5

I wake to scars.

Daxeel might not have booted me out of his bedchamber after having me in his sheets, but he makes sure I know the distance between us is still there.

He sleeps with his back to me.

Forever in the darkness of the Midlands, the only light that illuminates the deep blues of the tall walls and arched ceiling are from the glowjars and the now-simmering fire in the hearth. But that light is enough that, as I blink my weary eyes open, I see the ribbed skin of his back.

Honeyed flesh pulled tight over muscle—then torn.

Shredded.

And my face tightens at the sight of it.

Slowly, my hand slips out from under the weight of the fluffy blankets—not quite furs, but softer and thicker, like I’m wrapped in layers of plush teddy skins, the sort of toys father often bought me when I was little.

My fingers tremble with a fatigue I only notice now. My body calls out for the early Warmth coffees I’m so used to, but it tremors for the meals I’ve been skipping of late.

I toss aside thoughts of hunger, of coffee, and I reach out my wavering fingers for his back.

Those ribbed white scars disrupt the smooth caramel tone of his complexion. Ghosting my fingertips over them, I never quite touch the raised lines with puckered edges—but my face grimaces at the sight of them.

Melantha’s cool voice echoes in my mind, a threat looming in the distance, ‘Daxeel stands between me and the whip.’

His father’s whip.

A lashing meant for Melantha.

‘He has done so since he was too young, and so he has many scars.’

My eyes burn with the threat of tears; my mind flickers with images, a young boy with ocean eyes and a determined set to his jaw, standing in front of his crumpled mother—and staring up at his father.

‘But it was you who left scars not of flesh, but of heart and soul.’

Lashes shut on unshed tears.

My throat flexes with a thick swallow.

Daxeel’s pain is a part of him. Back then, I never realized, never gave much thought to it, his history, his misery.

Maybe if his flesh was never torn apart by his father, maybe if his father loved his mother the way one should love their evate, then my slight of him wouldn’t have cut him so deeply. Maybe we would find forgiveness sooner, easier than what we do.

‘That’s what you see when you look at me.’

‘What else is there?’

He spoke those ugly words with such tenderness. The realization of it aches a pulsing, crushing sensation in my chest, an echo in a hollow cave.

Daxeel never gave much thought to my pain, either.

He sees me as little more than a privileged brat, let himself believe that my father only ever lectured me after he found me under the willows with Daxeel.

I wonder if we were honest with one another, if we let each other in that bit more, how differently we would see each other. I wonder why I don’t tell him the truth of that night, what father did to me, and the true lengths of my punishment.

Most of all, I wonder—do I have the strength to keep fighting these battles in my pitiful life?

My hand lowers to the pillow I rest my temple on.

For a while, I watch his back, the curve of it rising and falling with his steady breaths. He’s found peace in his slumber. Might be the scent of me in the bedchamber with him that keeps his rest so soothing. Might be the cruel satisfaction of his slight victory.

I ache to reach out for him, to touch his scars and kiss them away, to whisper sorrys that he doesn’t care to hear because they mean so little to him. A part of me now understands why.

Sorrys don’t remove the scars.

He has faced, endured , too many betrayals in his life, and mine cut deeper than those scars.

I leave him untouched.

Gently, I slip out of the bed and creep over to the crumpled chemise on the floor. Silent, like the Quiet we’re inching out of, closer to the humidity of the Warmth, I peel the cotton slip from the rug, and I cut a look ahead, to the piles of ribbons, tulle, satin and a shredded corset. The remnants of a gown.

I pull on the chemise as I sneak out of the room.

And with one look back at Daxeel before I shut the door on him, I see that he doesn’t stir.

The washroom isn’t easy to find.

The doors confuse me, the wood that’s sometimes smooth with a lacquered blue, and other times blotched with crimsons and yellows, but always a shifting colour, changeable—and I understand now that the doors are enchanted.

I wander the fourth floor, eyeing up doors the deepest shade of blue, as dark as Daxeel’s eyes, some a grimy shade of grey—like when Knife washes my white dresses with my black breeches to annoy me, and the white is never quite the same again—and others as black as tar.

It isn’t until I come across a regular door of carved wood that looks softer to the touch than silk, that the magick of it reveals itself to me.

The door unlocks itself.

I stumble back and watch it as fiercely as I would watch a faerie hound advancing on me.

Then, as though pushed by an invisible hand, it creaks open all the way—and reveals a black marble washroom.

