12

Aleana’s slender fingers thread through mine.

Each step we take down the winding stone street, the bones of her fingers tremble against mine. There is a contradictory strength in her grip, the kind that reminds me of elders whose bones are like metal, needles , beneath frail muscles.

Since the night in the human lands, Daxeel has been gentler with me. Kind, even. That part of him I fell in love with all that time ago, it has returned, it embraces me—and I snuggle up to it every Quiet in his bed, in his arms.

I’m just waiting now, waiting for him to give me the answer for how he will keep me out of the second passage, and his proposal…

Only a matter of time, now.

We are in such a fine space that he’s loosened the reins on my confinement. Not much, but a little. Enough to let me go for lunch in Kithe.

But with the second passage less than two weeks away, the streets flood with fae from all over the lands.

Seems like anyone who wasn’t here for the first passage has arrived at the heart of Kithe and brought their entire bloodline with them.

My mood rots a bit more with every youngling that runs into me, every hissed ‘move’ from a stubborn elder and the growing stench of steed manure that the townkeepers can’t actually keep up with.

Ridge calls over his shoulder at us, “Want to walk up to Comlar?”

The sneer I aim at his back goes unnoticed, but not by Eamon who looks over the heads of pushy fae and stragglers alike. A small smile plays on his full lips.

There is a huff to my voice, “You said we would go to the scripture room—mind your boots!” I shove the youngling who stumbles into my legs.

The child only bites up at me before he runs off for his parents. Hope he falls and scrapes his knee.

“Scripture first, then Comlar?” Ridge offers with a throwaway grin back at us.

I shrink my shoulders into myself and squeeze between two groups of dokkalves waiting on the side of the road where the rental carriages are usually lined up. But there are no carriages waiting there this busy phase.

“Ok.” It’s all I say, because if I risk more, I might be unkind.

I always imagined I would love to live in a place like the Royal City of the Queen’s Court, but since I pass through those streets mostly at night when the parties carry on in the halls of the High Court, I’m beginning to doubt myself. Could I manage this boasting of folk all day, every day? To not be able to take a step without almost smacking into someone’s back or not even to stand still a moment without another knocking into me?

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

Kithe is best when it’s quiet; when it’s slow; when its cosy. I find beauty in the calm of it, so maybe I will always be a villager at heart.

Aleana’s palm is clammy on mine. “What is there to do at Comlar this phase?”

My boots creak around the strewn hay and bloody flesh that the kelpies feast on between rides. By the wet, salty stench of the fatty meat, I guess it to be blobshark blubber.

My nose wrinkles.

I manoeuvre around the waste littered all over the street.

Aleana isn’t so lucky.

The heel of her boot catches on a dump of kelpie waste, as pungent as the blubber. She curses under her breath.

I bare my teeth in a look of blatant disgust.

Firming her grip on my hand, she pauses to kick her heel against the stalk of a street lantern.

Ridge and Eamon hook around a merchant with stacks of freshly inked parchment scrolls at his feet, then round back to us.

Ridge’s gaze wanders away from us, fast. The impatience of waiting is quick to steal his attention to the snaps of the firecrackers some younglings throw at shop faces across the street.

“The tower is just as we left it,” Eamon answers and crouches down at Aleana’s raised foot. With a twig he snags from the edge of the road, he picks at the kelpie manure stuck to her heel. “There’s always gambling in the woods, watching the battle blocks, and the Hall is livelier than ever.”

Aleana shrugs. “I could do that.”

And I know she’s just eager to stay out of Hemlock House, to be outside the walls she feels trapped in so often. But I do wonder how she’s piqued her energy to keep up—I fear, maybe, she is back on those killer tonics of hers.

‘I want to live.’

And this, these little moments of sparkle, is to live.

She looks at me.

I shake my head. “I can’t.”

Officially, Daxeel said I can go to Kithe with Eamon for a short while, for the lunch we shared at Morag’s Mudhouse.

Comlar is beyond that boundary.

I’m not terribly sorry for it.

The last thing I want is to run into Pandora or my father at Comlar. Not to mention the idea of a busier Comlar isn’t so enticing to me right now.

