shadowborn contestant. When Raihn kills him and moves to hunt a deer nearby, Oraya tackles him to the ground, willing him to see past the fog of bloodlust. She lets him go when he seems to recognize her and explains that the animals are poisoned. He has been weakened by his fights with other contestants and by starvation, so Oraya helps him through the forest to find shelter before the sun rises.

They seek shelter in a cave just before sunrise but have no solution for Raihn’s hunger. Realizing he’s close to dying of starvation, Oraya insists that he feed on her because the only other option is to watch him die. He looks at the old wounds in her neck, from her old lover, and understands what this sacrifice means to her. Oraya is not surprised that he has inferred enough about her past to know how she got the scars. She recognizes that this situation is different, and she trusts him not to kill her.

She straddles his thighs and moves her neck toward him. She prepares herself for the intoxicating effects of the vampire bite, aware that it often induces intense arousal—especially if there is already an existing attraction. Raihn positions her blade in her hand, directed at his heart, and commands her to use it if she needs to. As he gently feeds from her, she succumbs to her arousal. She reaches for him as he pulls away, wanting more—wanting sex—and kisses him. He pulls away again, putting space between them. She knows by his arousal that he wants to give in to his attraction to her. He admits to previously fantasizing about having sex with her, but he doesn’t want to do so now with the effects of the venom coursing through her. When she attempts to stand, she stumbles, weakened by the blood loss. Raihn pulls her toward him and curls around her, admitting aloud that she’s the “most stunning thing [he’s] ever seen” (344).

Oraya wakes to Raihn’s arms around her, ashamed of her behavior last night. They study the fog rising and lowering over the land every 90 seconds, which burns upon contact with their skin. Raihn finds the Shadowborn man he killed the night before and steals his cloak, which is made of near-impenetrable Avathrian silk. They formulate a plan to make it to the end point of the Cresent trial—the gold gate that stands miles in the distance. Every 90 seconds when the fog raises, Raihn will fly them as far as possible, and in the 90 seconds it lowers, they will drop to the ground and huddle under the cloak for protection.

The cloak shields Raihn and Oraya from the worst of the burning. Closer to the gold gate that marks the end of the Crescent trial, they catch sight of the city surrounding them. It’s Salinae, a Rishan city of half a million vampires and humans, and Oraya’s birthplace. It has been decimated by Vincent’s Asteris power. He has killed everyone.

Oraya is overcome with grief to realize that Vincent has not only killed so many innocent people, but also any remnant of the family she planned to search for after winning the Kejari. Ivan attacks while they’re distracted, cutting into Oraya’s stomach. Raihn rips Ivan from Oraya, but before he can land a killing blow with his Asteris, Angelika arrives and threatens to kill Oraya if Raihn harms Ivan. Just as the fog returns, Raihn tosses Ivan into it and throws himself and the cloak over Oraya while Angelika is distracted by mourning the loss of Ivan.

Raihn urges Oraya to brace herself before hurtling them through the last of the fog and through the gold gates. On the other side, they’re greeted by the Ministaer and by Ibrihim, who is the only other contestant to have made it through. The Ministaer announces that the date for the final trial, the New Moon trial, will be moved to tomorrow instead of three weeks from now. His reasoning is that he’s not sure the capital city, Sivrinaj, will survive another month. Raihn and Oraya are speechless at what they see outside the colosseum—Sivrinaj is now strung up with hundreds of Rishan bodies, pinned by their wings: evidence of what Vincent has been doing while they have been isolated in the Moon Palace.