Shut up. Stop thrashing. Hold still.

I jerk upright, gulping air. Sun slants over the stone floor, the rugs with golden threads, the bookshelves. Not my room in Hellevig.

The Wolf’s tower.

By the window is a silver tray piled high with covered dishes. The competing scents of food hit me again, threatening to unbury the memories.

I force myself out of bed. Folded fabric sits next to the tray—a gown. The blue silk is so sheer it’s almost transparent, adorned with lace trim and pearls alongside yellow gemstones on the bodice. This isn’t a garment that lasts through multiple wears. Neither are the underthings it came with—those are the kind meant to be admired by a lover before he tears them off.

Heat floods my face, thinking of the Wolf picking out each scrap of silk. Picturing how it would cling.

How it would tear.

Theodora’s voice echoes in my mind. You need clothes, Bry. You can’t walk around in a tattered cloak with nothing underneath. Now get dressed.

So I do. I shove into the ridiculous underthings and yank the gown over my head. Of course, it fits perfectly, hugging close to my body in all the places he’d want to stare at.

I manage to stab the last tiny pearl button through its loop before the walls start closing in, before my lungs turn to stone and the room tilts and blurs, and I’m drowning in air and I can’t breathe can’t think can’t stay here another second.

I run. The corridor stretches until—there.

Windows ahead, a burst of green past the glass. I push through the doors, heaving air into my constricted lungs. In. Out. In. Out. Letting the perfume of roses fill my senses.

Finally, when I manage to return my breathing to normal, I look up. The garden spreads wild and free, nothing like Hellevig’s sharp-cut hedges. Climbing roses choke the walkways and twist around every tree trunk and branch, every crumbling statue and fountain. Beneath it all is a faint electric hum that prickles my skin—magic.

The Wolf’s magic.

For a reckless moment, I consider running. Trying to get to Theo—

Stop. My bare wrist is a mocking reminder that I’m a human illegally in Scillari and stripped of the only thing that might offer some security.

No mark. No protection. Just meat for the taking.

A snarl tears from my throat. “Fuck.”

I kneel in the middle of the roses, scrabbling my hands in the dirt. I have to grab onto something. I need to hurt something. Thorns gouge my palms as I tear at the weeds, fistful after fistful. Blood slicks my hands, vines tangle around my wrists, but I keep going. I can’t stop—

“Most people rest when they’re injured.” The Wolf’s words cut through my spiraling thoughts, equal parts amused and annoyed. “You didn’t touch your breakfast. Not hungry? Or are you too determined to rip up my garden to bother?”

I stare down at my shredded palms. “Why do you care?”

“I’m trying to decide if you’re an ungrateful brat or working to earn that execution I promised you.”

I don’t answer. “Did you need something?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. I need you to stop spattering your blood all over my roses. It upsets them.”

An incredulous laugh leaves me. He can’t be serious. But no, there’s no trace of humor in his voice.

“Keep going the way you are, and those roses will tear you apart before I do,” he adds.

Heat crawls up my neck as I realize what a mess I am. Panting like an animal, gown ripped to shreds, caked in filth and blood. Tearing up his garden as if I could unearth the rot in me if I dig deep enough.

“Look at me.” A quiet command. “At my face, not the dirt.”

Finally, I drag my gaze up to his. It’s a mistake to look at the Wolf directly. At those golden wings gleaming in the sunlight, at the dark hair falling over his brow as if I’d somehow disturbed his rest. He gives me a searching look, lingering on my hands. On my broken, muddy fingernails and the scrapes from the thorns.

“I didn’t piece this body back together just so you could damage it again,” he says, almost gently.

For a moment, the Wolf is gone, and it’s the male staring at me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost call the expression on his face concern. But I do know better. This has nothing to do with me; he’s probably worried that his toy might be too damaged to entertain him.

I shove to my feet. “Take me to Vartena. I need—there are things I have to do. People who need to pay.”

It’s as close to begging as I’ll ever get.

The Wolf tucks in his wings and studies me once more—assessing the destruction, the obvious signs of my unraveling. I hate that I’ve let him see me this weak.

“I’ll consider it,” he says. “After.”

“After what?”

“After,” he repeats slowly, “we go inside, and I finish stitching you back together without you bleeding all over my property.”

“I didn’t agree to be your prisoner,” I snap. “That wasn’t in our negotiation last night.”

“Tough shit. I’m not negotiating with you right now. You don’t even have clothes that you haven’t destroyed.”

My teeth clench. I glance down at myself again, taking in the ruin I’ve made of the gown. “I don’t want silks,” I say flatly.

His attention rakes over me. “Amara’s the one who picked out the dress. If I’d known you planned on mutilating my roses, I would have asked her to bring you something more…” He waves a hand. “Durable.”

“I’d like something practical.”

“You’re full of demands today, aren’t you? Heal me, clothe me, send me home.” He snaps his wings in irritation. “Do you dictate terms to every god generous enough not to gut you, or am I special?”

“If you want me to be your nemesis in this sick game, I have needs.”

He stares at me, head tilted. Surprised. As if I’ve caught him off guard.

I wait for him to put me in my place. To snarl that I’m nothing, that I’m only a human destroying his property with no right to make demands. That he’ll grind me under his boot until I remember what I am. What I am not.

But instead, he steps closer. “Let’s pretend I give in to this little tantrum and send you back right now like you asked. No weapons, no preparation. Not even a decent pair of shoes. Where will you go? What’s your plan?”

I glare at him. “I’ll stay alive long enough for you to get what you want out of this. Don’t fuss.”

“Consider me fussed. I’m invested. And I protect my investments until I’m finished with them.”

It takes every ounce of self-control not to spit in his face.

The Wolf makes a low sound. His fingers skim my jaw, tilting my chin up. “Who stabbed you? Your uncle? Another gutless noble? Vengeance and justice make a fine pair, Devaliant. Give me a name, and I’ll give you their corpse for trying to steal your death from me.” His head dips, lips grazing my cheek as he breathes, “Who do I hurt, vicious girl?”

It would be easy to give him a name. To let him unsheathe those lovely, lethal claws and ruin everyone who’s ever wronged me. There is violence in his voice, in the too-careful way he holds himself. He would make such a glorious carnage of all my enemies.

But that’s not what I want.

I curl my fingers around his wrist, noticing the way his pulse jumps against my palm. “No.”

He raises an eyebrow. “No?”

“I won’t give you a name. You don’t get to claim my revenge. I’ll take back everything they stole from me with my own hands, in my own time.”

Slowly, his lips curve into a smile. “One day, you’re going to set entire realms ablaze with the force of all that fury. And I want to be there to watch them burn.”

“You’d have to let me live long enough to see it through,” I say, caught in his gravity. In this strange, violent kinship.

And I realize that my death on the Duehavn changed me just like that first one at age five. I woke up different. This time, as someone with a purpose, and that purpose is to make the world bleed. And the Wolf? He’s the perfect god to draw out every dark thing that came back with me from the Void and expose all my ugly, snarling pieces to the light. To shape me into a monster as hungry and vicious as he is.