Besides, the better selection at the scripture room is really the reason I’m out of Hemlock House today. It was nothing to do with the lunch that we just had. I only asked Daxeel to loosen the reins a little this Breeze so I could browse those richer scrolls for answers I can’t find in the dim collection at Hemlock.

Of course, he doesn’t know that.

“Why don’t you take me to the scripture,” I start, “then head to Comlar? I can make my own way back.”

Crouched at Aleana’s boot, Eamon looks up and considers me for a beat. Searches for any hints of annoyance I might wear—and finds none.

He tosses aside the stick, then pushes up with a sighed, “Alright.”

Ridge reaches out for Aleana.

They walk ahead.

Eamon drifts to my side and keeps my pace. “What are you up to?”

I raise my brow. “Hmm?”

His eyes read me, search my profile intently. “What are you hoping to find in the scripture?”

With a sigh, I list them, “Defection, Mother’s wishes, the second passage, evate bonds.” I look up at him. “There are just… some things that don’t melt for me.”

Eamon’s brow knits together. “Such as?”

I throw my hands up in a I-don’t-know gesture.

“For one,” I say, “how will Daxeel get me out of the second passage? Is he going to corner me into defection again, slavery? Or is there another way?”

The corners of Eamon’s mouth tuck into his cheeks. It’s a grim look. “I don’t know.”

My mouth twists and now it is my turn to study him.

I keep my voice low, “What do you suspect?”

Ahead, Aleana and Ridge find the porch steps to the scripture room’s entrance. The black lacquered doors are parted in the gentleness of the Breeze but will close soon before the First Wind can hit.

Eamon pauses before we reach them. His hand takes my elbow, a tender gesture, but firm.

He looks down at me, that grim set to his mouth remains.

Hesitation flickers over him before he says it, confesses his truth to me—

“I suspect everything dreadful.”

I explore the scripture room alone, and I understand that it’s much too small to be considered a hall.

The first thing I linger near is the gold plaque in the lobby. According to the inscriptions, Kithe’s collection is funded and supplied by donations. That’s a pretty way of warning me that the collection will be scattered and modest.

Still, I’m in no position to turn up my nose at any scripture.

The past few Quiets, I’ve slept in Daxeel’s bed—in his arms.

Whatever switch flicked inside of him, if it happened in the human realm or during our bitter fuck in the kitchens, it has been a welcome change.

Daxeel is starting to feel like mine again.

I feel like his.

Together, we find a peace, a contentment.

It’s a beautiful thing.

Yet, no surrenders have been written. I have no engagement, no promise of a future with him. My place in the Sacrament stands. I am still enslaved.

And Daxeel is still to fight for the Cursed Shadows.

Time is running out, fast, like sand in my fist.

Now, with what Eamon said, the unease in my stomach is stirring. It writhes, a snake pit in oil, nurtured doubt.

The itch for answers is what drew me here. But Eamon’s doubt is what powers me through the aisles with a burn in my gaze and a determined set to my jaw.

It takes an hour or two before I have gathered an armful of scrolls. The priest ties them with twine before I make my way back to Hemlock.

The first bridge I take alone is the same one that the selkie once caught me on and tried to lure me into the waters. That feels a lifetime ago, but it was less than a month past.

This phase, it is no selkie that is drawn to me.

I’m out of the centre of Kithe when I hear him—

“Narcissa!” A raspy voice booms up from the winding road behind me. “Narcissa, wait!”

I stagger on the road. Almost trip over my feet as I turn to see the litalf wrapped in brown leathers.

He slows his run into thumping steps.

His broad shoulders sway with his eternal swagger, as buff as the beefy Caius, but stretched taller, so it suits him better.

Streetlights glisten over his leathers, easing an earthy brown from them, a shade that matches his hair tugged back into a braided ponytail.

“Ronan.” I take an involuntary step back, Daxeel’s command ringing through my bones. “I’m not meant to speak to family.”

Ronan lifts his calloused hands; scarred palms flat against the air. “Am I your family? Do we share a bloodline?”

“I…” My boots clack against the stone, my backward steps unfaltering. “I don’t think I can stop to talk.”

