I expected a dry chuckle, a verbal nudge to my ribs. But he remained stone serious, a wrinkle deepening between his brows.

My smirk faded. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Give me one honest thing, Raihn Ashraj.”

After a long moment of silence, he finally spoke.

“I’ve lived through some injustices in the last couple of centuries. Seen some fucking travesties. But one of the biggest, Oraya, is that anyone taught you that you should become anything other than exactly what you are.”

My hands went numb. My fingers were so tight around my mug that they trembled. The words split me from throat to navel, pulled me open and touched my most fragile parts.

My mind emptied of thought for several long seconds. And then only one returned:

I will need to kill this person, and I don’t know if I can.

It was a mercy that Raihn didn’t wait for a response. He just stood and extended his hand to me. “Let’s walk for a while.”

The sky was growing faintly rosy with the promise of dawn. We walked in the southern end of the district, slowly wandering closer and closer to the Moon Palace.

I hated time. I always had—it was forever a marker of the gulf between me and the vampires that surrounded me—but never more than I did right now, as this night slipped through my fingers.

Any minute now, Raihn would try to kill me. Or I would have to kill him. As our conversation grew slower, the silence between our words longer, I knew that promise was sinking into us both.

Finally, he stopped in a darkened side street. Rocky steps led down to the bank of the Lituro River. We stood exactly on the boundary between our worlds—the inner city directly across the water, the human district behind us—the sun warning of its arrival. He paused and looked out over the view—first to our left, to the skyline of Sivrinaj, and then the right, to the human district and the dunes rolling beyond them.

Then he stretched and reached for the buckle of his scabbard, which cut across his chest.

I tensed and stepped back. My hand reached for my blade, still strapped to my thigh. One thought: This is it.

But he just unbuckled the strap. “Here. Put this over there for me, will you? My back is still fucking killing me, and this thing is heavy.”

My brow furrowed. “What? Why?”

“Just put it over there.”

He spoke so casually, like there was nothing at all unusual about what he was asking me to do.

I took the scabbard from him. I didn’t know how he carted this thing around all the time—it was, indeed, outrageously heavy, so much so that I had to strain all my muscles to keep from letting it slip.

I did as he asked and laid it against the wall.

Raihn wandered two steps away, leaving me closer to his weapon than he was.

It was all so nonchalant. But I know this was a performance. I’d spent months now studying Raihn’s every move. This was just like his fighting style. The magic hidden in brutish strikes.

I just didn’t understand why. I watched him, waiting for the trick.

He turned to me, then loosened another two buttons of his jacket, exposing several more inches of his bare chest. He leaned against the wall, then pulled apart the fabric, looked down at himself, and frowned.

“I got a nasty cut at the trial. Even the healing didn’t help it much.”

“You… what?”

“Do you think I should be concerned?”

I didn’t move.

He rolled his eyes at me. “Honestly. Just come here.”

I did. He held open the lapels of his jacket, his head tilted back against the wall—a broad triangle of bare skin, and his throat, completely exposed to me.

Me, who was armed.

While his sword was over there, out of his reach.

All at once, I understood what this was. What we were doing.

He was offering himself to me. He was presenting me a perfect opening. He knew it. I knew it. We both knew the other knew it.

I could kill him right now. It would take so little. I would plunge the blade right there, right in the center of that perfect expanse of skin. His blood would probably be warmer than the others I killed—I didn’t know why I thought that, only that I was almost positive it would be true. I wondered if he would clutch me as it ended. How his final breath would feel over my face.

“Well?” he said. “What do you think?”

I stepped closer.

Our bodies were nearly flush. The smell of him surrounded me. It hit me, what that element of it I hadn’t been able to place was.

He smelled like the sky. He smelled the way air felt as it rushed around you, freeing and terrifying and the most beautiful fucking thing you’ve ever experienced.

My fingertips touched his chest. His skin was warm. He had a few scars here, too, and a smattering of dark hair that was softer than I expected it to be. The sudden urge to flatten my palm against his skin, run my hands across all those different textures, nearly overwhelmed me.

I’d envied vampires my entire life. But now, for the first time, I felt a sharp pang of sympathy for them.

Because suddenly, I understood what it was like to be hungry.

It was fucking excruciating.

“Hm,” I said flatly. “Looks serious.”

“I was concerned you might think so.”

I dragged my stare away from his chest, up the elegant cords of muscle of his throat, up to his lips—all promise, etched into the delicate curve of a smile that communicated so many things he didn’t say.

I imagined that if I killed him here, that smile would linger.

“Your heart is beating fast,” he murmured. “You must be very concerned for my well-being.”

I let out a shaky breath that I tried to pass off as a laugh.

And I didn’t move—couldn’t move—my fingers still brushing his skin, as his hand lifted to my face. I let him touch me, too. Let the immaculate rough brush of his knuckles caress my cheek, then unfold over the angle of my jaw. His thumb lingered, slowly moving over the curve of my mouth, my lower lip.

“Or are you afraid?”

The smile had faded. It was a real question.

And the answer petrified me, because I was not afraid, and that was the most terrifying thing of all.

I could open his shirt, slide my hands over the expanse of his chest, and thrust my poison blade right here—right into his heart. He could tear away this ridiculous delicate spiderweb of a dress and cut me open.

The two of us could burn each other up.

My eyes lifted to his. I had never looked at them at such a distance before. I realized they looked red because they were comprised of so many different threads of color—near-black and honey-gold and coffee-brown and even little glints of bright crimson. So many disparate pieces that shouldn’t fit together. Just like him. Just like me.

And it was there, in his eyes, that I found the truth that should have broken me.

Yes, we could kill each other here. We were offering ourselves to each other.

But neither of us would.

“No,” I whispered. “I’m not afraid.”

I didn’t notice my lips had curled until his thumb moved, tracing the shape of that smile as if it was something worthy of reverence.

“Are you going to kill me, Oraya?”

I didn’t run. Didn’t move. Instead, I lay my palm flat against his chest.

I surprised even myself when I replied, “Not tonight.”

His hand slid from my face and swept a stray strand of black hair from my cheek, smoothing it to the side. But instead of withdrawing, his fingers tightened around my hair—clutching it, but not pulling, as if he was trying to convince himself to let me go and failing.

“You might destroy me anyway.”

I saw it here, in this moment. Want. Desire.

And I knew what it was for vampires to desire someone like me. I knew it so well that it should have sent me running.