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Dare snatched me by the arm—and threw me off the fucking roof.

Air rushes up at my back.

Tendrils of hair whip my face, lash at my eyes, blind me.

I don’t manage more than a whispered gasp as I tumble.

Then my body jerks against a sudden pull, and I feel like warm taffy being stretched and tugged and yanked.

A cry hisses out of me.

Eyes wild, I glare up at the edge of the roof.

Dare’s unapologetic face is aimed down at me. His grip is firm on my wrist, the force of his snatching enough to have my bones humming and my muscles weeping.

“Grab onto the lattice,” he says, then peels a finger away from my wrist, then another, and I slip. “Or don’t.”

My breath shudders.

I scramble my gaze around—and right in front of me, vines thread through the lattice.

The moment I consider it, his hand abandons me entirely.

I throw my arms in front of me—and I snatch onto the leafy vines.

I cling on for life.

Above, Dare’s voice comes, “You have no skill in battle, but you do have a talent. Speed and agility create evasion.”

I crane my neck to aim my silent snarl at him.

From this angle, his jaw is a fistful of knives and his eyes are melted pots of gold beneath shadowy lashes. “Climb trees,” he tells me, “and stay out of the way until I find you. That is your strategy.”

I readjust my grip, tighten it, and slot my boot into a gap in the lattice. I pull myself closer, hugging my safety, and the vines tickle my nose.

I huff a breath, at him, at the vines, I don’t know. Maybe both.

But Dare is unfazed by the outrage glaring in my eyes. “Fires no longer than fifteen minutes—and only ever in the day. Each phase, you’ll have two hours of sunlight on the mountain.”

I tug my nose from the reach of the tickling vines. “Sunlight?” I echo, hardly aware of the word beyond a niggle in my brain.

“It’s cloudy, but strong enough that the dark males will take shelter. That’s your best time to move, to cook, to find a safe spot to hide out—anddo notrest in the same spot more than once. Always be on the move.” Dare crouches at the edge of the roof. He braces his forearms on his thighs, his boots dangling not far above me. “The sunlight won’t keep you safe from the litalves who will be after you.”

That strikes me silent.

‘The litalves who will be after you.’

Both sides will target me.

The litalves who have a vendetta will hunt me, for Taroh or for honour, whatever reason they pull out of their asses. But really, we all know—take me out, Daxeel goes down with me. Even if he doesn’t fall right away, the blow of it, a dead evate, a shattered bond, it’s enough to diminish him.

Ultimately, he will follow me into the beyond. The evate dies, the male dies with her.

Dare snaps his order at me, “Climb. I need to see your agility for myself.”

I groan and shut my eyes, as though to darken my sight for a moment will allow me some scraps of patience. Patience not to reach up for his boot and yank him over the side.

I focus on what he’s told me. I hold onto it like an echo of warmth in the dark. “So that’s when I cook,” I murmur the words like I’m not quite hearing them, not quite thinking them, but just regurgitating what he’s told me. And I start to climb the lattice. “When all your kind are…hibernating.”