When he speaks, his voice wavers, so slightly I might not have noticed when I was human. “You must understand, I felt everything he felt.”

My heart stutters. “Everything?” I breathe.

He finally glances up at me, his pale-white eyes practically pinning me in place. “Everything.”

“But…but you killed Gunter. If you felt everything he felt, surely you would have felt something for him. For the only father—”

“The bloodlust drove me to that murder. It was made of nothing other than a need for blood. I…” He glances back at his boots. “I must say, I feel regret over Gunter’s death. He was kind to Nox during difficult times. He treated him better than a son…” He clears his throat, and it’s so unexpected, I nearly jump.

“If your bloodlust is so strong, what’s stopping you from chasing me up a staircase right now?” I ask. “Or have you satiated your hunger well enough on the village people?”

Farin frowns. “Now that you have Turned, I no longer crave your blood. At least, not by way of hunger.”

A chill snakes up my spine as I remember Nox describing what it felt like to partake in the bloodsharing ritual.

Like there was a cavern in me begging to be filled, and sharing my blood with you was the only way to seal it.

I find myself shifting my weight back and forth between my feet. “Is this your way of convincing me not to kill you? Tell me that you’ve blossomed actual feelings so I’ll feel pity for you?”

Farin shakes his head. “I am many unpleasant things, Blaise, but I am not naive.”

“Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop saying my name like you know me.”

Hurt flashes across his face, but his reply is accommodating. “Very well. As we were discussing, my mind, though locked in the shadows of Nox’s, was not immune to his emotions. When I woke in Nox’s body, this time not as the byproduct of bloodlust, but of my mother’s witchcraft, I recognized then that I was…different.

“When I woke, it was not the suffering, the screams of others I so desperately craved—though that craving has not fully left me—but your presence, your—”

“I’d rather not hear what exactly about me you were craving,” I hiss.

Farin’s face falls, and it’s such a Nox-like expression, I feel as though I might die.

“My mother was overjoyed to have me back,” he explains, fidgeting with the sleeves of his robes, “but she was too blinded by her own desires to foresee what she had done to me. That she’d simply transferred me from one prison to the next.”

“You don’t look trapped to me. It’s Nox that’s a prisoner, not you.”

Farin sighs, and when he runs his hands through his hair like Nox used to do, I feel as though my lungs are being flayed with a serrated blade.

“I’m not claiming that my Fate is any worse than Nox’s. But it is my Fate, nonetheless. Blaise, you must understand, my spirit was confined to the ashes for centuries—”

“Of your own doing.”

“I can’t deny that. But the fact remains—my spirit continued on, untethered to this world. And then when I woke, it was only halfway. Like being aroused from a fever dream only to be so ill, the world does not entirely make sense. And then there was the bloodsharing ritual, and then there was you. An anchor that harbored me to the world, to the person I once was.”

“Sto—”

“Please, just allow me to finish.”

I don’t know why, but I snap my mouth shut, my heart pounding in my chest. “So I watched. I listened. I felt. I grasped onto that anchor that was you with all my might. And I schemed. I plotted not against you, but for you. Do you know how many hours I spent in the shadows of Nox’s mind, dreaming that one day I might be free? Do you know how many times we…

“I felt them, Blaise. Every stolen glance, every brush of your hands, every—”

“I don’t want to know what you felt,” I practically scream. “They weren’t yours to feel, they were ours, mine and Nox’s, and to act as if they had anything to do with you—”

“I didn’t,” Farin pauses, his voice dropping an octave, “ask for any of this. I didn’t ask to be locked inside the mind of another. I didn’t ask to have these feelings pushed upon me. When I awoke, do you know the first thought that came to my mind? Not that, after centuries of death, I was finally free. All I could think was that I’d awoken from a dream into a nightmare. A nightmare where I’d been forced to steal the body of the male you love. That for my immortal existence, you will only ever look at me and see him. Do you know how many hours I spent planning how I would win your affections? How honorable I intended to be when my mother finally found an escape for me? The ways I intended to change, to prove to you my love was genuine? But my lovely mother couldn’t see that, and so she trapped me in the body of the male you love. If there was ever a chance at all of winning your affections, she took that from me. Don’t you see?

“I want you, Blaise. I want your smile and your laugh and your everything.”

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe, because again, he sounds so much like Nox, and why shouldn’t he? He’s been trapped inside him for years, picking up on the inflection of his voice, his mannerisms.

I falter, take a step back, lose ground.

And then Farin is upon me, and the scent of cedar and parchment overwhelms my senses. He’s so close now, and his closeness feels so much like Nox, and the way he’s looking at me with those snow-white eyes of his looks so much like Nox, the traitorous part of me speaks next. “There’s a part of me that wishes you’d been more treacherous,” I whisper, tears stinging at my eyes now. “That I’d entered the room and you’d acted as if you were him. That you’d have convinced me that Nox with all his cleverness had found a way to free himself and banish you. I think I might have been easily convinced.”

The admission itself feels like a betrayal, but it’s nothing more than the truth.

It’s not any truer for being spoken aloud.

Grief fills Farin’s eyes—and they’re Nox’s eyes, and it hurts to be gazed upon like this, like my chest is parchment to which Farin has set a flame.

His breathing is labored, and so is mine, his forehead lingering so close to mine our skin almost touches.

He pulls something from his pockets and presses it into my hands. The ribbed hilt of a stake shakes in my unsure grasp. “If you choose to end me, I won’t stand in your way,” he whispers. “I have been dead before, and I can now say with certainty that oblivion is preferable to the hate shimmering in your eyes.”

It’s a fool’s move, but I squeeze my eyes shut, might as well prostrate myself in front of my enemy. In front of the very being who took Nox from me. But I can’t bear to look at him, can’t bear to watch the light fade from Nox’s entrancing eyes as I slaughter him.

It’s that thought that gives me the courage to press the wooden stake to the notch beneath Farin’s ribcage, right at the soft spot of flesh Nox taught me to aim.

He’d been close to me then too, the heat of his body threatening to smother me, and I can feel him as if he’s here. For a moment, it’s not Farin standing before me, trembling as I hold the stake to his chest.

It’s Nox, and we’re in my tiny dank little cell, the first place I’ve truly felt joy since my child was stolen from my womb. It’s just me and Nox, and as long as I close my eyes, it’s so easy to pretend…

Farin makes an incoherent noise, like he’s about to speak, but I shake my head. “Please. Please,” I beg, and I don’t have to specify what exactly I’m begging for, because somehow I know that Farin—twisted, sick Farin—understands.

He of all beings on this earth understands what it is to cling to a world that no longer exists. One that perhaps never has.

It won’t do to dwell on that shared understanding though, not when Farin’s here and Nox isn’t. Hate roils through my chest; it hurts so badly I want to scream, want to shove this stake through his chest and twist until he writhes in agony.

But I don’t.

Instead, I give myself one more moment. One last breath to sense Nox’s heartbeat and pretend it still belongs to him. I open my eyes to peer into his, and the longing, the pain that’s twisting Farin’s face is so familiar, it could have fooled me had I not known better.

“I want him back,” I whisper, my voice trembling, hardly audible.

“I know,” he whispers back. “I don’t feel him anymore. His presence. Before the ritual, when he was lost to the bloodlust, I could always sense him. I…I’m so sorry, Blaise.”