He wraps his fingers around my wrist and yanks me toward him so that my chin rests against his heaving chest. He stares down at me and pins me with those deathly cold eyes.

Nox takes a step forward, pushing me back. I struggle and try to swing at him with my free hand, but he only catches that wrist too, wrapping his cold fingers around my skin.

It doesn’t make sense. Nox is fae, but I’ve been raised in the presence of fae all my life. They heal fast, but not that fast. And the way he appeared in front of me—stopped my path.

I’ve never seen a fae move like that.

“What are you?” I whisper.

His eyes twinkle as he pushes me back into the dungeon, catching the door behind him with his foot and pulling it closed.

Locking me in here with him.

I’ve been alone with Nox before, of course. But not like this. Not after I’ve stabbed him, and with him looking at me like he’s going to…

Like he’s going to…

No, fae don’t eat people.

“Don’t bother answering,” I say in a desperate attempt to regain my footing. “I know exactly what you are.”

Nox cocks his head, and the slight movement is terrifyingly predatory. “Is that so?”

“Keeping innocent girls down in the dungeon, torturing people who don’t deserve it? All so you can please that wretched queen of yours. You’re a coward.”

I expect him to flinch, but he doesn’t. If anything, he looks relieved that I don’t actually know why he heals so quickly, why he moves like a shadow.

“Coward?” It’s like he’s tasting the word on his tongue as his fingers loosen around my wrists. “An interesting accusation coming from someone who shape-shifts into a lunatic every full moon. Tell me, did you ever think to inform your darling princeling what you are?”

The knot that’s been rubbing a callus in my gut since the night I woke soaked in Ellie’s blood starts to swell. I shouldn’t be surprised that he knows why I ended up in the dungeons of Othian castle. His queen would have done her research, passed what she knew on to him.

“Guess we’re both cowards then, aren’t we?” he says, his fingers finally releasing their grip on my wrists. He doesn’t move though. Doesn’t widen the space between us. And I realize then that I’m still pressed up against his chest, that he’s backed me all the way to my dais that looks more like a sacrificial altar.

When he goes to leave, he turns his back to me, and it’s like he’s delivered a blow to my gut. Because I realize then that there’s no escaping this place. I don’t know what he is, but whatever dark powers he possesses, he knows there’s nothing I can do to him, even with his back exposed.

“Oh, and Blaise?” he says as he shuts the door to the dungeon behind him.

“Mhm?”

“If I were you, I’d rethink referring to myself as innocent.”

He’s talking about Cinderella, about the harm I did to Ellie by not going directly to Evander when I realized I’d been infected by magic.

Innocent.

But as Nox disappears up the dank stone staircase, it’s not Ellie’s blood on my shirt I smell. It’s not the sounds of her groans that I hear.

It’s a little girl in a dark closet, biting her lip to keep from crying out in pain. It’s the smell of innocence lost and the stinging of tears in the eyes of a child who did not understand, but now does.

And because I can’t stand to think of that foolish little girl, I keep her in that pantry, and I don’t let her out.

CHAPTER 7

NOX

Three bones float in my tomato stew. One is from the leg of a rather scrawny chicken. One is the finger-bone of some sort of marsupial.

The other hails from the wing of a bat.

Abra claims that it’s Simeon’s idea to decorate the stew with bones. That the marrow seeps into the broth, enhancing the flavor.

Sometimes I wonder if she makes him add the bones. If she does it on purpose, so I might never take a moment’s rest from my occupation, not even for meals.

If it’s not bones (the scrying kind) in my stew, then it’s tea leaves used as garnish on the outskirts of my plate. Critters from all over Alondria find themselves within my dishes, each rumored to possess a specific magical ability. I’ve found my rice smothered in spices that had me hallucinating for days on end.

I like magic, in the way everyone likes the things they are naturally good at, I suppose.

Most fae view magic as some mystical, otherworldly property—one that defies balance and rules. But magic isn’t like that at all. It loves patterns and order and balance, and it acts with purpose.

It doesn’t enjoy being trifled with either, which is why a servant is currently refilling my goblet with a sticky red substance that has Abra curling her nose.

As if she didn’t make me into what I am.

She sets her silver fork upon her plate, as she always does when she’s about to speak. Like she feels the need to announce it. As if the frosted crystal dining table is full of blabbering dignitaries whose attention must be called, whose chatter must be dimmed, before she speaks.

As if it’s not just the two of us sitting here. As if it hasn’t been just the two of us since the death of the king.

I ignore the ornate silver chair at the far end of the table. His memory calls out to me from there, but I’ve long since learned to tune it out.

“Farin, dear, would you be so kind as to share with me your progress with the prisoner?”

I’m prepared this time, and know better than to bristle at the name, not to protest it. As a child, doing so got me nowhere and only yielded welts on the palms of my hands.

“Gunter and I are pleased with the progress we’ve made so far,” I lie, as easily as a human might, and I relish the way the words slip from my tongue with no consequence.

Surprise lines the queen’s eyes, as pale and violent as a snowstorm. She doesn’t know the gift she granted me when she Turned me, the weapon she put at my mouth’s disposal.

When I first woke from the change, everything about me was so unfamiliar, so devastatingly different, that I clung to my newfound ability. There is a thrill to lying, but it must be used sparsely, lest those around you notice the patterns—the palpitations of your heart when the traitorous words escape your lips, the way you must fight to keep your eyes from darting.

“And what is this progress you speak of?” she asks.

I place my napkin on my lap and consider my response. The queen is somewhat of a genius when it comes to magic—specifically potions. Gunter and I are among the few who know her secret, that she boasts no true power over the cold and ice.

At least, not as her fellow fae royals would see it.

I’m not sure they understand what true power is. For though the queen cannot summon the power from within herself, she can make power. Crush the simplest of herbs and grind them together to make magic.

If the others knew, they would interpret the fact that the queen drinks a brew every morning to maintain her abilities as weakness.