“Nox, stop.” My voice is barely a whisper, a flurry of panic. Desperation seeps through the words, and dread, too.

I no longer feel Nox’s teeth against my skin. Slowly, like it’s taking him an abundance of will to do so, he pulls away from me.

The unpleasant image of a tick being ripped from the flesh of its host flashes through my mind unwelcome.

His grip on my back loosens, and I let out another whimper of relief as the pain subsides a little.

Horror flashes in those pale blue eyes when he realizes what he’s done.

“Blaise…Blaise, I didn’t mean to…”

My heart is pounding so hard I feel it might lurch from my chest.

Nox’s pointed ears flick and his gaze flits over to my neck where he just removed himself.

“I didn’t mean to—”

Nox goes very, very still.

I can feel my pulse knocking against the thin layer of skin where his teeth just were.

Someone clears their throat in the corner.

We both jump, and my face floods with mortification as I hope Gunter hasn’t been standing there the whole time.

But when I glance over Nox’s shoulder, it’s not Gunter I see.

It’s the queen.

CHAPTER 27

NOX

The queen lurks on the other side of the dungeon door, sharp lines splitting her face from the shadows cast by the lantern light that creep through the bars to Blaise’s cell. She’s dressed in an ivory silk nightgown that does nothing to dilute her blinding features.

Her eyes are as cold as her heart, as frigid as her stolen powers, swiped from the magic of the land.

She’s holding the key to the cell in her hand.

“I’m disappointed in you, Farin. I wondered why it was taking you so long to find a solution to my little problem. Now I see that perhaps you’re less than motivated to assist me in granting the girl’s freedom, after all.”

Dread coils within my gut, compounded by the hunger that strikes at my insides.

“Don’t call him that,” Blaise snaps, hopping down from the dais to face the queen. I can hardly hear her over the thud of her heart as it fires blood through her veins.

Saliva pools in my mouth. My canines slice at my tongue; they’ve yet to recoil into my gums.

Fates, I was going to bite her. I was going to feel her body go limp beneath the allure of my venom. I was going to feast on her as she slowly faded from consciousness.

My stomach turns over, runs sour.

I would have killed her.

I want you to snap my neck if that happens. Blaise had joked about my killing her just yesterday, and even the words, said in jest as they might have been, had made my gut recoil in the moment.

But then tonight…

I think I might be sick.

Still, the hunger remains.

I reach for my flask, but my fingers close around thin air.

I left the flask on the roof.

“So much fire in your spirit.” The queen practically tsks, an amused smile curving on her mouth. “I can see now why you’re fond of her, Farin. Plain thing that she is.”

“Don’t you dare speak to her that way,” I say, and though I’m doing everything in my power to keep my gaze elsewhere, I can feel the blood rushing to Blaise’s cheeks in her anger, warming her skin, pulsing, pulsing, pulsing like a hammer against my pounding skull.

The queen’s laugh is shrill, and it bounces off the stone walls. “That you would deign to lecture me on my treatment of the girl displays just how blinded you’ve become. The girl will survive a harsh truth easier than she’ll survive you.”

Again, I sense Blaise snapping her head in my direction. The way the motion carves a crevice into her neck has me digging my fingers into my sides.

I don’t know how I let myself get this hungry. I’ve been regimented about taking the chicken blood Gunter fetches for me. In weeks, I haven’t missed a single dose.

And yet Blaise’s blood sings to me. A siren threatening to be my undoing. It intends to drag me underneath the waves and drown with me.

I’d been doing well until I heard the footsteps in the hall earlier tonight. Until I pulled Blaise behind that tapestry, dangling her pulsing neck right in front of my face. Nursing the blood from my flask helped to soothe the cravings after that, but kissing Blaise has sent me over the edge.

“I’ve made a mistake for which I intend to be punished, my queen,” I say, and out of the corner of my eye I see Blaise bristle, though I keep my attention on our captor. “It won’t happen again.”

“No.” The queen caresses the edge of the iron key with her long, pale fingernails. The noise of the collision scrapes against my ears, “I daresay it won’t.”

Panic courses through me, and I lunge for the cell, but I’m much too late. Minutes too late, probably. When I slam my body against the door, it doesn’t budge. It’s made of goblin iron, forged to defend against the fae, which has made it useful all these years Gunter and I have been experimenting on the queen’s prisoners.

The queen slaps the flat edge of the key against her palm.

“You were so far gone, you didn’t sense me approaching. You didn’t even hear as the key clicked against the lock.”

Shame hollows out my chest at the implication of her words. If I was so far gone I’d left all other senses behind, then what would I have done to Blaise?

I thrust my arm through the gaps between the bars, but the queen expects it and is safely perched on the stairs before I can reach her, before I can wrench the key from her grasp.

“Come on,” I say, gritting my teeth. “We both know you won’t keep me locked in here. Not when the parasite Blaise is carrying means so much to you. You won’t allow me to hurt her.”

“Nox?” Blaise’s voice has lost that carefree quality, and her panic thrums in my ears. It’s a question that demands an explanation. But I can’t bear to face her, to face him, at the moment, so I don’t.

The queen sighs, and the disappointment that leaches across her face has me fantasizing about plucking the vertebrae in her spine one by one. “It’s true that the magic inside the girl is useful to me. But she is not the only human to carry this sort of magic. So though it will be a severe loss if her life is forfeited, it will not be the end. I will simply have to find another.”