Gunter’s at the dungeon door.

There’s no rattling of a key in the lock, though.

“Nox, you don’t wish to hurt her. It’s Blaise. It’s Blaise you’re feeding on. Blaise you’re killing.”

Everything is foggy, but there’s something about Gunter’s words that ring true. Familiar.

And because they match up with the worry coursing through my bones, I believe them.

Right here. It’s the best path to get to my heart from the front…

My victims, they’re eager.

My heart gives a weak little sputter, and it hits me.

Why I felt I’d give anything to Nox when he told me he wanted something selfish.

When I look up at him, Nox is towering over me. Blood—my blood—coats his lips and dribbles down the front of his shirt.

But this is not Nox.

This is evil.

He lowers himself over me and grazes my bloodied neck with two fingers, bringing them to his lips.

“Tell the old man you don’t mind,” he whispers.

But that’s all he gets to say.

Because I grab the stake lying on the floor and thrust it into his stomach.

CHAPTER 31

NOX/FARIN

Pain lashes through me as the splintered edges of the stake brush against my heart.

The agony ripples through my body in waves, and it’s enough to have me gasping for breath and send me jolting backward.

It’s enough for the girl to scramble on her hands and knees.

She leaves a trail of bloodied handprints on the stone floor, the intoxicating substance wasted as it leaks into the grout.

I lunge for her, but it only serves to drive the stake deeper into my musculature, and I bite a chunk off my inner cheek in reaction to the pain.

“Come on, Blaise. You’re almost there.” The mentor’s words are steady, but his feigned calmness doesn’t fool me.

I can hear his heart pounding as if my ear is pressed to his chest.

The girl lets out a muffled whimper like she’s biting down on her lip, trying to stifle the cry, but she heaves herself forward.

A click of an iron key in the lock, the scraping of hinges, and the girl is on the other side of the door.

Another slam, another click, and the male has locked me inside.

As if that pitiful excuse for a door could ever hold me in.

Nox, sure.

But I am not Nox.

I am something new.

And also something quite old, I suppose.

There’s a sluicing sound, the ripping of flesh and organs and sinew as I cleave the stake from my abdomen.

The pain threatens to flatten me, but I absorb it instead.

After all, I know exactly the sort of thing to assuage the pain.

I lock eyes with the man as he drags the girl toward the steps.

“You have to run. Blaise, listen to me. You have to run,” he says, as if he thinks it will help the girl’s survival chances.

“I can’t. My legs…” She half whines, half cries. Pitiful creature.

“There’s venom in his bite, a paralytic of sorts,” the male explains, but he shoves her up the stairs all the same. She stumbles to her hands and knees. “Crawl if you have to, while your limbs still work.”

The girl places a hand on the step above her, and one would think she’s lifting a boulder twice her size for how she grimaces, how she has to brace herself for the simple movement.

The male’s eyes go wide. He knows the girl is doomed to die.

I wait for him to run.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he gets on his hands and knees and cups the girl’s face. “The paralytic is psychosomatic, similar to lychaen venom. It only works because it makes your mind believe you’re paralyzed. Just like he made you believe you wanted to be bitten. But it’s all a lie. You can move.”

The girl is sobbing now. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. Just run. Just go. You’ll die if you stay.”

The man looks back at me. He watches me stand and approach the bars. I let a smile curve at my lips.

I’ll catch up to him eventually when he runs, but I’d like to be alone with the girl.

He doesn’t take his eyes off me when he speaks to the girl again. “I’ll run when you make it to the top of the stairs.”

She sobs harder. “I can’t.”