Nox doesn’t as much as flinch when he says, “I’ll help.”

There it is again, the shadow that lurks behind his bright eyes, and though it sends a shudder of fear through me, it’s not dread this time.

Just recognition.

“You don’t see me any differently?” I can’t help but ask.

It’s not a question I feel I should ask. The question itself doesn’t seem fair to Nox. But there’s something ingrained within me, and I don’t know if it’s my stepmother’s doing or if it stretches back farther than that. It’s the feeling that there’s something irreparably soiled about me. Something that goes deeper than the way losing my child broke me, though it shouldn’t, though it’s ridiculous to think there could be anything worse. Still, the belief lingers.

“Of course I see you differently,” Nox says, and I can’t help the way my heart takes a dip in my chest. I expect him to pull away, but instead he draws my hands into his lap and continues playing with my fingers. “How could I not, after what you’ve been through? Would you have wanted me to see you just the same?”

My throat burns, and I shake my head, understanding now.

“No.” No. I wanted him to see me. And now he does.

Nox opens his mouth once, closes it, then tries again. “You bore a child, but you were just a child, too. That piece of filth…” His face sours on the word. “What he took from you didn’t belong to him. Do you understand that, Blaise?”

My chest tightens. “I know he took advantage of me, but I should have known better—”

“No.” Nox takes his hand and toys with my braid—the part that’s fraying and coming undone from the lock of hair he cut. “I can’t imagine how confusing it must be for you to look back on what happened. And I’m not saying I understand it better than you do. Fates, no.” He shudders, like even the idea is disgusting to him. “But what happened to you, Blaise… What he did to you… He took something that’s only meant to be experienced by adults, and he exposed you to it. So yes, it makes sense that you feel it was your fault, because he tossed you into adulthood. But you were a child, Blaise. A child. And no matter how what he did to you twisted your perception about that period of your life, it doesn’t change that. You were a child, and he was not. Saying you should have known better… You couldn’t have known, Blaise. Your mind”—he brushes the hair from my forehead and grazes his finger across my temple—“It wasn’t ready to know what it meant to say yes.”

My heart cracks a bit at the earnestness in his gaze. At the truth in his words.

Clarissa’s words flood my mind, but for the first time in my life, I’m looking down on them from above, and it’s like I can see the twelve-year-old me—gangly and skinny and so very very much a child.

And when the words come out of Clarissa’s mouth—whore, stupid, slut—for the first time in my life, I don’t want to shove the little girl away, lock her up, forget she ever existed.

I just want to wrap her up.

“Why are you still here, Nox?” I ask, and it’s this question—not the admission that I bore a child out of wedlock—that has him flinching. His eyes shutter, and though I feel freer up on this roof as the queen’s prisoner than I’ve felt in six long years, my heart threatens to plummet off the side of this castle.

He swallows, and for a moment, I think he’s really not going to tell me.

“Oh, come on,” I say, punching him in the arm and doing my best to keep my tone light-hearted, though it’s straining at the edges. “I tell you I was locked up for nine months until I gave birth to a child who was stolen out of my arms, and you’re not going to give me anything? Not a smidge of darkness?”

Nox sighs, running his hand through his hair. He looks like the rim of the moon, the way his tousled hair falls in his face, the way his pale skin reflects the glory of the heavens above us.

He opens his mouth, but it’s like he can’t seem to get the words out.

“The queen has something over you, doesn’t she,” I state more than ask. When he swallows, I bite my lip. “I know what that’s like, sort of.”

He cocks his head to the side in question.

“Clarissa. She knows where my child is—where the family is who took my baby. It’s why I sent her almost all the salary I made working as a servant at the castle. It’s why I never told Evander where all my money went. For years, she told me that if I did as she said, she’d tell me where my baby was.”

Nox sighs, and it’s almost like he deflates. He tips back his chin and sips from his flask. When he’s done, he sets it next to him on the rooftop instead of returning it to his belt. “I’m guessing she never came through on her promise.”

The weight of what my words imply hits me, and I grab Nox’s hand. The queen is blackmailing him somehow, and I can only hope it’s through a bargain that Nox has struck to his own favor, that in extracting the parasite from me, the queen will allow him to return to his family. “It doesn’t have to be the same for you,” I say. “The queen is fae. She can’t lie to you, can’t go back on a promise like Clarissa can. If she says she won’t hurt your family, then it’s not just that she won’t. She can’t.”

“And what if the queen isn’t the one who I’m afraid will hurt them?” he asks, and his gaze is a plea.

“Isn’t that usually who we end up hurting, the people we love?” I ask. “But they always seem to be the ones who are most eager to forgive us.” I mean to be comforting, but my words come out stale, probably because Ellie’s set jaw comes flashing into my mind.

Nox nods, his gaze darting down to my hands as he traces the veins on my wrists with his finger absentmindedly.

“One of these days, I’m going to get you back to your prince,” he says.

I falter, my stomach twisting. “Well, he’s not really my prince…”

Nox grins, a wicked smile spreading across his face. “Then maybe I’ll keep you trapped here with me.”

I should hate the sound of that more than I do.

CHAPTER 26

BLAISE

We stop by Nox’s bedroom on the way back to the dungeons.

“I have an extra set of quilts,” he explains as he places the key in the lock and turns, the door creaking open. “I’ve noticed yours is developing holes in it.”

He shoots me a disapproving look, but it’s the amused sort.

I may or may not kick holes in my blankets while I sleep.

When he slips into his room, I follow, and when he lights the lantern on the wall and light swarms the room, I can’t help the hole that chisels into my heart.

“How long have you had this room?” I ask, though I feel as though I already know the answer.

Nox runs his hands through his hair, his gaze upward as he counts back. Then he blows out a huff of air. “Oh, I don’t know. Eleven or twelve years?”

Eleven or twelve years.

Yet Nox’s room is practically bare.

There’s a bed in the corner, one hardly long enough for his lanky form. The scarlet sheets are made, but lazily so. They look like they’d be scratchy. There’s also a desk pushed up against the wall, though it appears more well-used than the bed. There are indentions in the wood where Nox must have borne down too hard while writing. The seat on the desk chair is worn as well.

Still. It’s just grimoires, all related to the work Nox does for the queen.

There’s a dresser across from the bed on the wall adjacent to the door, but nothing sits atop it.

There’s not even anything tucked under the bed, at least not that I can see.

“What?” Nox asks over his shoulder as he reaches into the trunk at the foot of the bed and pulls out a quilt.

“Nothing. It’s just…where’s all your stuff?”

Nox frowns, folding the blanket over his arm. “My stuff?”