I know enough about enchantments to recognize expensive tricks when I see them. Self-opening doors, colour coded—an enchantment that cost some gold and then more.

I fast figure out two colours and what they mean. Blue is sleep; in that room, someone is resting. Ordinary, untouched wood means the room beyond it is unoccupied.

The other colours, I still have to learn.

Right now, my focus is stolen completely by the door across the washroom, the one with the chamber pot on the other side.

I do my business, then take care to wash my body with a cloth before I leave to find the kitchens.

I remember the short descending stairs from the foyer—and I start through Hemlock House for those.

My steps are rushed. An urgency steals me, because Daxeel’s mother could slink out at any moment. I’m eager to avoid her threats before my first coffee.

But some moments into my hurried journey, it isn’t Melantha I run into.

It’s Caius.

Slathered in glossy leathers that reek of soap, he comes bounding up the stairs, two steps at a time. The house shudders with each thud. But his steps falter when he looks up—and I look down.

His mouth twits before he pushes into a prowling climb.

I grip the banister and start down the stairs.

Our locked gazes hold as we near.

Then Caius turns his dimpled chin my way as he passes.

I’m silly enough to part my mouth around a question—‘ where are the kitchens ?’—but I don’t get the chance to ask it before he lets a snarl twist his face, a scratchy warning sound crawling up his throat.

I freeze at the sound.

Muscles bolt to my bones.

My hand tightens on the smooth wood banister so tight that my knuckles bleach. I half expect him to smack his shoulder into mine and send me flying over the railing.

But he just stalks past me.

The throaty snarl leaves with him.

For a long moment, I keep tucked to the banister. Neck craned, I look up at the second-floor landing, watching the doorway he disappeared through.

He doesn’t re-emerge.

I loosen a shaky breath. It shudders through me before I start down the stairs again.

My mind flickers back to the small steps. In old homes like these, with bones more solid than my own, the kitchens are often in the basement.

With each step that I clammer down to the guts of Hemlock House, thoughts of Caius and his obvious disdain of me linger. Is he just another one who judges me too personally for my slight against Daxeel, or does his loathing come from something deeper?

I’ve observed Caius before, how receptive he is to Aleana, yet doesn’t take the elder sibling role in guarding her, then how he is with his brother, how little they interact, but when they do, it’s as though they are little more than colleagues.

What I’ve gathered is simple.

Daxeel and Caius just aren’t that close.

Pandora and I seem to share a stronger bond than Daxeel and Caius do. So a part of me, this sliver of self-sabotage and poor survival skills, urges in the flames flickering in my chest to spit at Caius’s boots and tell him to mind his own business.

But of course, I don’t.

I bite my tongue and descend the short staircase to a cold, stone corridor. Down that hall, I find the kitchens in the bowels of the house.

The moment I reach the stone archway, the fireplace carved into the wall flashes blue. Those flames lash and lick up the heavy bottoms of cauldrons and pots, flicker the shade of diamonds for a heartbeat, then mute back into their dull hues.

I spare the hearth a mere glance before I throw my stare to the male who sits on the edge of the dining table, his back to me.

Lingering in the archway, my bare feet flex on the cold stone floor as I study the smooth marble tone of his unblemished back, down to the waistband of his black linen slacks.

Dare is perched on the edge of the old, homely dining table whose surface is all scratched and marked and stained. Hunched over a midnight apple that he rolls in his fingers, he pays his surroundings no mind beyond the toying of the fruit.

‘ Don’t play with your food .’ Knife’s gnashing voice snakes into my mind, and instinct has my shoulders stiffen, as though the little cretin is really here and prepared to whack me on the shins with a wooden spoon. ‘ Or it might bite you right back .’

Thanks to Knife, I lived so much of my youngling years in fear of my meals coming to life and attacking me.

But the brownie isn’t here to stir old anxieties in me. This kitchen is safe from him and his utensil attacks. There is only Dare to my right and some slaves clanging pots to my left.

I take a tentative step through the archway. My gaze sticks to the defined muscles of Dare’s back, unmoving.

His attention seems drawn away to another world.

Despite that his sharp hearing will have picked up on my soft steps, my heartbeat, my scent, Dare gives no acknowledgement.

His stare is lifted, his profile set with concentration.

The gold flakes of his iris flicker like lights of their own. His stare is aimed at the small rectangular window tucked up against the ceiling, the window that overlooks the ground of the street above.

