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Samuel glanced down at the empty glass in his hands, fiddling with it idly, as a flush of shame flickering across his cheeks. Suddenly, Isaac understood the change in him. “Ah, I see Shan has been training you well, Lord Aberforth. I’m sure the King is pleased with your progress.”

“Isaac, please. I need to… I came to…” He glanced over his shoulder, towards where the Guard had been standing.

“If you’re worried about being overheard,” Isaac offered, “you needn’t be. He’s back past the ward.”

Samuel turned back, brow furrowed. “How can you be sure?”

How indeed?

That was a question that had been plaguing him for nearly a year, since he first began this mad plan with Alessi. The more bodies he drained, the more blood he consumed, the more something shifted inside of him. It wasn’t only his Blood Working that had been enhanced, it had been all of him.

His senses were sharper, more acute than any human’s should be. It wasn’t just the heartbeat that he could hear, he could see the minute lines by Samuel’s eyes, so faint that no one would even know they were there. He could taste the tang of the sweat on the back of Samuel’s neck, smell the lingering traces of blood from where he had pricked his finger to pass through the King’s ward.

His throat clenched, aching in a way that mere water could not sate, no matter how much he drank. Running his tongue against his teeth, he pressed his own flesh against the tips of his canines, nearly sharp enough to pierce.

“I’m sure,” Isaac assured him, at last. “Trust me, if you can find it in yourself to do that.”

What remained of the mask Samuel wore shattered. “I don’t know… that’s why…” He cut himself off, glancing up towards the ceiling as he blinked away tears. “I have two questions.”

Swallowing hard, Isaac could only nod.

“Do you regret how you did it?”

“How I did it?” He shook his head, holding back a mad laugh. “I do not regret killing them. If that is what you have come here to ask, then you can leave right now.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” Samuel stepped closer, his gloved hand catching Isaac’s chin and tipping his face up. He wasn’t close enough to kiss, not with the chains that still bound Isaac, but he was close enough to share breath. “I meant this.”

Oh, that’s what this was. “What I felt for you was true,” he confessed, too exhausted for artifice. “That you should never doubt. I only wish I could have—”

He halted. He didn’t know what he wished. Alone in his cell, with no one to talk to but the ghosts he had made, he had tried to figure out a different way he could have done things. But there wasn’t a different way, not truly. There was only one mistake.

“I wish I could have trusted you sooner.”

Samuel nodded, rested his forehead against Isaac’s. The words he spoke were barely a whisper, and Isaac had to strain to hear them. “And would you still take down the King, if you could?”

Isaac didn’t even have to think about it. “I would.”

Soft lips brushed his skin, then Samuel was pulling back, slipping the muzzle back into place. Isaac didn’t resist, accepting the bit with something like reverence. He had already resigned himself to his fate—the gruesome death that awaited him. If he lived, it would only be by the grace of the one he had hurt the most.

And if he didn’t, if they left him to face the consequences of his own actions, who would blame Samuel and Shan for casting him aside?

“Wait just a little longer, my dear Isaac,” Samuel said, stepping back towards the door with one last, longing look. A twist of the wrist, and the door was locked again, a single sigh, and he was gone from sight.

Isaac closed his eyes, listening as Samuel’s heartbeat grew fainter and fainter.