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His head cocked at the sudden question. “Safe.” Raphael regarded me for a moment. No doubt he saw I was unsatisfied by the answer. Taking pity on me, he moved and pointed to a table his body had blocked across the room.

Something in me unclenched, just slightly, when I laid eyes on it.

“There’s another option,” Raphael said slowly, like he didn’t want to startle me.

My shoulders tensed. “What?”

“Before I tell you, I want you to answer a question for me. Do you trust me to keep you safe?”

The wordnowas on the tip of my tongue before I even considered the question. Safe wasn’t a word that had applied to me in a long, long time. But as Raphael stared at me, red eyes warm and utterly still while he waited for my answer, it wasn’t so easy to spit the word out.

“I don’t know if I believe there’s such a thing as safety,” I admitted.

To my surprise, he didn’t tell me I was wrong. “That’s a fair answer, so let me change the question. Do you think anyone will do a better job keeping you safe than I would?”

“No,” I conceded.

Raphael nodded. “That’s right. As long as you’re here with me, dove, you’re mine. And I protect what’s mine. Ruthlessly.”

Ruthlessly. With dismembered hands and decapitated bodies. The thought should be chilling, especially given my aversion to violence. But… violence done to protect me felt altogether different than violence done against me.Hypocrite.

“Then let me place another card in your hand. Instead of scurrying off in a few days, you could stay longer and do one more task for me.”

I should say he was insane. Say there was no possible reason I’d stay. “What task?”

Raphael flashed a grin, just for a moment. “You could translate the grimoire for me.”

I blinked. Of all the things I’d expected… my gaze immediately landed on the enchanted book once more. I wanted to know its secrets, even if they were useless to a void like me.

“I told you I barely remember Old Runyk.” I’d had a knack for languages as a girl, something my mother had hoped would impress my father, but most of what I’d learned was forgotten.

“I have a library that would be at your disposal. I’m confident with enough time, you could decipher the text.”

“Why would I do that?” I demanded. What use did a vampire have for a witch-less grimoire?

“Because, if you do that, I’ll pay you five hundred gold pieces. Enough to not just start a new life as a beggar in the west, but to live like a queen.”

The offer was tantalizing.Too good to be true. “If you have hundreds of gold pieces lying around, you should give them to me anyway for getting you the grimoire. If not for me, you wouldn’t have been able to take it from the temple,” I reminded him.

“If you wanted payment for helping me retrieve the grimoire, you should have negotiated before,” he countered, with a smirk that made me want to hit him. “This is my offer. Five hundred gold pieces for the translation. While you work on it, you’ll live here, under my protection.”

But I’d still be working on his behalf. This was witch magic. It didn’t belong in a Vampire Kingdom. I didn’t belong here. “It’s treason.”

Raphael made a valiant effort to resist rolling his eyes. “Breaking me out of prison wasn’t?”

I flinched. “That was survival.”

“Then survive here, Samara,” he urged. “Thrive here. You’ve never had a chance to know yourself—I’ll give you that, and more.”

My heart slowed, the panic somehow easing, impossibly. For twelve years, my only thought had been how to survive the trials of each day. The only part of me I recognized now was the rat who would gnaw off a limb to survive.Could I betray my kingdom for the chance to find out I was something more?

“One thousand gold pieces,” I countered.

“A queenly sum indeed,” Raphael said, without so much as balking at the number. “It’s a bargain, then.”

I swallowed. For the second time, I’d made a deal with the vampire.

“Now, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”