When he says “my nature” there’s a pang in his tone, a slight uptilt of his voice, a negligible averting of his eyes that makes it taste of a lie.

“And what exactly could that be?” My voice is so dry, so devoid of life.

“I lied to you. Unintentionally, but it was a lie all the same.”

My back stiffens; my limbs go rigid. It shouldn’t infuriate me as it does. After all, I’m the queen of lying by omission, of deceiving those closest to me, but there’s something about the fact that it’s Nox that makes me feel as if I’m cracking from the inside rather than the outside. Like there’s a hairline fracture in my soul that keeps feathering outward.

It’s the most I’ve felt past the hunger, the lone prick in a void of numbness.

“I came to visit her, Cinderella, the first night you changed.”

His words ring like a gong in my ears. Pounding like the pulse at his neck, racking at my very skull. Unwelcome images assault my mind—Cinderella’s lips on his, her plush body inviting. I want to gag and claw and rip her to shreds, but my fingernails are digging into my flesh.

“Blaise.”

My attention flicks back to him, and something like fear—no, awe—shutters his gaze.

“I thought I was dreaming. She sliced her arm—your arm. The scent of the blood dragged me from my bed. I was half-asleep, and I thought she was you. That it wasn’t real.”

“You thought she was me.”

“Yes.”

“She was in my body. She didn’t change.”

“No, she didn’t change.”

Fear burns through me, and it’s the third feeling I’ve had since waking. Before whatever happened to me, there would have been no use in counting feelings, with how each tangled with one another. But now they’re separate. Distinct, separated by a void of nothingness until they crash in spikes against my iron heart.

“What happened?”

Nox doesn’t hesitate to answer. He thinks I deserve the knowledge of what happened to me. To my body. After it was taken from me. That’s about the only thing that keeps me from exploding when he says, “She offered me your blood. I thought it was a dream, a…a fantasy, so I took it gladly.”

This is the point my cheeks should heat, but they don’t.

“She wanted my blood in exchange. I didn’t even think to say no. Like there was a cavern in me begging to be filled, and that sharing my blood with you—not with her—was the only way to seal it. I wasn’t aware at the time that bloodsharing is a common practice among others of my kind.”

“Bloodsharing.” The word is foreign on my lips, but familiar to my soul. Even as I try to push out the horrifying, invasive thought of my lips sipping at Nox’s wrist, there’s a pang there. A longing for something I never knew I could want so badly.

Nox doesn’t have to tell me it’s meant to be an intimate ritual. Not with the way my chest cracks at the realization this moment with him was stolen from me. That I wasn’t the one to experience it with him.

Nox’s eyes are full of weariness, a regret that carves its way into my very soul.

“Bloodsharing is performed among my kind when they wish to declare eternal mates.”

Mate. The word rings through my head, scales past my memories. Evander used to tell me bedtime stories when I was young. Many of the faerietales involved mating bonds that formed when a Fated couple first laid eyes on one another. He always teased me incessantly about the way my eyes went starry over the notion.

But what Nox was referring to was not a Fate-willed match, but a match made by choice, by mutual agreement.

An agreement I hadn’t been allowed to make.

“The ritual binds the two souls together. Provides each party equal control over the other. It’s supposed to balance out, I suppose. To signify unshakeable trust in the other. But when the bloodsharing ritual is offered to a human, the balance is swayed, and the human is left with considerably more power over the vampire than the other way around.”

Vampire. The word raps against my skull. Not the outside, but the inside, as if asking politely to be let out.

“She wished to control you,” I say, and he nods, his teeth clenching. “And she did.”

Any anger I might have been harboring unconsciously toward Nox withers at that thought. At the notion of what that wretched parasite had taken from him.

But his eyes are wide and glazed over, and I know there’s more to the story.

I also know he won’t hold back, and I derive a modicum of comfort from that.

“She made me kiss you that night. She made me kiss you, even after I realized who she was.”

Something cracks, and when I look down, there’s crumbled marble in my fist from where I’ve clenched the edge of the dais too hard.

“And?”

“And time ran out for her, thank the Fates,” Nox half-breathes, and the residue of crushed marble in my palms pours onto the ground as my fingers relax slightly.

“But before I left, she made me forget. At least, she made be believe it was a dream. She told me to find a way to unbind her from her curse, the one sealed by the moon. Part of her command was for me to believe I was finding a way to extract her from you, but the whole time, I was working to enslave you.”

“You didn’t know,” I say because it’s true, and because it’s about the only thing grounding me to this dais right now.

“I should have known.”

Most males’ gazes would be downcast at such an admission, but not Nox’s. Instead, he pierces me with those strikingly pale eyes of his, refusing to relieve himself of the punishment of looking me in the face.

“I seem to remember saying something similar the night you showed me the aurora. Do you remember what you said to me then?” I can’t seem to get the emotion to poke through the callus scabbed over my voice, but the thought is made in earnest.

He nods in understanding, then swallows. “That you couldn’t have known. That your mind wasn’t ready to know.”

“She had no right,” I say, and he nods at that too. “But from what I can tell, she doesn’t have permanent control of my body, and I think I’d like an explanation of what’s happened to me now.”

My words are flat, but they prick my heart all the same. Like the feeling of tears pooling in my lids, except they’re collecting over my heart like acid rain.

Nox sighs. “When Cinderella offered me your wrist, it was your blood I consumed, not hers. She could still control me in the body she preferred, she just couldn’t change your blood. But there were unintended consequences. Though you couldn’t remember it, it was—is—your blood that holds sway over me, Blaise. I hadn’t realized it, probably because of the way I feel about you, but I’ve done whatever you’ve asked of me since that night.”

I crinkle my nose, and it must be the first expression I’ve made since waking up that actually looks like me, because something like relief huffs from Nox’s parted lips.

“That can’t be true. You’re never listening to me,” I say, and I can almost hear an echo of teasing in the lilt of my voice. Almost.

Nox shakes his head, crossing his arms as he leans against the counter. “Think about it. The night I lost control and drank from your neck, you told me to stop and I did.”

My heart gives a painful little lurch. I had assumed Nox had beaten through the barriers for a moment, that the weight of what he felt for me had provided him the strength he needed to make a single grasp at control. But it was a foolish thought. The type of thought made by girls who fancied princes could love them.

“I told you to stop,” I say, remembering the way Nox had looked confused when he’d done as I asked.