He opens his mouth, but I’m ready for it. I’ve spent every night of the harrowing journey back to Mystral preparing for the moment I run face to face into Nox who is not Nox.

“You’re not to command me,” we say at the same time.

“So that confirms it,” I say. “I suppose your mommy told you about the little bloodsharing ritual her parasite forced me into.”

I expect my words to rile Farin, but he only takes a step toward me and whispers, “You came back.” It comes out in a breathless huff, his breath fogging in the chilled air, and it sounds so much like him, those three little words take turns stabbing at my chest.

“Not fast enough,” I say, shifting my weight onto the balls of my feet, feeling the slickness of the stone floor against the soles of my boots.

Nox, who is not Nox, cranes his head, examining with those snow-pale eyes of his. “So it seems,” he murmurs, tucking his hands into the pockets of his black pants.

I can’t stand it, can’t survive being raked over with those beautiful eyes, the mingled butterflies and nausea that course through me when his gaze brushes my every curve.

My mind knows that the male standing before me is not the male I love, but my body can’t tell the difference. It doesn’t know any better than to beg my mind for permission to throw myself into the embrace I know I can never feel again, even though he’s there, standing right in front of me.

“Where’s your mother? Off using the latrine somewhere?” I ask. “Though I’m shocked she even lets you out of her sight for that long.”

I expect my words to strike, to extract the Farin in Nox’s face. For a sneer to warp Nox’s features so that perhaps I can look at him without my chest turning to ice, but he simply watches me, unruffled.

“My mother and I had a bit of a falling out,” he says.

I can’t help the exasperated huff that escapes my lips. “After all the trouble she went through to free you, and you had the audacity to fight her.” A cruel, satisfied grin tugs at the edges of my mouth. Is that who I’ve been reduced to, someone who revels in the pain of another?

But the queen ruined Nox’s life, then she took him away from me, so perhaps I’ve earned the right to relish her pain like warm blood from the artery.

“I didn’t ask her to bind me to this body,” he says simply, as if he had requested a pecan tart and was offered a lemon scone in its stead. “We quarreled over it, so my mother has returned to what she does best, dallying in the business of others. Fancying herself a Fates-ordained protector of this realm. I imagine she’s on her way to Avelea now, tracking down that Red she’s been obsessing over.”

A shiver snakes my spine, but I don’t want to discuss Abra at the moment.

I don’t ever wish to discuss her again.

“Nox asked you to come here to kill me, didn’t he?” Farin says, and the stillness in his posture has me tensing in preparation.

Still, he doesn’t move. Doesn’t try to close the space between us.

I’m more than happy to keep that distance, because as soon as he draws near, I’ll have to kill Farin, and Nox with him.

And then I will shrivel.

So I do what I do best, and I pretend I’m not drowning. “Why?” I ask, and my voice is so convincingly unfaltering. “Think you can mock me out of doing it?”

Farin shakes his head, causing a strand of dark hair to fall into his forehead. “No. I simply think it’s a cruel thing to ask of the one you love.”

Anger slices through my veins, causing my fingers to fist, and Farin must notice, because he shakes his head as if he’s been misunderstood. “I don’t mean to taunt you.”

“I can’t say I really care what you mean or don’t mean to do.” I find myself pacing across the stone floor, zigzagging like a predator who’s been lucky enough to find their prey sleeping.

A faint grimace curls Farin’s lips, and something close to hurt flashes in his eyes, though I decide it must be a trick of the light.

Or perhaps the reaction of a spoiled child who isn’t used to hearing anything other than profuse praise.

“Could you do it?” he asks, genuine curiosity underlying his question. “Could you kill the male you love, simply because he asked it of you?”

I don’t hesitate when I say, “I’d do anything for him.”

Farin cocks his head to the side, and this version of him is so utterly different than the one I met the night of Gunter’s death, it’s difficult to breathe. Difficult to remind my poor, shredded heart that this is not Nox. Not Nox. Not Nox.

“And is that what love is? Losing your sense of self in that of another?”

I say nothing, though my breath grows ragged, the pounding of my heart echoing off the stone walls.

Farin traces the tip of his boot against divots in the stone floor. “That’s certainly what it feels like to me.”

My heart stops. “What do you mean?”

Farin begins to pace, and now we’re circling one another, two lions ready to spar.

“The bloodsharing ritual the parasite orchestrated was unnatural. It isn’t meant for a creature of the night to share with a creature of the day. The cravings Nox felt for you after it occurred… Well, I suppose you can guess at the intensity based off how I behaved when I was allowed a foothold into Nox’s mind. When the bloodlust turned the reins over to me. Never have I wanted anything as much as I wanted you.”

The hairs on my arms stand up, and I don’t know what to make of it, but I can’t help myself. I can’t help the way my weight shifts onto the balls of my feet, leaning ever so slightly toward him. Can’t help the way my ears twitch, hanging onto Farin’s every word.

Because Farin was a part of Nox, and with each bit of himself that he reveals, I learn a bit more about the male I love, and it’s like droplets of wine to a drunkard. Blood to a vampire.

So when Farin speaks, I listen.

“He was fond of you before, and I imagine he would have fallen in love with you anyway. Don’t allow what I’m about to say cause you to doubt the validity of his affections for you. But again, the bloodsharing ritual was never meant to be shared with a human. The desire for you was so overwhelming… Blaise, it was like a hunger that gnaws through one’s bones, and by the time I was released, it had to be satisfied.

“But then you changed. You died and were Turned, and the bloodsharing ritual set in as it was meant to. A bonding of chosen mates, one as binding as a fae bargain. From what I understand, it seems the bloodsharing ritual often proves stronger for the male. It’s a testament to our Nox’s character that he gave you the space he did once it set in.

“Nox was on fire for you. More intense than any bloodlust he’d ever experienced.”

Nox was on fire for you.

They’re the kind of words I could suffocate on.

“And then I left,” I whisper.

Farin frowns. “And then you left, and it was like being rent in two.”

I notice that he didn’t say “and it was like Nox was being rent in two.”

The unease in my belly begins to sour. “Why did you and Abra have a falling out?”

Farin’s eyes glisten. “Changing the subject, are we?”

“I don’t think I am.”

Farin stops pacing and traces a circle on the ground with his foot. “Ah.” There’s almost shame in his posture, in the way his shoulders slump with his hands tucked into his pockets, the way he refuses to look at me.