“What do you do to them?” I ask, because it’s the only thing I can do from hurling my guts up all over the floor.
Only then does he look up at me, and the shadows underneath his eyes have darkened.
Hunter. Predator.
Teeth pressing against my flesh. The way Nox went crazed the day I sliced my finger on the parchment of the grimoire.
The way his eyes brighten with hunger.
My hands find my mouth as I stifle a gasp.
He eats them. Fates, Nox eats them.
I lose the contents of my stomach all over the floor.
Nox flinches, but it’s not disgust with my retching that I glimpse in his cold, dead eyes.
I wipe the bile from my mouth with my sleeve. “How often do you eat people?”
Nox frowns, and it’s as if realization registers on his face. “I feed on blood, not flesh. I try to keep myself full on the blood of animals to stave off my hunger. It’s typically effective, though not always with the headaches. Animal blood helps, but it never fully assuages the symptoms. Even feeding... There’s a venom in my fangs that numbs my victims. It’s like the Fates doled out a punishment befitting their convict.”
“I’m not sure why the fact that you only drink people, rather than eating them, makes me feel better, but it does,” I say, and Nox’s laugh comes out strained. Shocked.
“You can make light of anything, can’t you?”
“It’s a specialty.” I shrug, though I hardly have the balance for it with my head still spinning.
Nox goes silent and answers my next question. “I’ve slipped before. Killed humans and fae alike. Most of my victims happened in the beginning, in the year following my Turning. The hunger pangs were more difficult to control then, and I would sneak out of the castle at night and find my victims in the surrounding villages. Gunter did his best to keep my thirst quenched, but the animal blood didn’t satiate me the way human blood did.”
“Why not lock you up?” I ask.
“The queen forbade it. She hated me once I turned. Blamed me for wasting the ashes of her son. I suppose she thinks I ruined any chance of her truly having him back. So she let me stalk the villages, because she knew when I woke the next morning, I would blame myself. That I’d drown in guilt to the point my body craved blood like yours craves air. It was a horrible cycle, but Gunter ultimately got me through it. Eventually the hunger pains became more manageable, and I stopped letting my guilt control me. It only made my cravings worse.”
“But you still kill sometimes.”
It comes out as an accusation, and I’m not sure that’s accidental.
“When I think I can go longer stretches without drinking animal blood. When I think I’m strong enough to control myself, someone always dies.” It’s a statement of fact. A logical assessment. One stripped of emotion, lest it send Nox spiraling. “But when the bloodlust sets in, it’s not just me in my head any longer.”
“You convinced yourself you had enough self-control not to hurt me. That you could control yourself. Control him.”
Nox peers up at me, and his eyes have iced over. “Yes.”
The thought of his lips on my neck sends a wave of emotions through me, some more pleasant than they should be.
When I catch where his gaze has drifted, I know he’s thinking the same thing.
“You’re different, Blaise. You undo me.”
A wave of lightning strikes my spine, scatters through my veins, depositing in my twitching limbs.
“You knowingly put me in danger.”
The words ring hollow in my ears, knocking against my memories, except it’s Andy’s voice this time. You knowingly put Ellie in danger.
Maybe that’s why there’s no sharp, glinting edge to my accusation.
“I thought the way I feel about you would keep me from hurting you. I thought I could keep you from harm,” he says.
I swallow, my throat bobbing, and Nox’s predator’s eyes lock onto it.
“And how do you feel about me, Nox?”
“Like you’re the only glimmer of sunlight that’s marked my skin in years.”
A two-fold confession, and because I can’t bear to address the implications of what he’s saying, I follow the second half. “You can’t walk in the sun?”
Sadness brims his eyes, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s because I’ve chosen to ignore his admission. He shakes his head. “Not without burning. Gunter hung more tapestries throughout this wing of the castle. Before that, I couldn’t even leave my room during the day because of the windows in the staircase.”
I think of my panic attack on the roof, the way the air felt unbreathable after so long away from it.
I think of what it would be like to live in the shadows perpetually.
“When you drink blood, are you ever able to stop?”
Nox’s silence is answer enough.
It’s my turn to rub my temples. “How long?”
