Still, she’d looked like she’d picked a fight and come out on top.

I’m still not sure how she managed that.

But I find myself glad that she did.

I watch her eyes dart behind her lids, reminded of how I used to try not to admire her as I worked on extracting the parasite while she slept.

But then her eyelids flutter, her chestnut eyes settling on mine. “Is this the part where you go back to watching me sleep? It’s creepy, you know.”

I laugh, though it’s the boyish type that makes me feel as if I’m twelve years old again. Or at least the type of twelve-year-old who is granted a normal life, free of being ripped from his family.

“Or is this the part where I get to convince myself I’m dreaming?”

Her words send me back to a night not so long ago, back when she was human. Her lips feeling the blood at my wrist, drinking from me just as I sipped from her.

Desire sparks at the memory, but I have to push it away. Because it wasn’t Blaise I shared that moment with. It was the parasite.

But it was Blaise, in a way. Her body, at least. That part I don’t think either of us can deny, not when I heard her call to me just a few nights ago.

When the Old Magic cursed me, I assumed he’d shattered that bond, but then I’d felt a tug toward the Rip, the slightest prick of a goodbye, as if whispered from Blaise’s lips themselves.

It’s almost as if that bond has been there the entire time, but the Old Magic’s curse clogged the vein that’s supposed to deliver the blood flow to it.

Love. That’s what I thought he took away.

But now that I’m here with Blaise, love seems too generic a word.

Because what does it mean to love someone, and why do we use the same word for the objects of our infatuation that we do our parents, our siblings, our friends, when those feelings are all so very different?

In fact, I’m not sure love is something the Old Magic has authority over.

Because as I study Blaise, it’s true—I’m no longer infatuated with her. I don’t look at her and see perfection. I’m no longer blinded to her shortcomings by intense, all-consuming lust.

I see a girl who has been so incredibly hurt that she hurts others. And I no longer see that behavior as excusable.

I see a woman who bends her morals for a taste of love—or what I thought love was only a day ago.

I see Blaise, and I find what I’ve always needed—a friend.

A friend I’m not sure I want to ever let go of.

A friend I’d want to be next to, regardless of whether my feelings crest in torrential waves or settle like an undisturbed pond in the center of a peaceful forest.

No, I don’t think love is what the Old Magic took away at all.

I don’t think he could have taken away something that wasn’t wholly there yet, something that had yet to take form.

Because I don’t think I knew what it was to love Blaise before. Clearly I didn’t, if I felt my lack of feelings was as good an excuse as any to leave her.

As I watch Blaise, take in her beauty, it’s the appreciation for how she’s cared for me, the understanding between us, from which blooms something else.

The very something I thought was gone for good.

As it turns out, it seems the Old Magic took away the feelings themselves.

I just needed to find the source.

Another vein that bypassed the one the Old Magic had clogged.

“And what would you do if you convinced yourself?” I ask, surprised at the headiness in my voice.

It’s because you’re alone in a bunker with a female, and because you’re sorely undersocalized, I remind myself.

Blaise props herself on her forearm, allowing her black hair to slip down to the floor and pool there. The dark shadows of the paldihv curl around her, and I can’t deny the allure of it all, the way my throat tightens and my muscles tense just looking at her.

Her gaze dips down to my wrist, where she once—no, the parasite once—sipped, sealing the bloodsharing ritual between us.

Blaise wasn’t there for it, of course, trapped in the corners of her own mind, though I wasn’t aware of that at the time.

My neck heats with the memory of it though, the intimacy of it, before the parasite sullied it with the realization that I’d shared something so personal with a monster.

No, that wasn’t what had upset me so.

It was that I hadn’t shared it with Blaise.

Something stirs in me, and it’s different from the protectiveness that surged in me when I found Blaise passed out in the sand, just moments away from burning.

Her gaze is still fixed upon my wrist, and I know exactly what she’s thinking, because I’m thinking it too.

I can still remember last time, and I find I hate that she doesn’t. That she doesn’t know how good it felt, the bliss of sharing that moment.

I find I want to teach her, want her to know…

I inch closer to her, pulling her into me and offering her my wrist. She traces patterns across my veins with her fingertips, lighting me on fire as she does it.

Like she’s claiming me.

I’m not exactly sure what the Old Magic did to me in taking my feelings for Blaise away. I have no idea what the parameters are.

But something within me feels as if it’s going to snap.

She must sense it too, because her thumb lingers over the veins in my wrist, her lips slightly parted as she stares at the faint pulse.

It’s then I realize she’s holding her breath.

“Are you sure you want this?” I whisper, but Blaise’s eyes are muddled over with something stronger than just desire. She slips her palm over my mouth, begging me with her eyes not to say anything.

I know then what she’s thinking. Can see the agony I’ve caused her by abandoning her. By choosing revenge over saving her.