“But it was never enough. And I suppose the monster in him was always going to come out. I remember asking my mother about it once. Whether my father was always a monster. She said no, but that my grandfather had been one, and had trained it into my father. I remember asking her if I would grow up to be a monster, too.” An exasperated laugh escapes his lips.

“And what did she say?”

A wry smile twists his lips. It’s when he looks like this that it feels as if shards of glass are scraping against my chest. “She said no. Said that my heart was too tender. That I was stronger than my father.”

Gooseflesh prickles my spine.

“I think she meant to get me away from him when she discovered we could escape to another world through the Rip. But then I was attacked by a wolf, my leg injured. She didn’t know I would heal quickly, so she raced off to grab her healing supplies from our world, the Nether. My father caught her during the process. Made her lead him back to me. Imagine her terror when she found me running around on the leg that was supposed to be ruined. She’d led my father into our haven all for nothing. I didn’t see her for a long time after that. By the time we met again…well, I’d say she’d changed, but I’d changed too. The monster had already been passed down.”

“What kind of monster?” I can’t help but ask.

Farin flicks his gaze up at me. “Why do you want to know?”

I take a step closer, feigning bravery, though I fiddle my fingers together behind my back. “Why don’t you want to tell me?”

“Because,” he says, “I’m getting used to someone looking at me like I’m not the villain. Maybe I like pretending.”

My cheeks heat, something about the word pretending feeling more intimate than it should.

“Why do you want to know?” he presses again.

“Just call me curious,” I say, though my breath falters a bit. Why do I want to know? So I can size up my enemy, surely. “Maybe I’d like to remind myself that you are the villain.”

Something flashes across his face, but it’s too quick for me to catch in the flickering firelight.

“And why would you need to do that?”

He’s close now, and I don’t know when or how it happened, at what point during our conversation he shifted toward me, lessening the space between us.

“I’ve already told you. I’m a rather forgetful person.”

A grin snakes his lips, and they dip down to mine, ever so slightly. “Maybe I like that about you, Wanderer. Maybe I find it refreshing.”

Maybe he likes that about me, but he’ll always like Blaise more.

No—that’s ridiculous. That should not be my number one reason to protect my heart from Farin.

I clear my throat. “Never mind,” I say. “I’m sure it’s a boring story, anyway.”

Farin narrows his eyes in suspicion, but he creates space between us, regardless.

That’s good, because I’m not sure what I might have done had he lingered close any longer.

CHAPTER 81

NOX

I hesitate at a familiar oak door, my fist brushing against the gnarled planks as I will up the courage to knock.

A set of carvings marks the door frame. Each for marking the height of a twin.

There’s a slash above the shorter ones, where Zora got jealous that I was outgrowing her and pulled a stool out to the doorframe to carve her own slash when no one was paying attention to her.

My chest constricts when I see it, and in my mind, I hear another slash, the carving of a knife against her flesh.

My throat aches, a knot forming in it, and I don’t know if I can bear it, showing up here at my parents’ when I couldn’t save her. When I didn’t save her.

I didn’t save either of them in the end.

A shadow flickers across the fogged windows. Before I can make the decision to run, the door creaks open.

“We’re clo—Nox.”

My father’s voice trembles on my name, wiping away any question I had of whether he would recognize me. Before I can respond, he’s practically ripped the door off its hinges, wrapping his arms around me, his strong, calloused hands grasping at the nape of my neck.

“My son. Oh, my son…”

Panic stirs through me, but it’s an old reaction. Though I’m still cursed with vampirism in this body, my connection with Farin has been severed, so while the cravings for blood haven’t vanished completely, they’re considerably more manageable. Especially since I fed on the way.

Still, I try not to breathe too deeply as my father weeps on my shoulder.

It’s a more anxiety-inducing encounter than I imagined. Mostly because I keep waiting for my father to ask about Zora, but he doesn’t. I recognize soon that he’s also waiting for me to ask about my mother, and my stomach plummets.

Dead. My mother is dead. She must be.

But then my father pulls away, wiping his tears from his crystal-blue eyes, and I finally get a good look at him.

He’s fae, meaning he’s hardly aged since I last saw him, though I suppose the same can’t be said for me, since I was only a child when I was taken.

His midnight hair has grown out, and he looks less like the clean, orderly father I remember and more like a male struggling to survive alone in the wilderness.

“Your sister?” he finally asks.

I swallow, then shake my head slowly, unable to face the lingering hope in his gaze.

“Ah.” It seems that’s all he’s able to choke out for a moment as he presses his fist to his lips and squeezes his eyes shut.

It’s all my fault, I should add. I didn’t save her, I should admit, but I don’t. Can’t.

“Well, we’ll have to be gentle with how we tell your mother,” he finally says, straightening his back, though his shoulders still droop with weariness. “She’s…. Well, I suppose you’ll see soon enough.”

The brief relief that swarmed my chest at the news my mother still lives is replaced by an innate dread, but I’ve no time to ask what he means as he leads me to the back room.

I try not to, but I can’t help but note the mess that’s accumulated after all these years.

My parents were always the cluttered sort, mostly because they were always trading wares with the passersby that frequented the Serpentine right off of my parents’ property.

This is not clutter.