He nods.

“That’s why I can kiss you.” I look up and blow out the breath that’s been trapped in my chest. “There’s nothing wrong with my magic.”

I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but my relief is so profound, I can’t help it.

Henry arches a brow. “You thought you were moving miles of vampire-infested forest from home, with a man who hates you, while your magic wasn’t working?”

“Yes.”

He whistles low. “You’re braver than I thought.”

I shrug a shoulder. “Or more reckless.”

He smirks. “Or just a complete idiot.”

I’m too shocked he’s making a joke right now not to laugh. “Did you think that’s what I would be? A pretty idiot?”

He smiles sheepishly.

“You must be pretty Divine-damned disappointed.”

He laughs, and it’s a real laugh. He looks relieved for the lightness, but my skin itches. I can’t get out of this room and away from the uncomfortable intimacy soon enough. He probably thinks I’ll feel indebted by the secrets he’s shared, but I just want to run.

There’s a knot in my throat threatening to choke me. “I’m sorry about your sister,” I rasp.

I’m surprised by how much I mean it. I know what it’s like to watch someone dear to you slip away. I think of Aidia’s face in bed beside me the night before I left the city. I can’t imagine what I would do if I lost her. Just like I can’t imagine that he would let it go if he blames my family for what happened. He lost the sister he loved—and he died.

Then, there’s the matter of all the different ways he’s been killed. I may have finally trapped myself in the one mess I can’t kiss my way out of—an indestructible husband.

If I marry him tomorrow, I won’t have any escape.

An involuntary shudder ripples through me.

This sham marriage is so much more than I bargained for. I need to send a message to Kellan. I need Gaven to help me find a way out of here. I need at least three more creative ways to kill a man.

“Well, I appreciate you telling me, and I won’t share that with anyone. I feel quite refreshed and I’d like to go back to my room now,” I say as I turn away from him and press up to stand.

Henry’s gasp startles me. I freeze, standing on the ledge. I know what he’s seen, and I can’t believe my stupidity. My desire to escape left me exposed. I entered into this nude game of daring with him without considering that he might see the thing I’ve managed to keep hidden from everyone for years through carefully selected dresses and clothing that covers it up.

I meet his gaze over my shoulder. His eyes are narrowed and his jaw clenched.

“A gentleman would avert his eyes.”

His gaze lingers on my scars. “You’re to be my wife.”

“So you have a right to my body?” I ask, venom creeping into the words.

I’m mortified by the fury and pity in his eyes.

“Of course not. I thought—” He swallows. “I’m sorry. You were so comfortable in the library that I assumed and I shouldn’t have. I can leave and you can pull the string over there when you’re done and I will come lead you back to your room.”

We stand there, staring at each other over the water. The candlelight reflects off the surface. It casts an eerie glow on his face and stretches his shadow tall and strange on the wall behind him.

“Who did that to you?” he asks.

“Did what?”

His jaw ticks and his hands fist at his sides. “Who scarred your back? Who burned you, Harlow?”

The question leaves me breathless, my rage a great wave that never seems to crest. It just rises and rises until it’s too big for words. All at once, I’ve slipped out of the present and into the past.

The memory skips and jumps. The pain is too bright for it to connect. Aidia’s hand cool on my neck. “I’m sorry, Low. My heart…my heart…my heart—” Broken agony in her voice until I say, “My bones,” and she descends into sobs so intense I can barely make it out when she says, “Our blood.”

Aidia’s hushed voice in my ear. “This is the true beginning of your tale, Harlow. The hurt is not a dying ember—it’s the spark that helps you set this world on fire. The same place where the hurt seeps out is where the hope shines in.”

The brush of my fingers to the bumpy skin on my lower back returns me to the present. Those wounds never felt like a place where hope could live. Those beatings were meant to break me. Surviving them didn’t make me feel hopeful so much as transform me into a weapon to wound the world instead of a tool someone else could use.

I can’t remember the actual violence. But I remember the creeping horror—the awful inevitability of pain—the crushing, claustrophobic terror of having no way out.

Most of all, I remember the helplessness, and I will not be helpless again.

I let him look. I’ve spent so much time trying to keep anyone from seeing it, wearing carefully cut clothing, never being fully naked with lovers. I feel like I’m leaking vulnerability—like I’ve shown him where I’m tender and now I’m braced for a blow.

But Henry doesn’t move. He’s so still, I’m not certain he’s breathing.

Some part of me wants him to look—wants someone, anyone to bear witness to this secret burden I’ve carried for so long.

The desire to show my strength could work in my favor. Henry has already seen it. I may as well let him look his fill and see that I’m not so easily daunted.

“Harlow—who did this to you?” His voice is tight with anger.

Maybe he’s mad his bride isn’t pristine. Maybe he just wants to know my past so he can try to understand how to frighten me. He’ll be disappointed to learn that he can’t.

Henry waits for me to speak, his eyes drinking in the topography of my back.

I lick my lips. “How did you put it? To use your own words: This is what survival looks like.”

He swallows hard, his gaze tracing over the starry pattern at the very bottom of my spine, like he’ll be able to find the truth written there on my skin. I suppose that’s exactly what it is, but it’s impossible to read if you don’t know the language of this kind of violence.

“You are entitled to my future, Henry. Not my past.”

He holds my gaze, but I refuse to give him an inch. I know what he’s thinking—that he’s owed something because he shared with me. That’s the trap he tried to set. He can’t be mad at me for not stepping into it. I keep my chin up, my arms crossed over my chest, and turn to face him.

“Share if you want, but don’t expect me to feel obliged to do the same.”

Giving him this now might make him feel like we’re even, but it could also make him suspicious. I think it’s too soon for him to believe this is a realistic win. Just like how I don’t believe he was being magnanimous when he told me his secret. He wants sympathy.

“We all have our secrets, Harlow. But here, the difference in living and dying is knowing which ones keep you alive and which ones will cost you. Those marks are not…” His voice trails off, his face torn between anger and confusion. “Natural,” he says finally. “I’m not judging you, but as my wife, people will always be looking for your weakness because you will be my weakness. If someone here sees those scars, you need to be steadier. If they see a place to hurt you, they will use it.”

“Sounds like I’ll be right at home.”

In all our time together, Henry has been at ease, but now he shifts uncomfortably, water stirring around him as he crosses his arms, then lowers them back to his sides. It’s as if he can’t decide how to rebuild the wall that this unwanted intimacy tore down.

I know the feeling. It’s not as if I didn’t expect this to come up. In a few days, he’ll see me naked, but I had hoped to reveal my secrets at a moment of my choosing, when they could be used to strategically disarm him, instead of leaving me feeling exposed.

He looks down at the rippling water and then back up at my eyes, and I know at once that—even if this started as a way to test me—whatever he’s feeling now is real.