The tavern owner Bezzie whistles to herself as she locks, actually locks, Nox and me in the cellar bedroom together.

I stare around at the space, which is rather tidier than I might have expected from someone as eccentric as Bezzie.

There’s no vanity, though I’m not surprised. Bezzie appears to be in her seventies and not what most would classify a looker. Nor does she seem like she puts much stock in her appearance.

The rest of the room is neatly arranged with a handful of books and crafting materials.

And then there’s the bed.

It’s clearly the type meant to sleep only one, though my heart gives a lurch at the thought. Because this is Meranthi, and it’s likely beds like this sleep multiples all throughout the city. If a family is fortunate enough to have a raised bed like this one rather than simple cots.

“You take it.” Nox gestures toward the bed. He’s returned to being rather distant since this morning in the bunker.

My cheeks heat as I remember the taste of his blood against my lips.

What a mess.

“Where are you intending to sleep, then?” I ask.

He nods toward the floor, where he’s already rolling out a simple quilt.

Knobs from the uneven cellar floor poke out through the holes in the quilt.

I open my mouth to offer the bed to him. It would be the considerate thing to do. To share. But my chest is already halfway to cracking in two, and I know if Nox and I share this bed tonight, it’ll be like striking a wedge into the crack, refusing to let it close.

It might already be too late.

So I mutter something that I hope sounds like gratitude and slip into Bezzie’s bed.

I settle in and try to close my eyes and nod off, but everything about me is on edge.

My hunger especially.

“Is it just me, or does Bezzie smell delicious?” Nox asks out from the darkness.

“Ugh. I can smell her even with three doors and a floor separating us,” I laugh back, though somewhat nervously.

“I mean, it’s like…”

“The flavor of a good spice without the heat?” I ask.

He rolls his head to the side, his arms up above his shoulders, elbows splayed out from where he’s clasped his fingers behind his head to support it. “Finishing my sentences now, are we?”

There’s a gentle caress to his voice, a confidence I haven’t heard since we played one of our many games back in Mystral, the feel of his hands against my waist as he picked me up and set me on the dais.

Playing.

That’s all this is.

Playing, because that’s a good option to distract ourselves from the fact that both of us are likely going to die tomorrow.

“Ugh. Is that what happens when people partake in the bloodsharing ritual? Because if I’d have known that, I definitely wouldn’t have done it.”

Nox rolls over, propping his head on his hand as he stares up at me. “It was a horribly stupid thing we did, wasn’t it? Totally not enjoyable at all.”

My face goes hot with the memory of his teeth pressed to my wrist, the way his eyes shone with delight as he gazed up at me.

It was stupid of us.

Very, very stupid.

“Repulsive is a better word, actually,” I say, unable to stop myself from drinking in Nox’s grin.

“Repulsive, huh?” he says, as if playing over the word on his tongue. “Well, if that’s the word you’d use to describe it, then Blaise, I’m afraid you’re looking utterly repulsive tonight.”

My heart hammers, but I can’t bear to look away from him, especially as his voice dips low. “Seeing you in bed like that, in that nightgown…”

Teasing shades the edge of his voice, and I stare down at the nightgown Bezzie’s letting me borrow. It looks exactly like what you would expect from a seventy-year-old woman’s least favorite nightgown.

“Disgusting, I’m sure,” I say, trying and probably failing to maintain the lightness in my tone.

I find I can’t breathe, not when he’s looking at me like he’s a drunk and I’m the bottle of liquor he swore he’d stay away from. But even that isn’t right, because I’m the one who should stay away from him. The male cursed never to love me.

But I can tell he wants me.

And my stupid, stupid heart whispers to me that maybe that’s enough.

Because this might be our last night to live, and though a relationship where Nox will never love me would rot me to the core over years… Well, desire burns fast, but if we won’t be here in the morning, I’m not sure that’s a problem.

“You look uncomfortable down there,” I say.

Nox’s eyes glint with mischief, and he scoots backward on his pitiful excuse for a cot, patting the floor in front of him as if to beckon me.

I can’t help the laugh that escapes my lips. “I don’t think that’s going to work.”

Nox shrugs. “I’m rather flexible. Willing to make anything work at this point.”

“I think you’re just trying to get me down there so you can steal the bed.”

“I assure you I have more creative intentions than that.”

My heart patters against my chest, and I feel as though I can’t breathe as long as there’s this gaping space between the two of us.

It physically hurts being away from him.

And now he’s asking me to come down there with him.

So I do. I slip my bare feet onto the floorboards and teeter over to Nox, slipping onto the pallet with him. I drag the blanket from the bed over with me, settling it over the both of us as I lie next to him and tuck my back into his chest.