Just legends, legends told by superstitious humans suspicious of magic.

Or so I’d thought.

My gaze glances back to the corpse on the floor, and my world collapses around me.

What have I done?

I close my eyes and steel myself. Gunter will find me an antidote; I just have to get back to him.

First, I have to figure out which part of town I’m in; the best way to sneak back to the castle without being seen. The townspeople won’t understand that I didn’t mean to murder the woman.

Murder.

The sour scent of bile and blood threatens to make me heave again, but I don’t.

Instead I pace over to the window and draw the curtain.

Pain erupts across my face as the sunlight slices at me.

It takes me a moment to recognize that I’m burning.

I wait for the sun to set before I venture back to the castle. I hide in the shadows and pray no one comes to check on the dead woman.

It’s an awful thing to pray, something that the Fates will surely condemn me for. But they must be glad to take my soul as payment, because no one stops by the cottage.

After an agonizingly slow day, the sun finally sets, and I am free.

There’s only one problem.

I am hungry again.

It’s three nights before Gunter finally finds me. I don’t know it when he does, because gorging myself on blood isn’t all that different from gorging myself on wine, and I find I pass out after a certain point.

It’s another week of Gunter keeping me locked in the dungeon cell we use as a workstation, slipping me chicken blood through the grates in the goblin iron door, before he’ll tell me what I’ve done.

Before he tells me I left two dozen bodies drained in the town.

He doesn’t have to say anything though.

By the time the drunken stupor of human blood fades, I remember every second, every detail, every cruel laugh that dripped from my lips.

I remember him.

CHAPTER 29

BLAISE

Nox alternates between pacing around the dungeon, finicking with vials on the counter, and prying at the immovable metal bars that trap him in here with me.

“Nox,” I say for what must be the thirty-seventh time in the past hour. My voice is hoarse, trembling even as I try to steady it.

I fail, and he doesn’t seem to hear me, so I try again.

“Nox.”

His ears twitch, and the firmness in my tone seems to get his attention. There’s nothing I want more than to place my hand on his shoulder, to wrap him up and tell him there’s nothing he can’t tell me, but I know better than to approach him when he’s like this.

I don’t know how I know, but I do. Perhaps it’s just some innate survival instinct lodged deep within me, present from birth. Like how babies know to scream when they’re hungry.

I’m not sure where that instinct was when I was in the kitchens with Derek, but it’s decided to make an appearance now.

Nox finally turns to look at me, and while there’s nothing crazed in his expression, I catch it in the way his eyes darken, the way every limb in his body goes utterly still as he takes me in.

It’s like staring into the eyes of a predator.

“You’re not fae,” I say, because the fear is bubbling up within me now and I feel if I don’t keep him talking, find some way to tether him to reality, I’m going to end up dead.

Nox appears to be holding his breath, but he answers, and that’s a start. “No. I’m not. I used to be…but what I am now…I don’t know that it has a name.”

His voice is too steady for the clear panic he’s suffering. It chills my blood. Makes me wonder when that person underneath, the one I’ve only gotten glimpses of, is going to take over.

“Then describe it to me,” I say. No yes or no questions. Anything to keep Nox talking.

He runs his hand through his hair, and the tension in my chest gives a bit. At least it’s a familiar gesture, something that looks like something Nox would do.

“There’s no time. If I don’t find a way to extract the parasite from you…” He clenches his teeth and rubs at his temple.

“You’re going to kill me. Got it.”

Nox shoots an icy stare at me.

I shrug. “I overheard.”

“Right,” he says, and it looks as if he intends to bore his fingers through his skull with the way his veins bulge when he massages his temples.

“Well, you’re clearly not in the mental state to work right now. So just tell me. Tell me what you are.”

Nox heaves out a long sigh and backs himself up against the wall before sliding down it, knees splaying as he rests his forehead into his open palms. “Fine.”

I shift, and Nox flinches. “Don’t come any closer.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” I say, backing toward the bell on the wall in case I need to alert the queen that I really am about to die and she better consider long and hard whether she’s willing to let that happen.

“Years ago I found I became fascinated with reanimation—the theory that there are darker forms of magic that can be used to bring the dead back to life.”

Goosebumps prickle on my skin, and I find myself wrapping myself in my arms. “Seems like the type of thing that would be more popular if it actually worked.”

Nox lets out a resistant chuckle. “If only you’d been here to tell me that a few years ago.”