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Em.His jaw clenched.I sewed one of their friends’ lips shut a few years ago. Then slit his throat. That’s not the sort of thing you forget because of a pretty face and a few friendly pats on the back.

‘But the poor sod never felt it,’ I managed.Sewed his lips shut– those same fingers dancing through the night before me, jabbing needle and thread through vulnerable flesh … I suppressed a cold shiver. ‘You took his pain. They need to realise—’

They do, he interrupted sharply.And then what? I caused them grief all the same. If I’d burned Cathra – burned your friends and family and everyone you knew alive – would you ever have forgiven me? Even if you knew they never felt a thing?

I clenched my teeth, not willing to lie, but too damn stubborn to speak the truth.

You make something of me that I’ve never been before, Em.He signed the words at dizzying speed, as if he’d lose his thoughts forever if they didn’t make it into the world within the next five heartbeats.But the only reason I can be who I am with you is that every single time I’ve made myself vulnerable to you, every single time you found a weak spot, you chose to do no harm. You should understand—

‘That’s not true,’ I blurted, barely realising I’d interrupted him. ‘I hated you to bits, and don’t pretend I was pleasant about it. I … I made you blow up the pavilion by comparing you to the Mother. How is that doing no harm?’

He shrugged.You apologised.

I stared at him. It took a moment for the memory to return – after I’d returned from my ill-advised trip to Faewood that afternoon, on our way to lunch with the Mother … Ihadapologised. And he’d shrugged it off and ignored me, as he’d shrugged off everything I said in those first days …

But maybe I should have known there had been more to that bland reaction.

People don’t apologise to me, he added flatly, as if he’d read my mind.They never do. I can tell you the exact number of times it’s happened in my life, and you were the second one.

I decided not to ask the obvious question; the answer would doubtlessly be Lyn. ‘Fine, but—’

You figured out I cared about this stupid voice of mine.His signs were hurried and jumbled.Most people would have used that against me. You should have, too, but what did you do? Taught me your bloody hand language, even though you despised me. Do you have the faintest idea how wildly confusing that was?

I managed a laugh at the memory. ‘You once said that’s when you started wanting me. In that letter you wrote me at the court.’

Yes.He drew in an unsteady breath.And for a while I thought it was because you were so gods-damned beautiful when you stood there staring me down, or because you were so ridiculously fearless – but looking back, I don’t think it had anything to do with that. It was just that you found a wound and decided not to deal another blow to it.

Basic decency, I wanted to say; surely that was not enough to set me apart from the rest of the world? Fine, he may have been raised at a court where weakness was death and vulnerability an invitation to do harm, but the Alliance was not like that. These were decent people, or at least …

My mind faltered.

Or at least they were decent tome.

And then the point shaped itself, crystal clear in all its deadly simplicity: because others had found wounds, too. Tared had found one. And rather than leaving it be, rather than making one mistake and apologising …

Demon brood.

Understanding slowly turned my gut to ice.

‘So we’re just running in circles here?’ I said, swallowing something bitter. ‘Tared is not going to stop taking stabs at bleeding wounds because you’re still behaving like the bastard who came between Lyn and him, and you’re not going to stop behaving like that bastard because he’d make use of your newfound vulnerability to actually hurt you?’

Creon shrugged, but a darkness had settled over him, as grim as the lines of ink marring his arms and fingers.Suppose that summarises it, yes.

‘Oh,fuck.’

I warned you, Em.His knuckles turned pale as he clenched and unclenched his fingers.I do make things harder. If you want a lover everyone likes, I understand. I’m just not that person.

‘Don’t say that.’ My voice shot up.

You can’t—

‘Donotsay that, Creon Hytherion.’ I slapped his hand aside, so violently I almost slid off his lap.Not that person.The cold was climbing through me, advancing from my knotted stomach to my lungs, enveloping my ribcage like a corset pulled tight. ‘You aremyperson. Don’t underestimate me and how much I want—’

I wouldn’t dare underestimate you, he interrupted with a wry grimace.The opposite. I consider you fully capable of working yourself to death attempting to keep me and also please everyone else, and I’d rather stop you before that happens.

‘So what would you have me do?’ I said shrilly. ‘They have no idea who you are when you’re with me. If we tell them now, they’ll either think I’ve lost my mind or that I’m some heartless flirt who chooses pleasure over morals, and …’

The stutter of my breath would not let me finish that sentence. In some cold, deep abyss of my mind, it seemed I’d never stopped staring at Valter’s letter, those obnoxiously elegant letters shaping their sickening words on the page.We housed you for twenty years …