Physically, I cannot find the strength, the power over myself to halt my steps.

Ronan sucks his thin lips inwards until they vanish entirely. He hesitates.

After a beat, he nods, firm. “Then I will walk alongside you.”

My legs jolt on their own accord. I step around, then turn until my back is to Ronan, and I’m starting up the street again. My muscles move as though threaded with strings that Daxeel pulls, and I think of those puppeteers that I used to watch when I was a youngling.

In three quick running steps, Ronan is at my side.

He matches my pace.

I throw a sideway glance at him. “Did Pandora send you?”

“I am here to represent the Queen’s Court.” His chin lifts. Pride strikes through him; it stiffens his spine and creaks his leathers. “I have been looking for you, searching for a way to get a message to you in that house.”

“A message?” I ache to stop, to turn and face him, but my legs keep on and hike me up the hill. “Is everyone—”

“All is well, the babe is in full health and still in-womb.” Ronan dismisses my questions before I can ask them. “I am here to extend an offer on behalf of the Queen’s Court, therefore on behalf of Licht.”

“To me?” The frown I aim at him squints my eyes, doubt and suspicion creasing my face. “What sort of offer?”

Just streets away from Hemlock, Ronan wastes no time. “Kill Daxeel.”

My lips part.

My boots trip on the stone slabs of the uneven road, but they don’t stop their hike.

No words come from me.

I simply stare at him a moment, like a fish on ice, frozen in its final breath, forever in shock.

Kill Daxeel.

The Queen’s orders.

Ronan has been sent on official business of the Queen’s Court, of Licht, to me—to ask me to kill the male I love.

And it is all so wildly unbelievable that all I manage is a choked sputter, “You want what ?”

Ronan has no time for soothing my panic. He has no patience for the delicacy he should have in such an outrageous request. Not as my legs carry me to the bend of the road, and I take the street to the right, the one that will lead me to Hemlock.

“We have others assigned to the task,” he tells me. “At Comlar on the battle blocks is the safest way we can succeed without threatening the treaty. But he is… formidable.”

“You have attempted this?” My voice pitches, my arms hug tighter around the scrolls. They pop and crinkle in protest. “You have tried to kill him?”

“Of course.” He issues me a frown, one that creases with his blatant judgement—one that calls me slow. “A few times now. But it is not only Daxeel we face. All the dark ones know the risk of losing Daxeel’s life, Caius too, so they are rarely alone and unprotected. Even his own enemy—if of dark blood—will throw themselves between Daxeel and a blade to preserve his life for the second passage.”

It is true.

Any bad blood between Daxeel and another dokkalf will be forgotten in the Sacrament.

The dark ones hold their duty to the lands above all else.

“Nari, forgive this rush and impertinence. But Daxeel cannot be allowed to compete in the close of the Sacrament.” Ronan’s strides keep my pace and he is losing time with me. “What do you think Dorcha will do with the Cursed Shadows if they gain the power? Daxeel’s bloodline will relinquish the Cursed Shadows to the iilra—and then, there will be nowhere they cannot go. No limits to their invasions, no end to their violence.”

My nostrils flare around a shuddering inhale. “Where you have murder as your solution, I have other schemes in play. I won’t kill the male I love.” I punch the statement with a steady look. “And I don’t have to. I’ll get him to stop. He’s already… thawing. By the time the second passage comes, I know he will do what is right.”

Ronan scoffs deep in his chest. It comes out as a puff. “Nari, please. Our intel has determined that you won’t make it through the Sacrament. Daxeel has greater plans than you can fathom.”

I dig my heels into the ground.

A quiver strikes my legs.

I manage to stagger around to face him.

Still, the command tugs the strings and all I can do is stagger backwards up the street, my furrowed look on Ronan.

“That is all I know of it,” he says.

“Know of what?” I snap. “Why won’t I make it beyond the Sac—”

“Listen, Nari.” He snatches for my arm. “The Queen’s Court will reward your family—discreetly, of course. Your father will find wealth, as will you, and you can have your freedoms. No arranged marriages, but independence to live as you please. Just do what is right. Save yourself—and everyone else.”

