I meet his gaze and don’t flinch. “Yes, she’s alive. And you know what? She’s my assignment, not yours.”

A blade to the belly would be kinder than this. If he saw even a glimpse of how she’s crawled under my skin…

He’d destroy her. Tonight.

In our native tongue, we had a word for this feeling. Byargski. The gnawing dread when the thing you want most is slipping through your fingers and you’re powerless to stop it. That bone-deep certainty that a reckoning is bearing down on you like an avalanche.

And right now? That reckoning is wearing my brother’s face, and it’s out for blood.

“Swear it,” Bastien says. “Swear you haven’t Claimed her. That you haven’t soulbonded with her.”

“I haven’t.” Not a lie. “She doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

I say it like my chest doesn’t ache when she smiles, when she breathes, when she exists in the same space as me. Because none of it matters; I’m still going to end her. That hasn’t changed.

But I need to be convincing.

“Fuck’s sake, Bas. It’s been centuries since I took my time killing a Devaliant, and this one has a mouth that’s good for more than talking.” I shrug. “She’s a nice piece of ass to enjoy while I’m bored. It’s just fun.”

His expression goes colder. “Fun. They aren’t meant for fun. Not after what they did.” There’s a fine tremor running through him now. “I’ve seen the older sister. You know why they glow like that. Why are you keeping her?”

There it is—another fracture in his control. A hitch in his breathing, there and gone too fast to track. And I see him. The real him, the brother I knew before the world broke him and carved out everything soft.

I wish I could serve Bryony up to him on a platter. Let him have his fill of Devaliant blood, drown himself in it, if it meant never having to see that look on his face again. That awful, empty despair. What kind of brother am I that I can’t even do that?

But I can’t. Because hating her turned into needing her when I wasn’t looking, and now I’m lost. Every time I picture carving into her and watching the light fade from her eyes, something inside me riots.

Sentiment. In its most lethal form.

“Because it’s not enough to tear a Devaliant apart,” I say, lying to him. Lying to myself. “I want to break her first. Get her to trust me. The other day, she tried telling me she wasn’t catching feelings, but she looks at me like what we’re doing is more than just fucking. You want to know how to hurt a Devaliant? Let her think she’s special. Then let her realize she’s been spreading her legs for the monster who’s going to slit her throat anyway. It was all a game she thought she could win.”

I don’t tell him how I traced her freckles last night while she slept. Don’t tell him I’m counting heartbeats instead of plotting where to stick my knife.

“That had better be all this is,” Bastien says. “You swore you’d never abandon me. Not for anything.”

He thinks I’ve lost my way. That this fixation has made me weak, compromised me. And maybe he’s right. Maybe Bryony has dug her claws in so deep I’ll still be trying to get them out ten thousand years from now.

Doesn’t make it hurt any less—the accusation, the doubt.

I square my shoulders. “I haven’t forgotten.”

For a moment, neither of us moves. Then Bastien steps forward. His fist cracks into my jaw hard enough to snap my head back. White-hot pain blooms, copper flooding my mouth.

“The princess gets five days,” he says, his voice lethally soft. “You can shatter her precious, preconceived notions and savor the betrayal in her eyes before you end her miserable existence. Carve her up. Bathe in her blood. Fuck her corpse, for all I care.”

His eyes are twin black holes. I wonder, distantly, if this is what mortals see before they die. If this is the Void that greets them, cold and eternal.

“But if you’re lying to me,” he breathes, “if you Claim her, or worse, soulbond with her? I’ll dig my fingers into your chest and crush your traitorous heart in my fist.”

I think he loves me in whatever broken way he still can.

I think he hates Devaliants more.

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37

BRYONY

THE FIRST TIME I let a man fool me, he cut open my throat.

Five months after my father died, the court decided we’d mourned enough. Summer meant festival time in Luceni, and nobles from across Vartena came to dance, drink our country’s wine, and meet the three princesses of marriageable age.

Percival Whitworth was from Brevig. He asked my cousin Odessa to dance first—proper protocol—but his eyes never left me. Not once.

He had this smile. One dimple, right corner. The kind that makes something low in your belly tighten. When he took my hand for a waltz, I noticed that he had a deep voice that made me blush. His hand at my waist felt different than the dance instructor’s. Warmer. Intentional.

After, he’d poured wine into a goblet and handed it to me. “Show me the festival,” he’d said.

We wandered between the stalls that servants had spent days setting up on palace grounds. Lanterns were lit everywhere, strung from trees and posts. The air had smelled like cinnamon and summer flowers.

I remember his laugh. The way his fingers brushed mine and his palm settled on my lower back. Now I understand—a princess who rarely left the palace made for easy prey. I heard stories on my father’s knee about wrathful gods, but I was not warned about what men do to the women who anger them.

So when Percival Whitworth asked me to follow him into the woods, I went without hesitation.

His lips were soft. That surprised me. I liked kissing, the weight of someone else’s mouth on mine, the warm press of a man’s body. I’d only kissed two boys years before that, behind columns during dance lessons. This felt more real.

Until his hand shoved up my skirts.

I pushed against his chest. “Stop.”

His grip tightened. His eyes changed as he pushed back harder and rougher.

“No.” The word felt strange in my mouth. Princesses weren’t supposed to say it; we were taught to nod and smile and agree. “No.”

“Shut up,” he hissed, all that charm vanishing like it had never existed. “You can’t be all that different from your slut sister.”

He pressed a blade to my neck to quiet me.

I struggled anyway. A guard on patrol heard me and intervened. Percival didn’t run or cower, just stared down at me while the guard’s sword pressed into his back, like I was the one who’d done something wrong. Like I’d disappointed him.

He slashed the dagger across my throat before the guard could get him off me. My scar is a reminder that a man will still smile when he plans to hurt you.

But some lessons you have to learn twice.

Evander’s words to his brother echo through my thoughts as I slide beneath the sheets.

Let her think she’s special. Then let her realize she’s been spreading her legs for the monster who’s going to slit her throat anyway.

I’ve always known what he is from that very first glimpse of him in the Hellevig palace woods. But hearing him talk about toying with me? It lodges like glass behind my ribs. It hurts so much I can’t breathe through it.

The door clicks open, spilling light across the floor.

“Bryony?” His voice is dark and intimate. Tender. Like he gives a damn.

Like he isn’t trying to soften me up to hurt me worse later.

I pretend to be asleep, like I’ve been here this whole time. As if I hadn’t sneaked into the gardens and eavesdropped on him with his brother. The mattress dips as he climbs in beside me, his palm skimming over my waist. My jaw clenches.