I climb and I climb and I climb, and I don’t know if it’s for myself or Gunter or Nox.
But we all need me to make it.
There’s no other option. Not if I don’t want the male I love to crumble.
I’m three steps from the top of the staircase when there’s a loud crack from the bottom of the steps.
My throat wants to sob, to cry out for the loss of Nox’s friend at his own hands, but I don’t let it. I’ll let myself cry when I make it out of here alive.
But then I hear steps pounding down below. Slow and deliberate. A predator seeking to draw out the chase just a few moments longer.
I’m not going to make it to the door at the top of the steps.
Even if I could, there’s no way I could open it.
It should frighten me, and maybe it’s just Nox’s venom working its way through my system, but I’m as calm as the surface of a mirror pool.
Because I will not die down here. Not after Gunter sacrificed himself so I would live. Not when it would break Nox if I died.
Not when my child is out there somewhere.
I won’t die before I meet my baby.
I simply won’t.
One of Gunter’s tapestries hangs upon the wall, and a girl with flaxen hair stares down at me from a field of lavender.
Nox is close enough for me to hear his breath now, ragged, though not as crazed as before.
Like he’s satiated.
I fight the vomit threatening to scale my throat and turn to face him. It’s an effort, rolling myself onto my back, propping myself on my elbows, but I manage it.
I smell Nox before I see him. It doesn’t take a fae sense smell to sense the reek of Gunter’s blood, the stench of Nox’s sweat.
He rounds the corner, crimson blotches staining his lips, dripping down his chin onto his soaked shirt.
When he sees me, those brilliant eyes of his light up, but they are not my Nox’s eyes.
They are not warm despite being the shade of ice. They are not mischievous and hurt and smart and kind.
They are only hungry, and they are not his.
But Nox’s body is not Farin’s, and my body is not my parasite’s, and I am so, so very tired of the two of us being treated like they are.
So when I look at the face that isn’t my Nox, the lust that doesn’t belong to the man I love, I am not afraid.
I am livid.
Perhaps that’s why—when I rip the tapestry from the wall with my last bit of strength, and I watch the morning sunlight burst through the window, eating at Nox’s flesh like ants to a discarded fruit, like acid to a moth-eaten wood, when I watch him writhe in pain as his skin burns like paper to a flame, when I watch him fall, tumble down the stairs in an attempt to squelch the flames—it is not sorrow I feel.
Because that is not Nox writhing.
That is not Nox burning.
It is something else, something that doesn’t belong.
And I find I enjoy inflicting its pain.
CHAPTER 33
BLAISE
It takes a matter of days for Nox’s burns to heal.
It’s a lifetime to me, because I don’t get to visit him while he recovers. The queen won’t allow it.
She won’t allow anyone in my cell.
I wake to the smell of porridge in my dark chamber. Like the servants have been commanded to wait until I fall asleep to deliver me food, lest I be rewarded with any interaction with another living being.
The oil has been drained from the lamps on the wall, and I spend days in the darkness.
I’m being punished; I’m sure of it.
Punished for setting the queen’s beloved son on fire, for making him squirm and scream and writhe.
I think she means to make me regret it, to deprive me of any sensory experience other than the cold and the gloom and the memory of the screams seared into my skull.