All I see from this angle are some gleams of glowjars out there, and a single set of polished boots that stalk by at a brisk, determined pace.

Dare watches the boots pass. His mouth flattens into a firm, focused line. Still, he doesn’t acknowledge my approach.

No words of greeting or snarky glances my way. All traces of the previous phase’s humour have evaporated.

He lifts the half-eaten apple to his sharp bite.

“I’m not the only early riser, then?” My voice is a mumble, as unsure as I am of myself.

“Oh!” There’s a clang that shudders from the other side of the kitchens.

I take another step and look around the wall at the house slaves.

Two humans in beige dresses, those poufy skirts and corsets I loathe, are tending to a dozen pans heating on the stove. The slave with freckles and red hair turns to me, eyes wide, and rubs her greasy hands down her apron.

“Miss,” she starts and bustles for me, her skirt rustling over the stone floor. “Breakfast will be served shortly in the dining hall, but if you are hungry now—”

I shake my head. “Coffee?”

“Yes, miss, right away.” She bows her head and, with a lift of her hand, gestures to the rustic table that Dare is perched on.

I wander over to him, but falter halfway.

I turn back to the slave, a question burrowed into my face. Am I to join her? To serve my time as a slave meant for these soot-stained stone walls?

She misreads my doubt.

“Tris,” she introduces herself with another bow and flushed cheeks. But I know her name, because the first time I was in this home, Melantha said it when she addressed her.

“Should I…” I start, but my words falter as my frown deepens. “Am I meant to be down here? Should I be… helping?”

Slavery is my position here, after all.

Daxeel might expect me to be preparing breakfast in those ghastly dresses. No, he wouldn’t force me to wear that. He prefers my racy fashions, the fashions of the Light Court and the Queen’s Court, not those courts further out from the heart of Licht, where bell dresses and frilly gowns are the epitome of style.

“No, miss.” Tris shakes her head only slightly, but it’s enough to have a strand of burnt-copper hair tucked behind her ear shift and fall into her face. She’s sort of pretty, I think. But the sort of pretty that one might overlook in passing on the street, and only really notice when face-to-face.

Before I can ask what I’m to do, Dare steals my attention.

I whirl around as he chucks the apple core over his shoulder—and it lands with a rattle in a tin can.

“Daxeel will give you any orders he has,” Dare says with the strain of a contained yawn. “He’s the only one who can command you.”

Forgetting Tris, I draw in closer to him, to his words.

Sleep clings to his reddened eyes as turns his chin to his shoulder, not quite looking over at me, but an inviting gesture still. “He might order to you naked if you wear something like that gods-damned dress again.”

I tilt my head as I study him, the low set of his lashes over golden eyes, the muted shine of them, the pout of his full mouth, and I realize he’s a bit of a grump in the early hours of the phase.

Tris bustles up to my side. She sets down a copper mug full of steamy, fresh coffee. The fragrance of it is an instant hit that swells my insides with a relaxing flutter. It lures me into a creaky chair.

Keeping a false sense of safety, I sit two chairs down from Dare. He could kill me so easily from this distance, a lazy swipe at my neck for my throat to bleed and thump in his hand. Yet the distance eases me all the same.

A comfortable quiet is fast to drape over us like a heavy blanket. I keep the rim of the copper mug pressed to my bottom lip and force polite sips, not the greedy guzzle I ache for.

The clangs and clatters of breakfast being prepared on the other side of the kitchens overpowers my gentle slurps of coffee.

Dare is entirely silent, a statue perched on the edge of a farmhouse table, and his unflinching stare fixed on the small window up the wall. He watches the occasional pair of boots cut through the dim shadows of glowjars and lanterns on the street.

At this angle, I catch slight movement from him. The only sign that he’s alive, not a frozen figure, not an ornament: Hands clasped between his spread legs, he runs the pad of his thumb over his palm.

Stuck in a trance, he runs his touch over and over his palm, a patch of soft skin that’s smudged with black ink.

I frown on the dark stain for a beat before I realize what it is. A sketch of some kind, a small sun shape that he’s drawn onto his hand.

“Thinking of a tattoo?” I ask and keep my tone light, because Dare is as unpredictable as any hybrid, more so than any dark male, his changeable nature as dangerous as any battlefield. Seems it’s even less predictable in the early hours of the phase.