The scrolls crunch in my tight embrace. “Is that what Pandora wants?”

His throat bobs. “She wants you to survive. With Daxeel, we do not believe you will.”

Silence strikes me like a sword clangs my bones. The command fights me, turns me to walk onwards, and I’m in a silent battle.

Ahead, the familiar face of Hemlock House rises up. Crushed midnight skies, the home I have come to love.

A home of secrets and slavery.

“Consider it, Nari.” His boot flattens on the road—and stops. “What’s the worth of this one male balanced against the worlds?”

Ronan doesn’t give me a moment to respond. He jolts on his heel, then cuts back to the street we came from.

And he’s gone.

I burst through the door.

It slams against the foyer wall, hard enough to shudder the bones of the house.

Tris announces herself with a yelp, but before she can steady herself on the stairs that descend to the kitchens, I drop the scrolls on the floor.

“Take these to my room,” I say, breathless, a flush warming my cheeks. “Where is Daxeel?”

Her lashes flutter before she raises her hand and points to the door behind me.

I glower over my shoulder at it, then watch, mute, as dark spots start to spread over the wood.

The blots trickle over the blue paint, stains that shudder over to the wall, then spread their way up to the next floor.

Before the blotches can disappear around the landing and out of sight, I scramble after them.

They lead me all the way to the second floor’s last corridor, to the double ivory lacquered doors, slightly parted.

I slip through the gap.

Beyond the doors, the reddish hue of a lit hearth warms the darkness.

I step further inside and feel the heat wash over me, like a summer’s wave or a hot breath on wintery hands.

One disinterested glance around and I can see it is a study. Small, but ornate in Hemlock’s signature gold trimmed ceilings and cerulean walls.

I look across the room at the waxed blackwood desk on the other side of the kelpie skin rug.

Daxeel is hunched over the desk.

Curled parchments scatter the surface of the table, empty copper mugs and spilled ink.

He has his elbow pressed into the thickness of a tome, his chin rested on his fist. A gentle fatigue hangs over him like a delicate veil.

At the sound of my bootsteps, he lifts his gaze and looks at me from beneath his long, dark lashes. The deep blues of his eyes swim like ocean ripples.

“How was your lunch?” he asks, but his gaze is quick to drop on the scrolls that litter the desk. “Remind me to be more specific about the rules next time. Lunch without a side of adventure.”

I frown before realization hikes my brow.

He knows I went to the scripture room.

How he knows, I haven’t the faintest clue.

Someone saw me, perhaps. Or I wear the particular scent of the stale, dusty aisles.

Whatever it is, I just hope he knows nothing at all about Ronan running me down in the street.

“I’m not allowed to visit a scripture room?” I move for the velveteen armchair. I tug off my silky shawl. It billows to the chair. “Are you not a supporter of well-read females?”

“With you, it might be more accurate to say well-read slaves ,” he mutters under his breath.

I throw a sneer at him.

He doesn’t notice. He’s already consumed by the smoothed parchments sprawled in front of him, the curling edges pinned down by ink pots and pebbles.

Still, no mention of Ronan. So I’m sure he doesn’t know. Now I suspect Eamon might have sent him a crow to tell him he left me at the scripture room and took Aleana to Comlar.

Movement flickers at the edge of my sight.

A thick black tapestry—a family tree that glistens silver and gold, threaded letters shimmering as though winking at me.

It calls to me.

I home in on Daxeel’s name, far on the right. A gold line threads his name to another…

Narcissa Elmfield.

Faint, fading, then it’s gone.

In a blink, my name vanished from the family tree woven into the tapestry.

Another blink, it weaves back into place, returned.

I watch it fade, then return, over and over, and I don’t quite know what to make of that uncertainty.

It sways unease in my gut.

Is it Daxeel’s uncertainty that can’t decide my place on the tapestry? Or is it so simple that he might not survive the Sacrament, and that cuts our future down?

‘You won’t make it through the Sacrament.’

Ronan’s warning whispers through me.

‘She wants you to survive...’

I stiffen.

‘…with Daxeel, we do not believe you will.’

