He drew closer. I was caged between him and the wall. My heart thundered in my chest, but it wasn’t fear now. Even the anger was distant. The panes of his face were in stark relief, eyes vivid and beguiling. The white strands of his hair fell toward me as he bent his head to look down.

“I do not pity you,” Raphael repeated. “Little viper, I find you irresistible.”

I scoffed. “That’s madness.”

“Because you make me mad,” he growled. His words were like lightning in my veins, electrifying, terrifying. His hand came to my cheek, brushing my hair aside. All my thoughts halted. Moments ago, I’d feared death. Now, I wasn’t sure what to expect. For Raphael to take me back to the castle, or to chastise me for being careless.

What I didn’t expect was for him to kiss me.

He grabbed my cheeks and captured my lips. I stiffened in surprise, unsure and unsteady. I’d never kissed anyone. But Raphael was patient, coaxing. Desire stirred deep inside me, a wick catching fire with every brush of his tongue. He guided me, and my blood warmed, desperation lighting in my veins. His taste was potent and all at once it was everything to me. There was no room where a vampire had been killed, no enemy kingdoms, no spymaster dogging at my heels.

There was only me, Raphael, and this burning tension that had ignited.

Want him. It didn’t matter I only had half a clue what I was doing. He drew me deeper into the kiss, his other hand coming around my side and pressing me against him. He tasted like darkness and temptation. I lifted my hands to his head, pulling him closer. He groaned against my lips at the movement, and I arched at the sound. More. I wanted more of that. My tongue curled in his mouth, a bold exploration.

Then it found the point of his fang. Copper colored the kiss at once.

I jerked back.

Blood.

Raphael didn’t press me into another kiss, but he didn’t move back. His red eyes were lit ruby red, the glow of a vampire who just had blood. Gods damn it. The taste remained in my own mouth. A strange tingle coated my lips, as if I could feel his absence.

Raphael kissed me.

I wanted him to do it again. Before common sense chased away the blissful feeling that had started in my body, before I remembered that the perfect, handsome face before me was normally topped by a crown.

He went still. Waiting. Assessing.

If I reached for him, he’d let me kiss him. Despite all my inexperience, I knew that with every fiber of my being.

“Raphael, you promised me one more answered question. Do you believe this system is fair, with the blood dens and the humans?” The strong ruling the weak?

I wished I could have been surprised when he finally gave his answer.

“Yes.”

There was no more kissing after that.

And as Raphael escorted me back to my chambers—across from his own—I came to another conclusion.

It wouldn’t be enough to translate the grimoire.

I would need to steal it.

The necromancer that Raphael had failed to locate—I’d find them. I’d give them the book.

I’d give the monsters something to fear.

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Chapter Forty-Three

I had lived in rags for the better part of my life at this point. Rags were bordering on an overstatement, actually, since even the most worn material was quickly commandeered by those bigger and stronger. There had been nights I’d wished more strongly for fresh, soft, dresses than I had food.

And I would happily have agreed to never wear anything but those rags again if it meant I didn’t have to endure one more minute of this dress fitting. Between Amalthea’s exacting sense of aesthetics and standing half-naked while two vampires worked to mold the tarps to me, tension had every muscle in my body on the brink of cramping.

“No, that’s not quite right,” Amalthea murmured to the seamstress for what must have been the tenth time since we’d arrived.

The seamstress obliged and moved the bodice a sliver higher.

It was three days after I’d first come here with Amalthea. Three days since I’d been cornered by Titus. Three days since I’d kissed Raphael in the blood den. Now, I was standing on a raised platform like a mannequin. Amalthea went back and forth over hemlines and skirt designs and sleeve shapes and everything else I’d never wanted to know about with the vampiress shop owner and head seamstress, Bertha. At my feet, another vampire was pinning the skirt in place.

I’d soaked the fabric of my back with how much I was sweating, but I endured it. Apparently there were no human dressmakers to help. Thea is here. I repeated those three words over and over again like a spell. Thea is here, Thea is here. She wouldn’t let anything happen. And maybe I wanted to prove Titus wrong. To prove myself wrong.

When Amalthea had proposed dress shopping… it wasn’t that I wanted for clothing by any stretch, but I hadn’t wanted to disappoint her. Friendship was a foreign thing for me. The closest I’d come was a relationship with my half-brother, but that had been secret.

“Maybe a jot lower,” Amalthea mused, and once again the shift was adjusted. “Sam, what do you think?”

I thought I’d rather skip whatever event this dress was intended for, but that would hurt Thea’s feelings. Instead I said, “I’ll defer to you.” Because I couldn’t tell the difference between this position and any of the past dozen.

The witch nodded.

A sharp pain hit my calf. “Ouch!”

“Oh, my lady, I’m… sorry…” The seamstress pinning my legs trailed off, seeming transfixed. She’d accidentally stuck me with a pin.

She was still, in the way only vampires could be, staring at the spot of blood that had spilled onto the fabric.

I was frozen like a rabbit that had realized it was all too close to a hungry kobold.

“Be more careful,” Amalthea snapped. Her tone was harsher than I’d ever heard, but already the tingle of magic lit around me, the slight pain disappearing. In her hand was a now-blank card that must have contained the healing magic. She’d activated it almost immediately.

“Oh, my lady, I am so, so sorry,” the vampire at my knees stammered. “It was an accident, I swear. Please don’t tell the king!”

Bertha pushed the girl away. “My sincere apologies, Lady Samara. I assure you, I do not tolerate this sloppiness in my shop. I’ll see that the girl is dealt with.”

I stiffened at the tone in the seamstress’s voice. “What do you mean by that?”

“A proper beating, I assure you. Something that will make an impression no matter the immortal healing. And of course, I’ll pull out her fangs.”

I stared at Bertha and her certainty faded a fraction. “I can pull the fangs out again if that’s not to your satisfaction. Or would you like to administer a beating of your own as well?”

For a moment, I was so angry I was struck still. Always with this brutal, barbaric form of justice. When the shop owner parted her lips again to add whatever else to the girl’s unending list of punishment, I found my voice.

“You won’t be doing any of that.”

The girl cringed.

“Of course, Lady Samara, I didn’t mean to imply I would take away this privilege from King Raphael. If he prefers to take his justice personally, I would never dream of interfering.”

Whatever the girl thought Raphael would do, it had her shaking. After what I’d seen in his court, I understood why. I’d never seen a vampire so afraid, not even Janessa when Raphael had ordered her lover’s death. I thought of them as fearsome, near all-powerful creatures.

But looking at her peering up at me with beseeching eyes, lip quivering, all I could think was that I had no doubt looked the same way at Nelson more times than I cared to remember.

“To be clear,” I said slowly, “in your view, justice for mistakenly pricking my skin with one of the several hundred pins currently wrapped around me warrants beating and mutilation.” Before I could be misinterpreted again, I added, “Or worse. To you, that’s fairness?”