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“There is a weak spot on all dokkalves. More than humans or litalves or your unseelie pets,” he tells me. “It is our eyes.”

There’s enough energy in me now to react. It’s slight—a mere brow-raise—but it’s something.

He leans his weight back onto one foot, a prepared stance. “We see through the darkness like no other can. We see much farther than any other fae or beast. Our eyes are our strengthandour weakness. If a dark one gets you—claw out his fucking eyes, and you will have time to run.”

I’m better focused than I was in my first lesson. My eyes are a touch wide, my brows raised, and I’m nodding along with his words.

There is a reassurance in this, the promise of a weakness in dark fae.

His eyes, his eyes, his eyes.

Takes on a whole other meaning now.

“I’ll come at you from the front—” He gestures between us. “—but you’ll moveintome.”

Again, I nod along.

We do just as he said.

He moves for me; I move into him.

Dare pauses with his chest against me, my forehead pressed to his clavicle, and his hands gripped firm on my shoulders.

“Your attacker will expect you to retreat, to keep distance. Instinct will want to draw youaway. So now, as your attacker, I will need to readjust my approach, since you drew closer. My best response, at this angle, is to break your neck. What will you do to stop me?”

I blink against the pallor of his collarbone.

It takes a moment before my mind clicks.

It’s a trick question.

He wants me to focus on his eyes in this move. But that is not the best option for me right now, not at this angle.

I drop.

Legs buckling beneath me, I drop to a crouch at his feet, then roll to the side.

“You’re fast.” Dare looks down at me with an approving nod of the head. The gesture disturbs his dark curls; a few loose strands fall into his face and seem to brighten his golden eyes. “Not fast enough to fight, but to what?”

“Run.” I push up from the mat and run my hands down my weary face. “Fast enough to run and climb trees and scream for help—then die anyway because all this is pretence.” My words faded to a murmur, not for him, but my own thoughts slipping down my tongue.

“I don’t stand a chance,” I finish in a whisper.

Dare just frowns at me, his brow lifted, a look derived from mockery. “Morticia survived the passages when her sister was stolen by her evate. Morticia survived, unprepared and unskilled. You can, too.”

I scoff hard enough to jolt my shoulders. “Survive just so he can kill me in the end? So he can get his wish from Mother?”

Because that’s the truth of it, isn’t it?

It’s not the other warriors in the second passage that I have to worry about. It’s Daxeel. If I survive the others, the hunger, the poisoned berries, the wild beasts, and the elements on the mountain, then all I’ve done is become a lamb who survived long enough to walk right into the wolf’s mouth.

Daxeel needs me alive for the end of the second passage.

He needs me alive to sacrifice the bond to Mother—to sacrificeme.

These thoughts aren’t ones I let myself entertain for too long. I often beat them away with fatigue and rotting in my bed. Because once I let them in, my glass strength starts to crack.

My face twists with the sudden surge of tears that roll down my cheeks, the ache of the sob spreading in my chest.