But I can’t believe him. Not yet. His intel is misinformed. My life most certainly cannot be in danger with Daxeel, not anymore.

I assure myself that the indecisive tapestry is nothing more than the plain truth that fate is an uncertainty until it is not.

I loosen a breath and, turning my cheek on the troubling tapestry, wander closer to Daxeel.

I peek at the scribblings on the papers.

Conscription contracts. The fine print.

And I wonder what he is doing with these, since his career isn’t under a general, isn’t a contracted warriorship.

“Is this why you let me go out?” I lift myself onto the edge of the desk and perch there. My boots lull beside his chair. “So you can read all about the service?”

Daxeel sinks into the high back of his seat. His eyes glitter with a faint, tired amusement. He glances at the armchair draped with my crumpled shawl, then back at me perched on the edge of his desk.

“Reading in my leisure,” he says and runs his gaze over my dangling legs. “You judge too freely.”

The face I make is a mocking one. “Not thinking about changing careers, are you? From torturer to solider?”

It’s not exactly a promotion.

He offers no answer, no joke or sneer.

He simply watches me. His hand reaches out for my ankle and he begins an absentminded stroke along the calf of my stocking-sheathed leg.

My skin tingles at his touch.

“I was reading more about the Sacrament.” I explain away my stop at the scripture room. “But it only gave me more questions. Your home library is limited.”

Daxeel thinks on it a moment, on my detour. Then, he simply says, “And?”

The heels of my palms press into the desk, and I slump my weight. My mind sifts through countless curiosities that have been nibbling too long at my mind.

I ask, “Is it only who you can talk to Mother at the summit?”

He shakes his head gently. Stray tendrils fall into his face. The tip of one thicker curl brushes over the length of his lashes. “Caius can speak to her, too. We are of the same bloodline.”

My nose crinkles. “But you are the one with the shadows.”

As though it hears me, a resting shadow flicks from over his shoulder—then it drapes again, melting into the black shirt he wears.

“I have the shadows because I found a dragon eye first,” he says. “So I was the first to whisper through it to Mother. These shadows have latched onto me, but it is all temporary. I am merely their anchor to these lands.”

His soothing stroke down my leg is enough to curl my toes.

A tingle flutters through me.

I blink on the smog that’s too quick, too easy to come to my mind and distract me—

I focus on the doubt.

This is the first I am hearing of it, that he spoke to Mother in the first passage. The portal windows were blinded from the dragon caves, and Daxeel has never told me what went on in them.

So now I know—he whispered to Mother.

“What did you whisper?”

His smile is small. “A promise of what I will sacrifice. An offering to Mother, but not yet the sacrifice.”

I huff a breath and kick off my boots. They thud to the floor before I shift closer to him.

I rest my feet on his lap. “What if she doesn’t want it? What if Mother ignores your offer?”

His smile tugs. He drags his hands down my legs to hold my ankles in his firm, tender grip.

For a beat, he considers my question.

He loosens a soft breath before he tells me, “Did you know Morticia hid in the first passage of her Sacrament? Dark warriors collected dragon eyes for her. The iilra forced her through the portal for the second passage. But she refused to go up the mountain,” his lazy grin ignites a flurry in my chest. “She met a litalf male she loved. They made a deal to protect each other—and to stay hidden. When Morticia threw her dragon eye in the blood river, the iilra pulled the contenders out. It is the shortest passage on record.”

“She chose to love the one her heart belonged to. She chose not to have war.” I shrug, my face softened with a dreamy look. “She chose herself.”

I always liked Morticia.

Daxeel doesn’t mirror me. His eyebrow arches and the ghost of a smile flickers over his lips, but it feels something like a mockery, a joke about me that I’m not in on.

His fingers are soft around my ankles, his thumbs moving in tender caresses that I hardly feel through my stockings. “If the dark contenders had found Morticia and dragged her up to the summit, Mother wouldn’t listen—because Morticia didn’t want to talk to her. One must want to whisper. One must be willing in the sacrifice, no matter how hard it might be. And as for the sacrifice, well the better it is, the more Mother is intrigued.”

I would offer up Taroh, beg Mother to devour him whole, and ask for nothing in return.

