The memories rise in a hungry tide. I take her hand, marveling at the contrast between our skin. At the glitter of mine against her pale luminance. “You wanted to know why you shine like this. The real reason you Devaliants are so damned pretty.” I graze my fingers over her cheek, whispering, “There’s no demi in your lineage. None of you is special. It’s tainted blood, vicious girl. Your ancestors devoured so much immortal flesh that it changed them. Polluted your bloodline. And they passed it down to you.”

My hand slides to the nape of her neck, twisting into her hair. A few rough tugs, and her head tips back, baring her throat. “All this exquisite skin I love marking up? It’s born from atrocity. Every time I look at you, it reminds me of the dead.”

A small sound escapes her. A tear trails down her cheek, and I watch its progress in mute fascination. I want to chase it with my tongue, lick into her mouth, and swallow down the broken sounds she makes until she understands that this is how it’s always going to end.

“Can you even imagine the violence it took to make me this monstrous?” I ask her. “And I’m monstrous down to my fucking soul, Devaliant. Your family made me this way. I want you to know that when I rip out your heart, it won’t be personal. Just prophecy. There’s an old saying in Scillari, Drevikt, vahn nevikt. In vengeance, rebirth.”

I bring her closer, until my lips brush her jaw on every word. “We’ll always rise from the ashes. And when we do, we’ll drag our enemies into the dark. We all pay for the sins of our ancestors in the end. You’ll just pay in blood instead of gold. And there’s a vicious sort of symmetry in that, isn’t there? The daughter of a house built on dead gods and devoured magic, destined to die and die and die again. Atoning for the crimes of history with the only coin we monsters trade in: suffering.”

I nip at her earlobe, swiping my tongue over the slight sting. Gratified when she shivers against me, hands coming up to clutch at my shoulders.

“If there’s any mercy to be found in this ugly world, it’s that mortal lives are so fleeting. Not like us, cursed to carry our hurts through the ages. It lingers and festers and eats us alive.”

I gentle my grip on her wrists. “Listen very carefully,” I say, cold and clipped. “You do not step over this threshold again, or I’ll strip the flesh from your body and use it to bind the histories of everything your bloodline has taken from me. You Devaliants and your wars and your bottomless fucking entitlement. Say you understand.”

I wonder if she can feel the animal snarl building in me, rabid and aching to fight. Because she just detonated a bomb in the no-man’s-land between us, and now I’ve been left to bleed out.

She only stares at me, her face full of an emotion I can’t name.

“Say something,” I snarl.

But she doesn’t. She just leans forward and slowly presses her cheek into the crook of my shoulder.

Stop. Stop. Fucking stop.

I don’t want this from her. I don’t want her to show me all the broken parts of her and remind me that, in another life, I could have loved her so damn much I bled with it.

Tough shit, Wolf. We don’t always get what we want.

I dig my fingers into her nape. “Say you hate me.”

Her lips are unbearably soft as they graze my jaw. She remains silent, just touching me. Getting up close, where I can still smell myself on her.

“I could make it happen,” I tell her. “I could make you hate me so much you’ll claw out your own heart just to be free of me.” I’m breathing hard, fighting for control. Losing. “Say it. Remind me what we are to each other.”

Her knuckles brush over my cheek. Her lips part on a gasp, and I’m lost. I slant my mouth over hers, swallowing down the startled moan. She opens for me, desperate. She tastes like rain and destruction. Like the end of worlds.

“Nothing’s changed.” I’m shaking, I realize. Trembling against her. “We’re just fucking each other. That’s all this is. Understand? It means nothing.”

She wraps her arms around me, and my chest heaves as she holds me close. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “Evander. It’s okay.”

I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I let her hug me like she’s trying to hold all my splintered pieces together.

“Let me have you,” I say, grasping at her clothes. What am I doing? What am I doing? “Forget everything I said before. Just let me have you again.”

“Ishkah,” she whispers against my lips.

I go still at the word, tempted to pretend I didn’t hear it. That’s her line written in the sand, but she’s already scuffed mine out, and why should I listen? She wants me; I can smell it on her. I can make her yield. Make her mindless.

But then she speaks again, and it’s barely louder than an exhale. But I feel it like a knife to my heart.

“I’m leaving.”

The words drop like a stone into water, rippling out and out. Because contained in them are so many things left unspoken.

“Amara’s waiting for me,” she continues, like she’s not gutting me alive. “After I left you last night, I wrote down everything I remembered in Caelestis about Rhosyn and left it on my desk. It… It’s an anagram. Onrhys is the word for ‘serpent’ in Lybräian. It’s a symbol of House Devaliant.” She wipes a tear away. “You mentioned black market parts to Amara, so it’s probably another reason for you to hate my family. But you deserve to know.”

My chest constricts. “Bryony,” I breathe.

“Let me say this. I owe you a truth before I go. My only non-negotiable.”

She reaches for my hand. Takes it between her own, and slowly, slowly, she pushes up her sleeve to reveal the neat row of scars along her inner arm.

“You asked about these. I want you to understand what they mean.” She guides my finger to the topmost mark, a jagged line of silver. “I once told you that after the Void, nothing feels real. Everything is fog and static. So I have a ritual.”

I frown, uncomprehending. Her smile is terribly gentle. Sad in a way I can’t bear.

“One,” she says softly. “Breathe. It’s always the first thing when I wake up on that altar. I force the air in and out of my lungs until I remember how they work.”

My throat closes up as understanding dawns. As the pieces slot into place, ugly and aching.

“Two. Feel.” Another scar, a second rung on the ladder. “Sensation, texture. The grit of stone, the chill of the altar.” She looks up at me through her lashes, and it’s like a punch to the sternum. “The brush of your hands on my skin.”

She traces the third mark, and I can’t look away. Can’t speak.

“Three. Name,” she continues. “They can take everything else, but they can’t have this. I am Bryony. I am my own, no matter how many times I die.”

The next scar is larger. Angrier. “Four. Present. When and where, even if I’m not sure I want to be there. The temple, the palace.” Her breath hitches. “This room. Your bed. With you so deep in me, I can’t tell where I end and you begin.”

I want to wrench my hand away. I want to lace our fingers together and never let her go.

“Five.” The last one. “Real. This moment, right here. You and me and the blood in our veins. Your heart against mine.” She laughs a little, but it sounds like a sob. “Us. This. It’s the realest thing I know, even if…”

Even if it has to end.

I squeeze my eyes shut. Try to breathe around the fist in my chest, the crush of it. Because this shouldn’t hurt so much.

“I’m so sorry for what they did to you.” Her voice is low. “And that’s not enough. I know it isn’t.”

There’s only the cadence of our breathing in the silence, the splintered pieces of us. She brings my palm to her cheek. Nuzzles into the contact, and I feel the wet slide of tears against my skin. The delicate flutter of her lashes.

“So this is what’s going to happen,” she continues. “You’ll let me leave here because that’s the bargain we struck. And then you’ll hunt me in Vartena, and when you catch me… it’ll be my death that settles the score. One insignificant mortal to balance the scales. It’s only fair, isn’t it? A tithe long overdue. So, kill me however you want. Do whatever makes the pain less for you.”