“Have you ever been in love?”

My brows leapt. I wasn’t expecting that question. I didn’t know how to answer.

I loved Farrow. He was one of my closest friends. But was I ever in love with him?

Strange that it wasn’t Farrow’s name on my lips as I watched Vale’s serious profile, silhouetted by the white firelight. And I was grateful that he didn’t wait for my answer—or perhaps, heard the truth in the lack of one.

“I had only one great love,” he went on. “The House of Night. I helped build an empire. I shaped it with my blade and blood. I gave my king, my men, and my kingdom my unquestioning and all-consuming devotion. If you have ever loved something that much, you know that there’s no wine sweeter, no drug stronger. And when it fell…”

His throat bobbed. He stared into the fire.

“I was angry for a very long time. I came here to escape the memory of my failure—but then I spent every day dreaming of returning to the House of Night. Dreaming of rebuilding what I had let fall.”

“Then it’s good you’re going back,” I said, my mouth dry.

It’s good, I had to repeat to myself.

Vale needed to leave. He needed to leave to save himself and to save us. He’d murdered an acolyte of the White Pantheon. Maybe Thomassen had been right. Maybe Vale’s presence here—his presence as a tainted child of Nyaxia—did only worsen our fates.

What did it say about me that, despite all of that, the thought of Vale leaving made my soul ache?

I fidgeted with the rag because I needed something to do with my hands. “You must be happy to go home.”

Vale’s gaze turned to me.

“I thought I would be,” he said. “But perhaps they, like your friend, want something I can’t give them. Maybe they want some part of me I have already given to someone else.”

I let my eyes fall down to the bedspread—to my hand pressed against it, and Vale’s atop it, those graceful fingers stroking the shape of the delicate bones at the back of my hand the way a musician stroked the strings of an instrument.

My heart thrummed so loudly in my chest.

And looking away didn’t save me from Vale’s stare, because I could feel his eyes the way one can sense a wolf stalking them in the forest.

Except I wanted to be caught.

The bed shifted as he turned to face me fully. He leaned a little closer. His scent surrounded me.

“Why did you come here,” he asked, “when you realized they’d come for me?”

“Because my work isn’t done.”

A lie. It was as done as it was going to be.

“Look at me, Lilith.”

Vale rarely said my name. The sound cut me down to the bone, shivered and swirled just as it did when he wrote it over the page.

Look at me, my sister had begged.

And I felt just as frightened now, as I forced my eyes to lift, forced myself to meet Vale’s stare.

Once it had me, I was utterly ensnared. I couldn’t hide.

Run, a voice inside me whispered.

Stay, another begged.

As Vale’s fingertips reached for my cheek. Stroked my cheek, my jawbone. Brushed the bridge of my nose. He wore the same expression that he had the day I showed him his blood—the day I realized, for the first time, that the only thing more beautiful than his blood was the expression of amazement on his face.

Tears pricked my eyes.

“You want more than I can give you,” I whispered.

“I can’t imagine that ever being true,” he murmured. “Because I want only you, Lilith. Whatever of you I can have. I’ll take one night. One hour. One minute. Whatever you want to give me. I’ll have it.”

My breath was ragged, choppy. It burned in my chest with all the emotion I realized I could no longer smother.

I had never been enough.

I had never been able to give any of them enough—enough time, enough love. Everyone gave up so much trying to get more from me, and now I did the same for them. From the moment I was old enough to understand my eventual fate, I made every decision knowing this. Knowing that I couldn’t be enough. Knowing that I would wither too fast, like a flower in an early frost.

I didn’t realize how much I had liked that Vale didn’t see that in me until this moment, when I knew that it had to end.

“I’m dying,” I choked out.

I didn’t know why I said it. It didn’t really matter, now, when he was leaving and the gods were damning us and the whole world seemed to be ending.

“I’ve been sick my entire life. Every year I don’t know if it’s the last. I’ve been leaving this world since I was brought into it. No one wants to believe it, but it’s the truth. It always has been. I’m—I can’t stay.”

You’re asking for more than I can give.

His hands had come up to my face. He held me firmly, so I couldn’t look away from him.

I could always see the moment things changed, once they knew—the moment they started grieving me while I was still alive, the moment me standing in front of them stopped being enough.

But his gaze was firm.

“Whatever you wish to give me,” he repeated, slowly, like he wanted to make sure I understood. “I’ll have it.”

I didn’t know that I had been waiting my entire life to hear those words until now.

I wasn’t accustomed to goodbyes. I never thought I would need to be the one to say them. It’s so much easier to be the one who leaves first.

I could leave now and spare myself a goodbye I wasn’t ready for.

But instead, I put my hands on either side of Vale’s face, a mirror of how he held me.

I pulled him close, and I kissed him.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I wasn’t sure why I had expected the kiss to be fierce and animalistic, but that first one was quiet, gentle. Sweet.

Vale’s lips were softer than I thought they’d be. His beard tickled my chin. At first, he just brushed his mouth over mine, like he wanted to start by knowing the shape of it, knowing the way I tasted.

Then, his lips parted, the kiss deepening, the touch of his tongue—shockingly shy—meeting mine. My head was cloudy and fuzzy in a way that had nothing to do with my exhaustion.

A serrated breath ghosted over my lips—and that, that one little sign of the intensity of his desire, lit something on fire inside me. Suddenly Vale’s closeness, the warmth of his bare skin, the taste of him, the smell of him, overwhelmed me.

A tiny, wordless sound escaped my throat, and I kissed him back this time. Harder. Deeper.

He met my fervor with enough enthusiasm to leave me breathless.

He held my face firmly, his tongue exploring my mouth, each kiss bleeding into the other. Gods, I had never kissed anyone like this—each movement so intuitive. I never had to stop and guess what he wanted. It was the kind of ease I thought other people must always feel.

One of his hands moved to the back of my head, tangling in my hair. The other wandered down to my waist, his thumb slipping between the buttons of my shirt, brushing my bare skin. That one touch made me gasp.

His tongue rolled against mine, then he withdrew. In my fervor, we’d both fallen back onto the bed.

Everything was hazy, distant.

“You’re injured,” I said softly.

His chuckle was low and thick. “Incredible how much better I already feel.”

But his smile faded, and he gave me a long stare—and I knew what this wordless silence meant, the question he was asking.

I parted my thighs, opening myself to the rigid press of his desire between us.

His eyes darkened, the desire in them so sharp it cut me open, and it occurred to me that maybe I should be afraid—that maybe the hunger I was seeing in Vale’s expression, feeling in the way he held me to the bed, was about more than sex.

I wasn’t, though. No, the fear came from somewhere else. Not from Vale’s roughness, but his tenderness.

He smoothed a strand of hair from my forehead.