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His lips curl against my cheekbone.

The snarl that crawls through him is violent enough to shudder his chest.

I turn my cheek to him. “You make it seem like I enjoyed what I did to you. But Ichasedyou, Daxeel. In words, in letter, in poetry.”

And I did, I wrote it all, wrote out my favourite poems, had them sent to him, but the strongest words I ever wrote to him were the truest ones from my own heart. ‘I miss you’.

I echo the confession in a voice thick with tears, “I wrote you.”

Still, the curl of his snarl remains. “Six times. You wrote six letters in ten years.”

“What more was there to say than I already did? I was regretful, and I wished to see you once more. You didn’t write back, and so I left you alone.” Dampness streaks my cheeks. Silent tears that I don’t wipe away. “What would have happened, Daxeel? If I had asked you to help me that night and had not shamed you?”

The pressure of his snarl on my cheek lessens. “I would have stolen you away,” he says, then draws back to look down at me.“I would have taken you to a steed and rode until we reached Kithe. I would have married you, kept you—and protected you. Even this—” He looks through the panelled window to the darkness that has thickened so much that I can barely make out the white gleam of the apples on the tree. “—I would not have done. For you.”

The smile that snakes onto his lips is a pained, dark one.

It’s as cruel as the one flashing in my mind, when he spat out the blood and glass in the courtyard.

And he aims it at me. “Now I do itbecauseof you.”

My wet face crumples.

I voice the ache in my chest, “What will be your wish, Daxeel?”

His fanged smile remains.

Hand splayed on the tapestry, he pushes himself back with a step.

The hunger in his eyes pins me.

I utter the words in a breath of raspiness, “What do you mean to do with me?”

A shadow peels from his arm. It unravels towards my face—then caresses away the tear that dangles on my jawline, as though wiping away my worries.

“I have meant the promises I made.”

“You can’t kill me,” I whisper and push back into the wall as though it’ll cave to me and I can scramble out of here. That’s the urge stealing me, to escape before Daxeel tells me something too awful, too terrible.

There will be no turning back.

“I cannot kill you,” he says, softly, and the shadow flicks over my nose, like it’s toying with me, “unless my wish allows otherwise.”

I suck in a sharp breath.

Daxeel snatches me by the chin and shoves my head back into the tapestry. The crown of my head screams in protest, a scream I can’t manage to release beyond a gargled sound he’s fast to silence.

“Haven’t you worked it out yet? Those tomes and scrolls your nose sticks to—did they not warn you of the answer, my vicious one?”

The push of his solid chest against mine pins me in place.

“You are not free from the Sacrament, Nari.” He looms over me, his mouth hot on mine. “You will enter the second passage.”

I cannot move.

I cannot breathe, or think, or cry, or scream, I can’t even fucking writhe in his hold.

“Evate,” he adds, then his tongue darts out, licks away a tear from my lips, “is my sacrifice.”