“You should get away from me,” I whisper, hating the words even as they slip from my lips. I don’t want him to get away; not at all. But he’s already so close I can feel the edges of his body heat, and I know if he comes any closer, he’ll smell me, and then he won’t want to come close again.

Derek cocks his head to the side. “Why would I want to do that?” His mouth curves into a playful grin that has my heart skipping.

A lump rises in my throat. There’s no way I can make myself tell him, not without shriveling up and dying.

But then his nose twitches, and I die a little anyway.

“I’ve been trying for hours, but I can’t get the smell to go away.” My words are rushed, and I fumble for better ones, words that will explain why I’m not a filthy, disgusting child.

But Derek’s smile is warm. He drops the lock of my hair and leans in, and for a moment I’m terrified because I think he might kiss me, but then he reaches behind me and produces a pair of kitchen scissors. “I think I can solve that for you.”

My breath freezes in my chest. Never in my life have I been allowed to trim my hair more than an inch at most.

“You’ll be in trouble with Clarissa if she finds out,” I warn him.

His voice drops to a hush. “Then it’ll be our little secret.”

Unease grips my chest, but the stench is shoving its way down my throat again, threatening to suffocate me.

And Derek is right. I do want it gone.

“Okay,” I whisper.

I let out a lone whimper when the scissors crunch through my wet hair.

A single lock falls to the floor.

It’s not long before there’s a pile of wet, black locks tickling my bare ankles.

“There,” Derek says, running his fingers through my cropped hair when he’s done, tousling it. I can’t breathe. “I like your hair better this way.”

I don’t know what my hair looks like, but as far as I’m concerned, it could look like rats had made a nest in it as long as Derek’s blue eyes sparkle like that when he looks at me.

“You like it?” I ask, my chest constricting.

“I like you.”

My gut twists, terror and elation wrestling with my insides.

I’m not sure why, but the way Derek’s fingers are roaming through my hair, down my neck and toward my waist, seems like something we’d both get in trouble for if Clarissa caught us.

But his fingertips leave a trail of fire where they touch, and after today, I’m not sure there’s anything else Clarissa can do to me.

That’s probably why, when Derek picks me up and carries me into the pantry, pressing his warm lips against my neck, I don’t think to tell him no.

CHAPTER 4

BLAISE

It’s not uncommon for me to dream of Derek, of the man who stole my childhood.

But it’s not like the dreams to stick so close to the truth. They usually like to stray, to warp Derek’s face into that of a monster. Sometimes he presses a knife to my throat.

In the dreams, I almost always scream.

I almost always fight back.

To dream of what actually happened, to feel the dread creeping into my belly as he undressed me, to remember biting back the whimpers, too desperate for his affection to tell him he was hurting me…

The truth is so much worse than the nightmares.

It’s the kind of feeling I would normally douse by making my way to Evander’s rooms, lounging in his chaise and teasing him incessantly, living for his unwavering attention.

The last time I dreamed of Derek was the night I fell asleep at the library. I’d been dreaming of Derek when I woke to Evander standing over me and the pile of books.

He’d swept me into his arms that night and carried me to bed. I could have melted into his chest, could have clung to that moment forever, but the feel of his warm embrace is beginning to fade around the edges, as it should.

He’s Ellie’s husband now, and I have no right to cling to the phantom of his touch like I do.

It’s a cruel sort of torture, being hopelessly in love with someone for the way their touch never wanders. For the way they carry you to bed and never think to join you in it.

I blame the male in the dank corner of this wretched dungeon for forcing me to relive that moment in clandestine clarity.

“What did you do to me?” I ask Farin.

The question strikes me as it forms at my cracked lips. It takes the form of a whisper in my ear, the hint of a memory that didn’t actually occur, but should have.

A question I should have asked Derek, but was too young to know to ask.

I don’t expect the fae male to answer. Perhaps that’s why I flinch when he does.

“Wraithseeker. It possesses a host of magical properties, but in this case, I was using it to locate the source of magic that dwells within your body.”

He doesn’t turn around, and all I can see of him in the dim lantern light is a tall dark silhouette, pouring an assortment of vials with pungent liquid into a glass container.

“And the other uses?” I ask.

He pauses, a single drop of venom-green liquid plopping from the edge of the vial in his hand, splattering on the table, leaving a hissing plume of steam in its wake.

“Torture, mostly,” he says, corking the vial and leaving it on the workbench as he turns to me. “Of the psychological sort.”

“I take it one of the ingredients is lychaen venom.”

He crosses his arms, arching a brow, and his deadly moonish eyes glimmer in the dim lantern light. They’re so bright, they almost shimmer on their own.

It’s eerie.

“You’ve studied lychaenthropy?”