Dare dips his head slightly. He looks down at the inky drawing on his pale hand. His thumb pauses on the edge of the sun sketch.

Long lashes lower with a lazy blink. He shakes his head. Tousled curls fall into his face.

“I dream it,” he says after a beat, and the roughness of fresh sleep thickens his voice.

He dreams of the sun.

My mouth puckers in thought.

Maybe he dreams the sun because he is of the sun. No matter how drawn to the life of a dokkalf he is, he is hybrid, he is both—and he belongs to the light as much as he does the dark.

But then, my thoughts are wiped clean and declared untrue when he adds in a barely-there sigh, “I miss her.”

I blink at him.

My startled stare pierces into the back of his head. His dark tendrils are unruly from whatever deep sleep he was sucked into during the Quiet.

I lower the empty copper mug to the table.

‘I miss her.’

Such a private thing.

Words spoken from his heart, perhaps even his soul. But more than the words was the defeat in his voice, and his demeaner that now appears more defeated and sad than tired.

I almost think he didn’t mean to tell me that, like he forgot who else is in the kitchens with him.

I force a hard swallow and push aside the empty mug. I hope Tris notices and refills it.

My voice is soft, afraid to spook him, “Who?”

Silence. That’s what comes in answer; silence.

Even in the farther edges of the kitchens, no clatters, no clangs, no hissed orders or whispered bickers.

I look over at the slaves.

Stirring a bowl of cream and chopped chives, Tris has her head bowed. Her cheeks flame, her mouth pinches into a freckled cat’s bottom. Her sharp gaze lifts to sear into Dare’s back, but then she catches my stare. She blinks, the flames on her cheeks alighting into wildfires.

I tap my finger on the table at the base of the empty mug.

Relief ribbons through her. Her shoulders sag with a quiet exhale before she moves for the jug of fresh coffee, then rushes over to me. She fills my mug to the brim before she retreats back to her duties.

So many seconds have passed, maybe a minute whole, and so I don’t expect Dare will answer.

But then, he speaks in a whisper that I almost don’t catch—

“ I don’t know .”

For a beat, I watch the light glisten over his inky tendrils. My mouth turns down at the corners as I reach for my mug. I cup it in my palms, relishing in the burn against my flesh.

“Someone you’ve… met?”

Dare smiles, a small gesture stained with bitterness. He lifts his gaze to the window again, finally tugging his focus away from the smudged ink.

I watch as he shakes his head slightly. I almost wonder if he really knows he’s speaking to me, or I just happen to be around in a private moment when he voices his sleepy thoughts.

“No.” His voice is firmer now. Guarded. “But I miss her.”

How can one miss someone they have never met?

My thought is shattered as Dare throws up his arms with a yawning stretch that ripples down those lean muscles on his back, and I think of water trickling over boulders in a stream.

With that one stretch, he cuts down any question I might ask.

His muscles slink beneath his skin, the faintest shadows lining the definition. The stark contrast of his inky hair and his alabaster complexion holds my attention for a lingering moment.

He must be so dangerously beautiful to females who aren’t me. Females like Tris who, I’m certain, hasn’t stopped scowling at him across the kitchens for the past few minutes.

If I had met Dare, not Daxeel, I would have been another of his willing victims. But now that I know Daxeel, my lust, my desire, it calls out for only him. Even when I have lain with another, my mind was consumed by Daxeel.

I let the coffee pour down my throat, my mind away from my body, living in moments of the past.

Dare jumps off the edge of the table. His bare feet smack to the stone floor just as Tris comes up to pour more thick, dark coffee into my mug.

“So, Nari, darling heartbreaker,” Dare starts, but the husky sleep of his voice dims his teasing nature. He turns on me, leans against the wall, and with the nail of his thumb, scratches the line of his lashes, “what will you do with your gift?”

Tris stalks off again, and I’m certain she only tended to my coffee so she could get closer to Dare, maybe throw him a dark look that he hasn’t noticed, since he seems to not remember that she exists at all.

I fiddle with the handle of the mug. “What gift?”

His grin is lazy, unenthused. “A whole month to win over your male.”

I’m not so certain it is exhaustion that’s keeping him in this strange mood of his, this grump, but rather that it’s more to do with the female he misses but has never met.

“And now you know,” he goes on, “that you are his evate. You’re a clever halfling—what will you do?”

The words spill out of me, “I will love him.”