I press, “And what is yours?”

“Mother does not mind selfish motives. So my sacrifice is one that will ease my pain.”

His father.

That’s the first that comes to mind. The sight of Daxeel’s scarred, torn back burned into my eyes, forever.

But who’s to say Mother would like that offer, the offer of a father that a son does not love?

Sometimes Mother doesn’t listen.

Daxeel’s searing blue gaze pierces through me. “If I win this Sacrament, the darkness will not be contained to these lands anymore. The Cursed Shadows will break through the barriers. The iilra will direct it where they choose.”

The sway of my legs falters.

Daxeel doesn’t graze his thumbs over the flimsy material of my black stockings anymore. His hold is loose, and his eyes blaze through the dim light of the study. He watches me.

Something flickers inside me, a faint flame. “Where?”

“To the human world,” he says.

My brows pinch, once, twice.

I study the ink on his hand, the spears of blackness that coil around his fingers, but my mind is churning, it’s racing against the winds.

I ease out the question, afraid of it, afraid of the vibrancy in his eyes. “Darkness will take the human world?”

A dark smirk ghosts over his lips. “ We will take the human world.”

I yank my feet from his lap.

Legs curl into my middle and, still perched on the desk, I glare down at him.

“War?” I hiss the word with a raspy breath. “War that the humans cannot withstand?”

War between the light and the dark, that is natural. Our forces clash, but they are matched.

The humans…

“They will be exterminated,” I say. “You… Daxeel, you cannot. How can you—?”

Daxeel shoves out of the chair and towers over me.

“You did this,” his whispers. Gravelled words lash at me with such sudden cruelty that I flinch.

I blink, stunned.

“What?” I choke out. “ I did this?”

The life burns blue in his eyes, but all loving pretence has shattered in front of me, a glass mask exploding into a glitter of pretty confetti.

“I took the lashes for my mother, I stand between any threat and my sickly sister.” He snatches my chin, hard. A wince escapes me, but he yanks my face to align with his, and he hisses, “Then I met you. And for the first time, I knew what it was to love without all the poison, to be loved in return for who I am. Not for what I sacrifice. You, Nari, were first to draw out the gentle nature of a child who saw such little kindness. And you betrayed me. That was the final knife I would take into my back—the final blow to my heart.”

A cry catches in my throat.

Daxeel’s hand drops to my neck and with a hard yank, he’s pulled me off the desk. My feet barely smack on the rug before he’s hauling me to the wall.

This past week, our tender flame of love that we cupped safe in our joined hands, all a lie.

A mask he wore to keep me in his bed…

To keep me complacent.

And I feel I might be ill.

The room becomes a blur of midnight blue and gold. He spins me around then pulls my spine to his chest. I’m pinned in place by the solid carved-from-fucking-stone arm that loops around me.

I face a tapestry, a stitched portrait of a shadow.

“Abraxlor,” Daxeel growls the name at the shell of my ear. “The first master of the Shadow Court. One of the original true dokkalves.”

I blink up at the portrait weaved and painted onto the tapestry. A male whose nose is too thin, eyes too black, jaw too harsh.

“They say he could manipulate the darkness around him.” His breath is hot on my ear. “He would blind opposing courts in battle. Blur the borders between lands. He made the shadows tangible, so one could just reach out—and touch it.” A nip at my ear flinches me. “His evate was the only one who did not fear him or his great gift. She might have enjoyed it the way you have done.”

The fierce burn of my cheeks is hotter than the simmering hearth.

The kitchens flash in my mind—shadows licking all over me.

“The gift was lost over time,” he says, “as were all great original powers and magicks. Many hunt for the return of their bloodline right. But I would have turned my back on this Sacrament,” his voice softens and he brushes his hot mouth along the shell of my ear before he plants a chaste kiss on the curve of my jaw, “for you, Nari. I would have done that—for you.”

I swallow, thick.

There is nothing seductive about this, his words, the caress of his mouth on my prickling flesh. Nothing that soothes the fear rinsing my insides out.

“Daxeel.” I breathe his name like a realization, an epiphany of all the ugly things. “Do you even love me at all?”

