It’s the way the road in the distance leads to nowhere, or the fact I don’t know where it leads, when we’ve lived here for years and that seems like something I should know. It’s the way Rose is sometimes Theo, and how she’s a bit younger than she should be, given the wrinkles creasing the backs of my hands.

It’s that we’re in Mystral, yet the day is sweltering with heat.

It’s the sun that beats down on Nox’s neck. On his face, his exposed arms.

“Blaise? Baby?”

Confusion wrinkles his brow, and by the time it hits me what’s wrong, I’m too late.

“Nox! You have to get insi—”

My husband bursts into flames. Fire licks up his exposed arms, eating at his flesh, at the lumps of fabric where he’s rolled up his sleeves.

I sprint for him, and the heat of the flames berates my cheeks, but I grab at his hand.

Nox doesn’t scream. He doesn’t move.

“Darling, you’re burning. You must get inside,” I plead, but his feet remain planted, even as the flames encroach on his shirt collar.

“I’ve missed the sun, Blaise. It doesn’t hurt,” he says, and his voice is so confident, so soothing, I’m tempted to believe him. But the smoke is filling my nostrils now, and his skin is beginning to peel back in dark, curling flakes, and I know if I don’t get him inside, he will die.

“Please, do it for me. We can see the sun another day,” I say, like I might to a child in need of coaxing, and when I look at Nox again, he’s no longer Nox but Theo.

My child is burning.

Horror slithers through me, and I don’t think, don’t breathe, before I’ve lifted my child into my arms and am running running running for the house.

“But Mama, I want to play,” Theo says, even as the flames lick through my shirt, burning my skin and sending a jolt of pain through me I can hardly feel, hardly pay attention to when my child is dying.

We reach the threshold, and I practically launch us through the door, throwing my body over Theo’s and rolling us both to smother the flame.

It works; the fire dies down, and when I peek open my eyes to witness the burn marks that have surely singed Theo’s face, it’s not Theo I find.

It’s Ellie.

She’s gasping, crying through her bared teeth, struggling to breathe. At first I think it must be the smoke from the flames, that she’s suffocating, but then…

But then I smell it.

The blood.

My vision goes clear and my attention snaps to her belly, where a sticky red substance soaks through her shirt.

“She stabbed me…” My friend gasps, but I can hardly hear her, not over the ringing in my ears.

“Who stabbed you?” I ask, but my voice is a mumbled whisper, an automated response.

“You.”

The single word draws my gaze away from the blood, but not my attention.

Its scent fills the air, saturating my senses with fresh rainwater and lavender and copper.

I am suddenly very hungry.

“You. You did this to me. It was you.”

Ellie’s perfect features contort in pain, but whether it’s from the wound or my betrayal, I cannot tell.

“It wasn’t me. It was her. It was Cinderella,” I explain, and the words should come out frantic. Because my best friend believes I stabbed her.

But my voice is calm. Low. Like the growl of a lioness in wait.

Ellie’s heart is pounding, her fear palpable as she stares up into my eyes. She scrambles backward on her elbows, but she’s wounded and there’s nowhere for her to go.

“Shh. I’ve got you,” I whisper. The words I might whisper to one of my children during the crackling of a storm.

The tenderness in my voice is absent.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she begs, and something about that feels wrong too, because it is not like the Ellie I know to beg.

But then I realize it’s not Ellie speaking. It’s me. The words fall from my lips.

“Please don’t hurt her,” I’m saying to myself.

Fear grips me, because the desire that cascades through me is so unnatural, so wrong, I cannot bear to feel it.

My ears detect something, the slightest of beats. Ellie’s pulse, rapid and panicked; it sounds like a sultry dance.

It’s slipping away from me, and I have to hear more of it.

“Please. Please don’t do this.”

It’s Ellie again, but I’m not sure what she doesn’t want me to do.

All I want is to listen.

All I want is to taste.

When I sink my teeth into Ellie’s neck, the screaming I hadn’t been paying attention to ceases.

The blood is not sweet as I expect, but bitter, and when I come up for air and glance at my friend, her eyes are wide open, but she no longer sees.

“Ellie?” I ask, and I feel a bit drunk, her warm blood still coating my chin.

My friend doesn’t answer, and now I’m the one screaming.

CHAPTER 41