“I’m afraid I have a horribly selfish thing to ask of you.”

Nox is still holding me, but I can hardly feel him anymore. Not since our lack of movement has made my entire body go numb.

I want to cower away, pretend I can’t hear him, but Nox will be gone soon, and I can’t bear not to give him anything he wants.

“Anything,” I whisper.

I can feel Nox’s throat bulge against my forehead as he swallows. “You can say no, Blaise. I won’t command you.”

My heart sinks, because I know whatever he asks of me is going to rip me to shreds, and I know just as surely that I won’t be able to refuse him.

“Try me,” I whisper into his coat.

“First, if you could look after Zora. She’s been released from her curse, but she’s yet to wake. I don’t know how long she’ll sleep, but if you could watch over her…”

“Of course. With my life.” It’s an easy answer, because I would have done it anyway, even if he never asked. “Something tells me that’s not all you want to ask.”

“I want you to kill me.”

I jolt away from him, clutching my chest like my ribs have splayed open and I’m trying to catch my heart before it falls out.

Nox’s arms hang limp by his side, and his brow knits together. “Him, I guess. Farin. I want you to kill him for me. The idea of him using my body for whatever he wishes—” He runs his fingers through his air, blowing out a foggy breath. “I don’t mean that you have to do it yourself. I’d never ask that of you. But if you ever mend your relationship with the Prince of Dwellen, if you’re ever in the position where you can influence someone to do it… Fates, I feel awful even asking this of you.”

Shock strikes at my chest, though I’m not sure why. Hadn’t I asked him the same thing, commanded him without realizing it, to snap my neck if the parasite ever got control of my body permanently?

But just because I can understand, doesn’t mean I can do it. Doesn’t mean I’m brave enough. My mind goes spinning down a thousand paths, grasping for something, anything, other than resigning Nox to this fate.

Resigning myself to this fate.

“Lazarus’s Comet.” I’m pacing now, my nimble feet making no trail in the snow. “We’ve theorized about it before. It would be strong enough to free you, wouldn’t it?”

Nox tucks his hands into his pockets and watches me pace. “That’s a century away.”

I open my mouth, wanting to beg him, wishing to say, Can’t I be enough? Can’t I be the type of girl you’d wait a century for? My chest stings, and though I understand, I don’t…

“Blaise, if it were only me I had to consider, I’d wait millennia to come back to you. You know that, don’t you? Surely you know that.” I’m not breathing, not really. “But we don’t know how long you’ll live. You might be cursed with vampirism, but we have no evidence of what vampirism does to humans. Whether it will extend your lifespan to match the fae’s. Without that evidence, we can’t know whether you’ll be here when Lazarus comes around again.”

“Then I’ll just find someone who knows,” I say. “I can’t be the only human with vampirism out there.”

“The parasite was ancient, and she’d only ever met one vampire in the flesh until me,” Nox counters. “I don’t believe our kind is easy to find.”

“She didn’t exactly have much motivation to go looking though, did she?”

Nox sighs, his shoulders slumping again, this time with resignation. “Blaise, I love you. You know that I love you. But you’ve spent your entire life waiting. Waiting for the Prince of Dwellen to realize he’s in love with you. Waiting for that awful stepmother of yours to lead you to your child. You’ve spent your life living in a world you’ve made up in your head.”

The lump in my throat burns. “Nox, please.”

His blue eyes glisten in the moonlight bouncing off the snow beneath our feet. “I can’t stand to think of you spending the next hundred years living out a fantasy with me, forgetting to live the life in front of you. I can’t bear it, Blaise. Let’s not forget there’s a chance that the Lazarus Comet doesn’t work. All while Farin is wreaking havoc, using my body to do it. I know what the inside of his mind feels like, Blaise. I feel him when he takes over, and there’s nothing but darkness and a thirst for suffering that poisons his mind. If you allow him to live, the danger he’ll pose to the world…”

“Don’t put that on me,” I almost hiss, and regret it immediately.

Nox’s expression saddens, and it makes my heart ache to know that I caused him pain.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…” I shake my head, because of all the people who walk this earth, I do understand. “I’ll do it myself,” I promise, and though guilt twists Nox’s beautiful features, he can’t hide the way his shoulders slump in relief.

It aches. To see the weight lift off his shoulders at the idea of his death. At the idea of a world where there is no more Nox.

But then Nox is kissing me, and I’m melting into him. And for a moment, I pretend.

I pretend this will last forever.

I pretend until the feel of Nox’s lips on mine, the press of his torso against mine, fade into nothingness.

I pretend until Nox is gone, and there’s nothing but hollowness left in my chest.

CHAPTER 57

BLAISE

It’s not as simple sneaking into Mystral castle as it was sneaking out of Othian castle, but then again, I would have felt guilty about killing any of the guards at Othian.

I have no qualms about cleanly snapping the necks of the males and females who followed the queen’s orders to keep a child who wasn’t hers locked up in this castle, the guards who brought him back to his kidnapper after he attempted escape.

Three kills are necessary to enter the palace, but one I kill for spite.

My footsteps are silent upon the stone floor as I race through the halls under the cover of night. I check Nox’s room first, praying to any deity who might listen to a creature of the night that I’ll open the door and find him poring over grimoires at his desk.

I open the door, but Nox is not there.

His room is not empty, though. It’s only been hours since he disappeared in my arms, and his room is already full of stuff. Trinkets and decorations and shrunken skulls and jars of scuttling critters.

Vomit threatens to pass over my tongue, but I hold it in.

In the corner stands a dark figure. When he turns to face me, my chest caves in.

“Blaise,” he says, and when my name falls from Nox’s lips, when the shape of it forms in the timbre of his familiar voice, I can almost, almost pretend it’s him.

My heart flutters, though its wings are soon clipped when the glistening lights fall over Nox’s face, across the smirk that is cruel and devious and not at all belonging to the man I love.

He’s as beautiful as ever, perhaps more so, strictly by shallow standards. He stands tall and confident, like he owns the ground upon which he walks.

It suits him, in a cruel sort of way.

I can’t help but notice that there are no shadows left underneath his eyes, that the dark bruised spots have been wiped clean.

That he’s been feeding.

I think of the wails rising in plumes over the village in the story Asha told, and my stomach turns over.