“Yes.” That answer urges out of him in a husky rush, like it’s the truest truth of all.

He spins me around and shoves me against the tapestry.

It wrinkles at my spine.

“I love you, Nari.” Softly, he sweeps his mouth over mine and I lean into it, the promise of a kiss never delivered. “The first time I saw you, there was—”

“Love?” I breathe the word, my lashes fluttering shut, melting into his declarations.

“Not love. A hunger for your body. Evate .” His lip curls around the word. “I wanted to fuck you, have you squirm beneath me, see what your plump lips looked like around my cock. I’ve felt lust before, but what it was with you in that moment… it was dangerous. I wanted to break your ankle so you couldn’t run, tie you up and throw you in a cell so you could never leave. I wanted to force my bite onto you in front of everyone. Evate .”

“But you didn’t,” I whisper to his lips before I plant a tender chaste kiss there. “Because you know what is right, what is wrong, despite our more unevolved urges.”

He presses his forehead to mine.

His lashes tickle me as he confesses, “Some of my kind resist their evates. But I… I knew what you were to me. Evate. I suspected it at first, but I didn’t resist you. I wanted you, the bond, my evate. I wanted you forever. Then you revealed your hand and it was poison .”

His lips curl against my cheekbone.

The snarl that crawls through him is violent enough to shudder his chest.

I turn my cheek to him. “You make it seem like I enjoyed what I did to you. But I chased you, Daxeel. In words, in letter, in poetry.”

And I did, I wrote it all, wrote out my favourite poems, had them sent to him, but the strongest words I ever wrote to him were the truest ones from my own heart. ‘ I miss you’ .

I echo the confession in a voice thick with tears, “I wrote you.”

Still, the curl of his snarl remains. “Six times. You wrote six letters in ten years.”

“What more was there to say than I already did? I was regretful, and I wished to see you once more. You didn’t write back, and so I left you alone.” Dampness streaks my cheeks. Silent tears that I don’t wipe away. “What would have happened, Daxeel? If I had asked you to help me that night and had not shamed you?”

The pressure of his snarl on my cheek lessens. “I would have stolen you away,” he says, then draws back to look down at me. “I would have taken you to a steed and rode until we reached Kithe. I would have married you, kept you—and protected you. Even this—” He looks through the panelled window to the darkness that has thickened so much that I can barely make out the white gleam of the apples on the tree. “—I would not have done. For you.”

The smile that snakes onto his lips is a pained, dark one.

It’s as cruel as the one flashing in my mind, when he spat out the blood and glass in the courtyard.

And he aims it at me. “Now I do it because of you.”

My wet face crumples.

I voice the ache in my chest, “What will be your wish, Daxeel?”

His fanged smile remains.

Hand splayed on the tapestry, he pushes himself back with a step.

The hunger in his eyes pins me.

I utter the words in a breath of raspiness, “What do you mean to do with me?”

A shadow peels from his arm. It unravels towards my face—then caresses away the tear that dangles on my jawline, as though wiping away my worries.

“I have meant the promises I made.”

“You can’t kill me,” I whisper and push back into the wall as though it’ll cave to me and I can scramble out of here. That’s the urge stealing me, to escape before Daxeel tells me something too awful, too terrible.

There will be no turning back.

“I cannot kill you,” he says, softly, and the shadow flicks over my nose, like it’s toying with me, “unless my wish allows otherwise.”

I suck in a sharp breath.

Daxeel snatches me by the chin and shoves my head back into the tapestry. The crown of my head screams in protest, a scream I can’t manage to release beyond a gargled sound he’s fast to silence.

“Haven’t you worked it out yet? Those tomes and scrolls your nose sticks to—did they not warn you of the answer, my vicious one?”

The push of his solid chest against mine pins me in place.

“You are not free from the Sacrament, Nari.” He looms over me, his mouth hot on mine. “You will enter the second passage.”

I cannot move.

I cannot breathe, or think, or cry, or scream, I can’t even fucking writhe in his hold.

“Evate,” he adds, then his tongue darts out, licks away a tear from my lips, “is my sacrifice.”