The Serpent and the Wings of Night (Crowns of Nyaxia Book 1)

Part 6 – New Moon

The wounds on the young woman’s neck had not yet healed.

Two days ago, the boy she thought loved her tried to kill her.

Today, her father came to her room.

“I have a gift for you,” he said. “Follow me.”

The king often gave the young woman gifts, though he rarely called them so. Right now, she was heartbroken. She felt hurt and foolish and stupid. She was not in the mood for gifts. But she was not in the mood for arguing, either, so she went with her father.

He led her to his throne room. It was a stunning place, a sea of marble tile in red and white and black, the Nightborn throne looming over it all. The king closed the double doors behind him and ushered his daughter inside.

She froze.

The room was empty, save for a single figure at the center of that expanse of smooth red marble—a handsome young man, kneeling, his hands bound behind his back. He looked up at her with the same eyes that she had dreamed about. Uttered a frantic apology with the same mouth that had tried to tear open her throat.

The girl could not move. The mere sight of her lover seized her heart, too many feelings thrashing in too many directions.

The king strode across the room and stood behind the boy, hands resting upon his shoulders. He turned to his daughter and said, “Come here.”

She did. Up close, she could see that the boy was trembling in sheer terror. This was strange to her. She had not yet seen that vampires, too, could be just as frightened as she was.

“Look at him,” the king commanded.

She did. She did not want to. Looking into those too-familiar green eyes was agonizing.

“He’s afraid,” the king said. “As he should be.”

The boy gazed up at his lover. He tried to apologize, tried to say that he didn’t know it would be that way, that he would feel that way—

The king shushed him. He reached to his belt, unsheathed a dagger, and held it out.

“Take it.”

A command. The young woman could not disobey her father’s orders. She had done so only once, and now look at what had happened.

So she took the dagger.

The king had trained her for years. She knew how to handle a weapon. Her fingers fell into place immediately, now second nature. But this was the first time she had held one so close to another living being. The light from the lanterns bounced on the blade, casting sparks of green in the boy’s frantic eyes.

The king said calmly, “I told you the night I brought you here that I would teach you how to wield your teeth. And I have upheld that promise. But now it is time that I teach you how to bite.”

The young woman kept her face still. But inside, panic seized her.

“The heart is the easiest way,” the king went on. “Straight through the chest. Slightly to the left. You will need to be forceful. Quick. It will be easy right now. But other times, they will try to run or fight. Do not give them the chance.”

Everything had gone numb.

The dagger was heavy in her hands.

Her lover looked up at her and begged.

“I am so sorry, Oraya. I—I’m so sorry. I didn’t know, I didn’t mean to, I don’t even remember—”

There are moments in one’s life that remain permanently distilled in memory. Some wither within minutes, and others are carved forever into our souls.

This image, of the boy she loved begging her for mercy, would follow her for the rest of her life.

Years later, when the girl was a grown woman, she would decide that the boy did not mean to hurt her that night. That he had not yet understood his newly Turned vampire impulses. It did not change what he did. It did not make it any less unforgivable. It only made vampires more dangerous. They could love you, and still kill you.

But in this moment, the girl did not know what to believe.

I can’t. The words lingered on the tip of her tongue. Shameful words. She knew better than to say them to her father.

The king stared at her, unblinking. Expectant.

“One strike. That is all.”

She started to shake her head, but he snapped, “Yes. You can. You will. I warned you long ago that you were never safe with anyone but me. I warned you. This is the consequence, Oraya.”

He did not raise his voice. The king rarely shouted. 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 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.

“This is a dangerous world.” His voice turned soft, tender. “This is what it takes to survive.”

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. He was forging her. If she had listened to him before, none of this would have happened.

She was not yet cold enough, not yet strong enough. But she could hone herself a little sharper now, even if it meant throwing herself upon the unforgiving steel of her father’s command.

She swallowed.

She lifted the dagger.

The boy wore a thin cotton shirt. It was easy to see the outline of his chest. She picked her target. Slightly to the left, just as her father said.

“You have to push hard to make it through the breastbone,” the king said. “Harder than you think.”

“Wait—” the boy choked.

The girl struck.

The king had been right. She’d had to push harder than she thought. She felt every layer of flesh, had to fight with the blade to get it through. The blood burst forth from the boy’s skin like it had been waiting for this moment.

Bile rose in her throat as her lover cried out. He lurched, but the king held his shoulders tight.

The young woman started to turn her head, but her father hissed, “No. Don’t look away, little serpent. You look them in the eye.”

She forced herself to obey. Forced herself to look the boy she had loved right in the eye until the last dregs of life seeped from them.

She held tight to that hilt long after his head lolled. At last, the king stepped back, allowing the body to flop to the floor. The boy was only recently Turned. His blood was redder than it was black. The crimson bloomed over the marble like rose petals bursting from a bud.

“Good,” the king said.

He strode away. He offered his daughter no comfort, no tenderness. Why would he? The world would offer her none, either. She should learn this.

So the young woman stood there, alone, for a long time.

Strange, that girls are so often told that the loss of their virginity marks a threshold between girlhood and womanhood, as if it fundamentally alters them in some way. It was not the sex that changed the girl forever. Not the blood that spilled between her thighs that shaped her.

The blood that spilled over that marble floor, though…

Those are the stains on one’s innocence that never fade.