Fuck yes. This is what I wanted.

“Tell me why you really brought me this,” she hisses. “A test? A trap? What game are we playing right now?”

For a moment, all I can do is stare at her—this wild, reckless creature who sees the monster in me and snarls right back. “The same game we’ve been playing since you got here. Move, countermove. Disarm, attack. You draw blood, I draw more.”

Do it. Hurt me. Make me feel it.

She releases me with a disgusted sound and shoves at my chest. “The toy is going to bed. Enjoy your brooding, or lurking, or whatever it is demented gods do to pass the time.”

It’s too abrupt. Too much like a retreat. I want to keep poking at this woman and seeing what snarls out of her, finding hard lines and all the little things she craved when she was bleeding on the altar. I tell myself this is how monsters deal with any prey they toy with. They find weaknesses. They make it hurt.

My hand closes around her wrist. “Wait.”

A frown tugs at her lips. I can practically see her pondering all the ways she could break my hold.

“Let me show you the library.”

What the fuck? I want to swallow the words back. Pretend they never happened, because why would I be stupid enough to invite her there?

The Devaliant blinks. “What?”

“The library,” I grit out, because apparently my mind and mouth have decided to mutiny. “I want you to see it.”

There. I’ve committed now.

Dumbass.

Emotions flicker across her features. I tense, waiting for her to laugh in my face. To throw my offer back at me with a sneer.

But then—

“Okay,” she breathes. “I’d like that very much.”

I can’t look at her. Can’t breathe through whatever this is cracking open behind my ribs. I need to dig it out.

But instead, I just turn and lead her down the hall. I feel her stare between my shoulder blades as I push the library doors open.

She steps inside and sucks in a sharp breath, taking in the high arched ceilings, stained glass throwing color everywhere. A staircase circles up and up, railings wrapped in glowing roses. And the books. Hundreds of thousands of leather-bound tomes, scrolls, and stone tablets in a thousand dead tongues.

It’s one of my most prized possessions, this library. The only surviving piece of my life Before—a repository of my people’s history. Our language, our craft, the legacy of our magic before the war ripped my mother’s territory apart. Turpori is now temporarily split between Asteria and Nyholm until my brother and I reclaim it.

And I let a human pass the threshold. A Devaliant. The last woman in the realms who should ever see this sanctuary.

Amara’s right. I’m out of my mind.

“It’s incredible,” the Devaliant breathes. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

She tips her head to take in the tiered balconies and the domed skylights, reverence softening her features. This is the first time something of mine has moved her to awe. I want to trap that expression beneath glass just so I can keep it.

In truth, my library is a rather modest collection by Asterian standards—a few hundred thousand volumes as opposed to the millions that line the archives of Alexios’ palace. But to mortal eyes, I imagine it seems vast.

The Devaliant runs light fingers over the spines. “I can feel the power in each one,” she murmurs. “Like a current. It’s almost alive.”

I go still, a sudden wariness tightening my muscles. “Magic leaves a mark. In the right hands, a drop of power can rewrite reality.”

And in the wrong ones, it can raze entire cities.

If she hears the catch in my voice, she doesn’t let on. “I’ve never seen so many books. How old are they? How old are you?”

“A few are as ancient as the first Eternals, before our realms divided. Others are more recent acquisitions from the fallen libraries of Scillari in the aftermath of the war.” I flash her a smile. “As for my age—I’m a thousand. Old enough to have collected plenty of perverse pastimes.” I lean in, breathing my next words into her ear. “And young enough still to enjoy them.”

She shivers. “And luring wayward Vartenan royalty to their doom? Is that a recent hobby?”

“What can I say? I’m always in the mood for new experiences.”

The laugh that startles out of her is effervescent, and it sends a shrapnel burst through my withered excuse for a heart. What a lovely sound, her amusement. Musical.

She moves deeper into the stacks. I follow her, never more than a half-step behind, waiting for the inevitable moment when realization sinks in and her survival instincts roar to life. Remembering what I am, what she is.

But she doesn’t. The Devaliant has forgotten herself.

“There are more books here than in the entire palace in Hellevig. My sister, Theodora, would weep at the sight of it. Burst into flame out of pure, rapturous bibliophilia.”

I snort. “The scent of charred princess would be difficult to air out.”

That earns me another smile, this time more wistful. “Could you… send word to Theo? To let her know I’m okay?”

I should play gatekeeper. Should twist the knife until she understands exactly what it means to be at a monster’s mercy. And yet…

I’m not your jailer, I’d told her. And I meant it.

“Tomorrow,” I say gruffly.

The Devaliant gives me a grateful grin. “How do you have volumes from before the realms divided?” she asks as she continues down the stacks. “I thought all the records from that era were lost to the Great Burning when the Urnian Archives fell to human soldiers.”

“Not all. Some were smuggled out in the years leading up to the border wars between Asteria and Vartena when tensions were escalating.”

She pauses. “You fought in the war.”

Memories batter against the inside of my skull. The taste of ash, the screaming. My brother’s blood-slick hand clutching mine as his face twists in agony.

End it. Please. It hurts.

A blink, and I wrench myself back to the here and now. “Yes,” I say flatly. “I fought.”

“There aren’t many surviving books about the war in Hellevig.” Her voice goes soft, careful. “I heard Amalthea ordered most of them destroyed as part of her bargain with Alexios. But the ones we do have only tell the Vartenan side.” She fidgets, throwing me an apologetic look. “They say paying a tithe to the Eternal was better than losing more of our own. Alexios and the Dark King were killing us in large numbers, and nearly all of my family died before Amalthea…”

She notices my expression, the words dying on her lips. She must sense it—the sudden crackle of my power shivering through the air, the sparks of heat.

But the reckless creature barrels on.

“None of those accounts even mention what Vartenans did during the Godkiller Crusades—”

“Never call it that,” I cut her off, the words bitten out between my teeth. “Not to a god. Not if you want to keep breathing.”

I don’t tell her what we call it in Scillari. The Devouring. As if mere language could encompass the scope of that devastation, the breadth of all we lost. Everything they stole.

She swallows hard. “What should I call it?”

My smile is a dead thing, empty of warmth or mirth. “The war. The purge. The culling. Take your pick. But call it a crusade again, and we’re going to have a problem.”

“I wasn’t thinking.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

Sorry.

She’s fucking sorry.

Would she still be sorry if she knew? If she could see inside me, all the broken bits that used to be a brother, a son, a god meant to rule. Everything her family took from me.

I should tear into the fragile offering of her remorse and rip it to shreds. Even a creature like me can recognize the danger in it. The deadly, disarming lure.

“Be careful,” I warn her. “Compassion is a poisoned chalice to offer a beast.”