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“You might even enjoy it,” his eyes dip to my skin. “I know I will.”

My heart quakes at his rising interest even as another, insidious part of me is coming alive.

He pulls me in close.

The Thief is going to kiss me, just as he did when he was Karnon. And perhaps he’ll breathe that same vile magic into me now as he did then. Only this time, I won’t be immune to it.

A human would struggle against this. A siren, however …

Let him come closer. Let him think he has us.

My eyes drop to his lips. “I know you can wear the faces of the dead.”

He leans in, his lips skimming my jaw. “And to think I believed you’d never figure out any of it.”

He releases my throat, and I stagger back, massaging my raw skin.

“Do you want to know something?” he asks.

I gaze back at him with barely masked repulsion.

“Mara met me more than once. The first time, I was courting her sister.”

Just like Janus, Mara once had a sibling. I’d almost forgotten. I rack my brain, trying to remember her name.

Thalia. That’s what it was. She was the Flora Kingdom’s heir apparent, only she died before her time, falling on a sword or something like that, after, after …

My eyes snap to the Thief. “The traveling minstrel. That wasyou.”

A man had come to her kingdom, and Thalia had fallen hopelessly in love with him. The way I heard it, the whole thing had ended poorly.

God, but how long ago was that? Centuries? All this time the Thief has been moving his pieces into place.

His eyes seem to smile. “I was an enchanter—I just happened to have a penchant for serenading young royals. You want to know something those histories never mentioned?”

He pauses, and the silence of this strange place seems to close in on me. I never knew that something as insubstantial as silence could have such weight.

“I fucked Mara then too. To this day she has no idea that I’ve been inside her as two separate men.”

Nausea stirs low in my belly.

Just a dream.

“She was always the envious one, but especially then, when her sister had everything and she had nothing. The first time we exchanged anything more than pleasantries was after it was known that Thalia and I were together. She pulled me away at one of those frivolous parties, dropped to her knees, and well … what she lacked in power or rank she made up for with enthusiasm. I didn’t even have to enchant her—truth be told, at the time, I didn’t want much to do with her, but I just couldn’t resist the temptation.”

I grimace.

“I remember how the story ends,” I say. “You were killed,” I say.

“Do the dead ever really die?” he asks.

The same damn question he posed to me back in the Flora Kingdom.

I can feel the answer right there, on the tip of my tongue. I glance from the Thief to the strange blooming vines, to the column he rested against just minutes ago, to the pool next to it.

My ears begin to ring as I stare at that water. The longer I look, the more it seems as though it’s shifting,whispering.

Save us …