My answer is so unflinching and simple and unashamed that Dare lifts his blank stare to mine.

He blinks on it for a moment before he turns his cheek to me. His gaze finds Tris who smacks down a chopping board on the bench across the stone dungeons, and I think she does it too hard, too huffily.

Unfazed, he just watches her cut a loaf of bread into thick slices.

“No dancing?” he asks, and still, the mockery is wiped from his tone. “No training, no reading? You will stand as furniture in this home, and merely love him?”

I frown at him.

Dare doesn’t look at me. His focus is still fixed on Tris.

She’s moved for the hearth and now bends over to tend to the pots on the flames.

Dare makes no effort to hide how blatantly he considers her generous backside, made bigger by the tulle underlayers of her skirt.

But his words clang my bones.

The way he said it, merely love him …

Dare is trying to help me, in his warped and wicked way.

It’s not enough.

That’s what he’s telling me.

It’s not enough to simply love Daxeel.

No dancing, no training, no reading?

Be myself. Live as I normally would, as though I am free, not like an enslaved evate who begs her male to love her. Treat Daxeel as I would under normal circumstances. Dance, read, tend to animals, find my friends and laugh, live outside of Daxeel.

Gripping the copper mug, I push out from my chair. The legs of it scrape over the stone.

Dare doesn’t look away from Tris’s curves.

“If I was better, I might thank you,” I say with a sniff. “But I am not, so I won’t.”

My words swerve his gilded stare to me.

One heartbeat, two, then he smiles small. “Thank me for what?”

In answer, I just arch a brow, then turn my back on him. Before I walk through the archway, I spare a glance over my shoulder at him.

His thumb has returned to his palm. Absentmindedly, he runs his touch over the sketched sun. His thoughts seem to have drifted away from him again, back to thoughts that turn his mouth down with a frown.

He watches the window again.

He forgets Tris.

And I leave.

By the time I finish exploring the first few levels of Hemlock House and read the colours of the doors, as though it’ll help me learn their meaning, the Warmth is mostly gone.

I find my way back to the main floor, where double doors open to a sprawling dining hall. The ceiling is glittered with chandeliers and gold trims.

Breakfast has been and gone.

I made sure to hide myself in the washroom’s claw-footed tub for most of it, then spent some time wandering the aisles of the library I discovered. Mostly, I just studied the titles of the tomes on the shelves.

Now, as I wander through the open doors to the dining hall, Eamon is the only one still at the table. In front of him, his plate lies clear, except for the streaks of green relish and some breadcrumbs.

He waited for me.

Eamon looks up before my bare foot can even touch the polished, blackwood floor of the room. He watches me approach.

I don’t say anything as I take the seat beside him.

And neither does he.

Without a word, Eamon pours fresh springwater into the glass chalice in front of me. Then he lifts his hand in a gesture to a slave I don’t know the name of, one with long black hair braided down her back and whose nose is dented on the side like her crookedly set mouth.

She starts to clear the table.

Loosening a breath, I lean my temple on Eamon’s shoulder.

It’s not until the dishes are gone with the slave and table is wiped clean and glistening up at me that I finally break the comforting silence. “Where’s Aleana?”

Eamon snakes his arm around me, his fingers softly stroking my elbow. “With the healer, upstairs.”

I reach for the chalice. “Why?”

“Standard health assessment,” he says, and his lofty tone is enough to dig the frown deeper into my face. Light. Too light.

Hiding secrets from me.

I swirl the water around the chalice, watching it splash and wave like a wild sea. “Did she come to breakfast?”

His hand stops grazing my elbow. He sighs something gentle before he answers, “Very few did. It was only me, Rune and Samick.”

Daxeel…

Is he still resting?

Did he wake already to find me and my slip gone—and so he hides out from the glaring reality of my presence in his home? Does he avoid me for his own sake or to torment me?

Maybe it’s simpler than that.

Maybe he’s just busy with other matters.

I think of Dare’s indirect advice, because Daxeel will live his life outside of me, and so I should do the same.

“Will you stay with me today?” I ask.

Eamon’s shoulder tenses against my temple. A premonition of unkind news.

“I have matters in town.” That’s all he says.

“That’s why you waited here for me,” I whisper the realization with an edge of bitterness, then set down the untouched chalice. The springwater sways before stilling completely.

“I didn’t want to leave without seeing you first. Are you… alright? Did he harm you?”

