Lydia and Elias joined us two days ago, bringing news that the body of Queen Abra had been found separated from her head in an abandoned warehouse on the border of Avelea and Dwellen.

There was no word regarding what happened, or the whereabouts of Piper or the parasite, who we assume escaped at the moment of Abra’s death.

Dinah looks at me first, holding a metallic lamp in her hands. “I think I can get into the palace in the early morning. Tonight maybe, even,” she says. “There’s a statue of Tionis in the graveyard quarter I doubt Az knows about. According to the guard schedule I snuck from one of their pockets, there are two gaps. The first, I’m pretty sure only I could get through. The guards on duty at that time aren’t sympathetic to our cause, but they are new. There’s a low risk they’ll recognize me if I sneak in dressed as a servant. If we want to go as a group, though, we’ll have to wait until just before sunrise, when there’s a gap in coverage.”

Relief lingers on the edges of my mind. It’s something. Not enough to banish the anxiety threatening to rip my chest cavity in two. But it’s something.

Just a few more hours, and hopefully I’ll have heard from Asha.

Assuming Dinah doesn’t get caught.

“But Kiran,” Dinah says. “There’s something else.”

Fin and I exchange a worried look.

Dinah sighs. “We have visitors.” She beckons to the hole in the ceiling, and two figures descend the ladder, both with too much ease to be natural.

My fingers flex into fists as the first figure lowers her hood, and none other than Blaise stares back at me.

“You.”

It’s as good of an accusation as I can come up with as heat boils in my head, threatening to burst the capillaries lining my skull.

I’ve always blamed my anger on my Flame and Rajeen. But now that my Flame is gone and I’ve discovered my true heritage, I know better.

It’s just me.

It’s always been me.

Blaise opens her mouth to say something, but I get to her first.

I’m not really sure how it happens, how I outpace her and her companion. I suppose it’s just the rage rolling through me.

But I blink, and then I’m pinning Blaise to the wall by her throat.

The instinct for survival flashes in her eyes. Fangs jolt from her gums, but as fast as she is with her vampirism, she’s not fast enough.

Not when my skin has a grip on hers.

There’s something about being bereaved of my Flame that feels unjust when it comes to destroying the female who betrayed Asha, who left my wife drained of blood on a battlefield, handed her over to the male who threatens her with his body nightly.

I should be able to make her burn.

But then again, burning is only a single feeling, an isolated sensation.

There’s so much more I can do with the magic that remains. The magic my father didn’t know to take.

Blaise’s fangs flash, but I’m faster, as I unleash every bit of fear I’ve ever experienced from my fingertips, allowing it to seep into Blaise’s flesh.

Her already pale face drains of its last flecks of color, her brown eyes bulging wide as I unleash dread upon her.

Her companion bellows in anger, but I can’t make out his words, not with the rage buzzing in my mind. All I hear is the muffled sound of a scuffle as Fin and Lydia hold him back.

There’s a flare of light behind us—Lydia’s fire, I suppose, but it’s hardly anchoring me to the present.

Not when all my attention is on Blaise.

It’s the fear of Rajeen that I release on her first. The dread of a child at the hands of his angry father’s drunken whippings. The trepidation of his father catching him in the act of weeping. The boiling tears that mar his face.

I give it to Blaise, who whimpers, her compact frame shaking underneath me.

Next, I give her the fear of when my mother took the blame for the time I broke the banister in a fit of anger, and my father made me watch as he beat her.

Tears stream from Blaise’s eyes, but they’re not boiling her skin, as they did mine, so I decide that’s not enough.

I give her the fear of losing my relationship with Fin, the night Ophelia tried to seduce me, and when that isn’t enough, the fear I felt as I watched Calias unleash waves upon Asha and Fin, drowning the two people I cared most for in the world. And even though there’s a faint awareness in the back of my mind that I’m at fault, I give her Tavi, force Blaise to share in the guilt of that innocent female’s death, the feel of her warm blood sticking to our fingertips.

Blaise’s lips murmur something that looks like it might be a plea, but the noise in my ears is swallowing me now, drowning everything out.

So then I give her the moment the palace doors opened, and out walked Asha in a wedding gown and that dreadful mask.

“No.” Blaise cries out this time, and it’s my own anguish I hear as she weeps for Asha, weeps for my wife.

Every moment I’ve laid awake, my mind racing with the possibilities of what Az might be doing to her, I funnel into Blaise. Every wicked imagining that haunts my waking moments, every sick machination that twists my dreams into nightmares.

Blaise’s eyes go wide. The weeping stops, and for a moment she seems paralyzed.

And it’s wrong and awful, but I want her to ache. I want her to ache like I ache, but more than that, like Asha aches. I want her to feel exactly what she’s done to my wife, what she’s caused.

I want her to know…

But then, somewhere in the back of the room, I hear a voice, one that’s unfamiliar to me. The male who accompanied Blaise begs, “Please. Please, stop. You don’t know what you’re doing to her. Please.”

It’s then that I look down at Blaise, at the way she’s gone completely still under my touch. The way she isn’t fighting back.

The way she’s not in the room with us anymore.

And then something else flashes before my eyes.

The girl, broken in front of her stepmother’s corpse, the news of a lost baby dampening her soul.

I realize with horror that anything I might fear has happened to Asha has already happened to Blaise.

I don’t think it makes me hate her any less. Perhaps it makes me hate her more, for putting Asha in a vulnerable position when she should have wanted to protect her.

“Please, just let her go,” says her companion. “Do whatever you want to me instead. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Justice? You want to make her feel what she did to you? So torture me instead. Make her watch. Just please stop.”

Blaise’s eyes roll back in her head, and she begins to shake.