Metal scraping against metal, the creaking of rusty hinges, and the door opens to reveal a stout woman only a few years my senior. She has dark curling hair and cheeks that have that look of being permanently flushed.

My teeth ache.

Definitely an intentional ploy sent by the queen. But why? For someone who pretends to value all life, this seems a bit extreme. Though I suppose if I kill the girl, the queen will simply tell herself it was an accident. That she wasn’t at all involved.

If I kill the girl.

I wait for the shudder, to recoil at my own morose thoughts, but it seems I’ll be waiting forever.

“Did the queen send you?” I ask. My neck cranes to the side as I focus on the red blotch staining the girl’s collarbone.

The girl nods, and it causes her neck to fold right around where her pulse gently hammers.

“Did she say why?” I ask.

The girl swallows, her pale throat bobbing. “No, miss. Just that she thought you might be hungry.”

I frown at that. Surely the queen isn’t sending me a gift out of the goodness of her heart. It seems more likely that this is some ploy to get me to break, to drive me to kill. To force Nox to see me for what I really am, for what he made me.

Perhaps she hopes that if I become a murderer, Nox will despise me.

It seems like a fairly hypocritical take, considering Nox is a murderer himself, but given the queen’s opaque view of her own faults, I wouldn’t put it past her to assume everyone else possesses the same lack of self-reflection.

“You should probably go,” I say, my voice silky, if not tinged with disappointment.

There’s nothing I want more than to rip into this girl’s throat, but given that’s exactly what the queen wants from me, I think I’ll pass.

My stomach can twist into knots, my canines can rot from my gums before I’ll make a move that might bring that female any satisfaction.

But when the girl turns to go, something primal takes over. Something that sees the prey beginning to run and reminds me I’m the predator.

That this is my natural right.

Her blood is my natural right.

Heady desire floods my veins, burning with rage as the girl practically flees to the door.

I make it to the threshold before she does.

It’s as easy as sidestepping, and though she was several paces ahead of me, I block her path.

Fear bulges in her already wide brown eyes, and there’s something about it I find displeasing, so I say, “Sh. Don’t fret. It won’t hurt.”

I know this to be the case, yet it tastes like a lie.

The girl stills, and fear drains from her cheeks. She even cranes her neck to the side, exposing her artery like she’s offering me dessert to go with my dinner platter.

My canines expand, my mouth salivating.

“Just a sip won’t hurt, don’t you think?” I ask, though I’m not sure who I’m asking. The girl is soothed enough by my compulsion that she can’t exactly tell me no.

She can’t tell me no.

The thought barrels through me, snapping my bloodlust at its roots, pouring icy water over my head, spilling it through my burning veins.

“Get out of here,” I tell her, and she does.

I have to dig my fingernails into the stone walls to keep from chasing her, and when her scent fades from my senses, I fling myself across the room and down the bowl of lamb’s blood lying stagnant on the floor.

In the end, the lamb’s blood does its job. It doesn’t quite quench the cravings, but it does assuage them, and I’m able to redirect my mind from the servant girl, who I’m still fairly sure I could track down if I wanted to.

I do want to, but I won’t.

I consider locking myself back in the laboratory, but there’s no way to bar it from the inside, so instead I try to distract myself.

It’s not that difficult when I consider that Abra’s plan to humble me has backfired.

I’m sure she planned on me slaughtering the servant girl. To the queen, the loss of a servant would be well worth the havoc it would wreak on my relationship with Nox, but my head is fairly clear now, and I’m free to roam about the castle.

Might as well make use of it.

I consider what would irritate the queen more than anything else, and to my pleasant surprise, I find the idea that strikes me would also help Nox.

When I enter the corridor, I’m pleased to discover it’s nighttime. No sneaking a path from shadow to shadow to avoid the windows that haven’t been barred by tapestries of Zora. The only thing I have to avoid is the detection of servants, mostly for their benefit than mine. I suppose I’m technically free by Abra’s bargain. Nox was the one locking me up, after all, but I still don’t want the queen finding out what I’m planning.

So I slip through the dark castle, blissfully undetected.

I can’t help my disappointment when I don’t find Nox in his room or in my previous cell. I suppose this means he’s researching in the library he and Gunter made from their collections. He’s told me about it, but I have no idea where it is, so I don’t bother wasting my time looking for it.

I’m not sure how long I have until the queen notices that her servant is waltzing about the castle, suspiciously not-drained of blood.

After confirming that Nox isn’t in his room, I cross the hall and push on Gunter’s door. It creaks open with little resistance. I suppose there’s no use in locking it now that there’s no occupant.

The room is thick with years of flavored incense, though I suppose none has burned in here since Gunter’s death.

I try not to look, but the spinning wheel in the corner catches my attention. It’s large, almost shoulder height, and it’s made of what looks to be dark-stained walnut.

The tip of the spindle glints when I light the lantern hanging next to the doorway. It’s white, and looks to be made of bone, and I can’t help but think it looks sharper than spindles are supposed to.

And then there’s the loom, the same one Gunter wheeled into my cell to work on as we “took a break.” That’s what he’d claimed, but he’d been working for Abra all along.

I’d thought it was sweet, initially—the way he’d crafted those tapestries in Zora’s memory on Nox’s behalf.

I’m not sure what I think about it now, knowing what I do. Knowing he wasn’t respecting her memory at all, but trapping her in worlds foreign to this one, in a multitude of lives that aren’t real—not truly.

But I suppose it doesn’t matter what I think of Gunter, of his intentions.

All I need right now is his knowledge.