I peel away from his shoulder and blink a weary look up at him, one that defies the amount of coffee I’ve already guzzled this phase, one that might look like I need to be back in bed too soon.

I shake my head. “Did you expect him to?”

His throat bobs as he cuts his gaze to the polished table. “I worry. Sometimes beyond what is rational.”

My smile is small, but true. “What is your business in Kithe?”

His gaze is glued to the table, as though the glisten of it is the most interesting ornament in the room. “There is a tavern,” he tells me. “Decrepit, practically in ruins. But it has a flat above it, and the rent is cheap.”

I stiffen in my chair.

Breath pinned to my chest, all I can do is stare at him.

He turns an apologetic look to me. “I am only viewing it.”

“For what purpose?” I whisper the words with a faint hiss. “To leave at the close of the Sacrament and come home?” One doesn’t view property if they are to leave in a month. I twist in the chair to face him. “Why would you need a flat above a tavern if you’re to come home, Eamon?”

The look he gives me is tight. “Home is…” He pauses to swallow, then loosens a curt sigh. “Home to you mightn’t be what home is to me.”

“What?” I hiss, lips curling to bare my teeth. I inch closer, like I’m about ready to chomp into him. “What are you saying?”

“If your nuptials to Taroh come to be… your home will be across Licht. When will I be able to see you, if ever?”

“You will move.” The answer comes too quickly from me. “You will move to be close to me.”

His mouth flattens into a thin line. “And what will my life be beyond that?”

I shrug, harsh. “What it is now.”

Eamon reaches for my hand. “I like Kithe, Nari. It all depends on the Sacrament, of what’s to come, of what occurs in your path, but I do wish to stay here.”

He takes my fingers into his grip, as though it will somehow enchant his words, make them easier for me to hear. It doesn’t.

I wrench my hand out of his grip and push up from the chair. It skids back with an awful screech.

“Nari.” He lifts a pleading look to me. “We cannot be sure Taroh will even allow our friendship once you are wed. How can I pin my future on uncertainties?”

I look down at him with a slack face but a gaze that burns. “And so you will abandon me, too.”

Eamon parts his lips around words that don’t come, because before he can utter a word, I turn my back on him and stalk out of the dining hall.

I make it up one level before the sobs wash over me.

Aleana might understand my tears, and so I look for her.

I search every level, every hall in Hemlock House, because I have no one else I can talk to. No one else within these walls cares to hear my woes.

Aleana will listen. Her patience won’t grate in the presence of my tears.

But this does not come to be. Instead, I learn that I am utterly selfish and a tad disgusting because, when I find her bedchamber, the door is ajar, and I peek through the gap—

A ghost of ashen skin and coarse hair, Aleana lies flat on the bed. So melted into it, she and the mattress seem to become one. Such a skinny, frail female, but there is something weighted about her as I inch closer to the crack in the doorway, something in the exhaustion that droops her lashes and glistens her brow with an early fever sweat.

She isn’t alone.

The healer leans over her; his spidery fingers spindle a white twig around her ear.

Aleana’s voice is a rasp. “How long?”

“A week, maybe two.” The healer’s answer is crisp, unfeeling. “The white powder is eating you from the inside out.”

“I’ve been more energised,” she breathes the words without any conviction. “Healthier.”

“Miss Aleana, I told you this would happen.” The healer sighs, as though heckled, and draws back, taking what I suspect to be a temperature twig with him. “All these tonics you pour down your throat, they feed you with bursts of vitality, but your body is weakened by power it cannot sustain.”

“I need…” Her breath chokes as she struggles to sit up against the sagging pillows. “I need time.”

The reality of it strikes me like a slap to the face.

She gives up and sinks into the mattress. “Just another month, that’s all I ask for.”

Another month…

The end of the Sacrament.

Morticia must be around the other side of the door, somewhere out of view, because I hear her voice like a snake slithering out of darkness, “And how long did you give her when she was born?”

The healer’s sharp face pinches. “Three years.”

Melantha steps into view, carrying a tray of phials and jars. The two largest phials are undeniably pure, unfiltered white powder.

Black powder is for cuts and broken bones. Wounds.

The white powder is used for a different sort of ailment, the sort of the soul or the mind or an eternal sickness that can’t be cured. Sickness.

Melantha sets the tray on the foot of the bed.

