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“You make it sound so simple.”

“For me, it was,” I confess, feeling so much truth in that. “Maybe it shouldn’t have been. But maybe you’ve been away for a long time and you don’t know how disconnected our society has become.”

I consider the most peculiar example to share to someone who’s been gone for decades. “We date onappswhere we list out what we’re looking for like we’re buying groceries.”

Her forehead creases. “What’s anapp?”

“You’re single, right? We could totally get you onto a dating app and find someone who’s seriously into horns. Everything is a fetish for someone.”

Again, she shakes her head like she can’t believe the conversation we’re having. “It’s been so long since I’ve talked to someone from my old realm.” She gestures toward her horns. “You can see why I didn’t have the option to return home, fetish-friendly datingappsor not.”

“How did you get horns, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Everything about her that was open a second ago shuts. “That’s a complicated and unhappy story. Maybe another time. What I will say is that I was stolen from your world and taken to a place so awful it doesn’t have a name. It’s like where Nicodemus is and that’s why I can’t bring him back. I made an agreement when I escaped, and to renege on that deal puts this realm at risk.”

It feels like I got slapped by the person who was supposed to give me ice cream. “So you’re going to let me die?”

Taken aback, she says, “No.”

“Then I’ll just stay in this poolforeverand call that a life?”

“No, you will renounce your hold on Nicodemus. Tell him you no longer return his affection and never think of him again. You will be amply cared for by your three remaining family members, and he will endure the fate he chose.”

I glare at her, displaying my disappointment and extreme disgust. “Oh,honey, you really have no idea who I am.”

“You are a woman in a strange land who doesn’t know the first thing about surviving adversity.”

I blurt a sick laugh. “Wow, you really got this one wrong.”

More heated, she snaps, “Your case is hopeless—you must see that.”

“All I see is your desperation.Yoursurrender. And sure, I think you probably earned that, but for the first time in my life, I know exactly what I’m fighting for and I won’t stop until I win or I die. I will never cast Nico away and you shouldn’t want me to.”

My hands ball into fists and I think I feel soft fur against my neck. “Because right matters, and what happened to youwasn’tright. What happened to Nico—what’s happening to him this second—isn’tright. The difference, and I’m really sorry about this, is that Nico has someone who will fight for him. I wish you’d had that—I really do. But just because you suffered horrors and had to fight alone doesn’t mean that Nico has to share your fate.”

The pain seizes me suddenly, a blade entering and exiting my chest, piercing my heart. I can’t even scream. I just look down, seeing nothing where I know a blade exists.

Nico was stabbed through the heart and so was I.

Chapter58

Nico

Pain.

Purpose.

The never-sated beast calledviolence.

My life wasn’t always this.

Hollow years of disconnection fed into decades of cold detachment. Exacting trials, the constant measuring of worth and rank.

I struggle with evasive memories that appear and then vanish in this frustrating game whose sole objective is distraction. I don’t care whether I’m able to catch my mercurial remembrances, only that my mind remains occupied. That is the only strategy I have the power to implement, the only way to prevent a target from being painted on my heart’s one true desire.

No, don’t think of her. The past. Yes, my history. Brothers—I had a dozen, all unified in only one subject: my selection as their designated prey. Too young, too small, and then too much of a threat when I grew older, larger, and stronger than they ever were. Twelve against one, my life in a cage match, prepared me for the future I would find beyond the hilly town where my life began.

A father—he gambled too much, raged too much, abused too much. A family devoid of warmth. A mother who grew cold and hard, her heart closed too tightly to ever bloom again, at least with us. She fled into herself years before the queen offered her a way out. But I was long gone by the time she physically left for a foreign land where she hopefully began her life again. I like to think the damage that was done wasn’t irreparable, but I have my doubts.