As she starts to scoop powder and pour milky substances into the mortar to grind a paste, perhaps a tonic, Morticia’s stern tone comes, “Three years to live, and yet here she is, nearing her third decade. So can your expertise be trusted, healer?”

“Sister,” Melantha’s tone sags with her shoulders and she turns to look at the wall beyond the door.

I don’t see Morticia, but I do recognize the dimness in Melantha’s bleak, black eyes. Sorrow.

“What?” Morticia snaps, and I hear a clatter, as though she’s smacked her hand down on a dresser, and some lotions and hairbrushes have toppled over. “A human doctor could do a better job—”

My face pales at the sharp insult.

The healer swerves his gaze across the room, yellow eyes flashing like canaries set alight. He draws back his hood to reveal a hairless head—and now I realise, he wears no eyebrows on his face, no lashes on his eyes.

I cringe at the sight of him, of his glaring rage, his unfiltered faeness.

But it’s Aleana who severs the spat when her wispy voice comes sheathed in breaths and whimpers, “I will slow down on the tonics. If I don’t take them every day, will that give me more time?”

The healer thins his lips and, slowly, drags his attention back to the wraith of a fae on the bed. “Yes. But how many days, I cannot estimate. My advice, stay in bed, prepare for passage, and say your goodbyes.”

No one flinches.

The healer drones the words like he’s said them before, Aleana just sighs something disappointed, and Melantha’s hands don’t falter as she prepares little phials of tonics.

I suspect she is only keeping her hands busy so she doesn’t break down.

My intrusion on this private moment is a storm dizzying my mind. I stagger back a step, a breath loosening from my lips, and choke on silence.

I’m to lose Aleana, too.

Aleana is to lose everything and everyone.

She’s to die soon.

I don’t know what I expected, or even what I hoped for. I simply thought she would… be here and stay.

I never considered that she was ruining her already ailing body with the tonics to keep up with us, to visit Comlar and to drink wines, maybe even to merely keep her eyes open.

Suddenly, whining about my terrible circumstances and Eamon’s abandonment of me doesn’t seem all that important. At least, it’s not a complaint I should be mentioning to Aleana.

Her concerns are greater than my own.

All Aleana wants is to make it to the end of the Sacrament, and I have no doubt that it’s to ensure her brothers survive before she can pass in peace.

I slink away from the door slowly, one step, another—and my spine connects with a solid, muscle-packed chest. The warmth of a steady breath disturbs my loose waves, and I know it’s Daxeel before I turn to face him.

His eyes smoulder in the dark, the low set of his lashes adding a silent warning to the look he pins me with.

Caught me eavesdropping, and he’s not pleased.

His jaw ticks—then he snatches me by the arm and hauls me to the staircase.

I suck in a sharp breath, my bare feet thudding on the carpet to match his rushed pace.

Daxeel’s grip doesn’t loosen, his mood doesn’t soften. He takes me all the way up to the seventh floor. Only then do his fingers loosen from around my forearm, before they slip away entirely.

He turns on me at the landing, then gestures with a slight lift of the chin. “This is the guest floor. Four bedchambers, three of them are taken. Each has their own modest washroom.”

The look he runs me over with is a blank one, one that carries no hint of how entangled we were just last Quiet, of his mouth hot on mine, his fingers inside of me. In that look, we might as well be mere strangers who pass on the street, never to meet.

I loathe the sickly ache it floods me with.

He turns his back on me and stalks down a narrow corridor that lines the descending staircase.

I follow.

“Your belongings are in the bedchamber assigned to you.” He pauses at a plain wooden door with an unpolished brass knob. “I won’t be around often.”

My heart tugs a little that I’m being banished to an upper floor, to my own bedchamber, and not to be welcomed permanently into his.

It irks me some that he wants his space from me, even if it’s to maintain some semblance of control over himself.

His hand lifts and, slowly, as though laced with warning, his fingers clutch my chin. He forces my head to tilt back and moves in closer. The tips of our noses graze.

For a long moment, he considers me.

Threads of shadows flick along his arm to wind around his hand, to reach me. They caress my chin where he holds it.

The contrast trembles my lip.

Then, “Do not leave Hemlock House under any circumstance—unless I expressly permit it.”

The command jolts through me.

And the second it does, his hand slips from my jaw.

Daxeel leaves without another word, not a backwards glance, not even a lingering touch.

I decide, as I watch him go, I hate him enough that I want to push him down the stairs.