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Actions spoke louder than words with this group. Mina could reveal all the sentiments that made her believe in Adham, but her family would never get past Mirceo’s head hanging on by a thread.Can I blame them?

“You look like you’re about to drop,” Balery said, not looking much better after her extended efforts to find Lothaire, Kristoff, and Mina. At great personal cost, this oracle had rolled her bones over and over for weeks, until she’d been able to direct Mirceo and Caspion to that exit from Nightside. “You need to drink.”

Mina didn’t want to dilute Adham’s blood.He’s inside me.She’d taken him into her, and they’d become one body, one blood. Though she no longer had the plague, her hunger for him proved unrelenting.

“And I can give you something to help you sleep,” Balery said, brows drawn over her doe-brown gaze. “Or are you worried about dreaming the sorcerer’s memories?”

“She should be worried!” Mirceo exclaimed. “I still can’t believe you drank straight fromSilt Harea.Do you know how old he is, how many memories he’s transferred to you? Your eyes might still go red.”

Mina muttered, “You’re one to talk about drinking straight from another.”

His cheeks flushed, and Caspion pulled up his collar. With sudden interest, Trehan and Bettina both studied the ceiling. Lothaire and Ellie shared a smile. Seemed more than one Dacian practiced this “deviancy.”

Viktor sighed. “Degenerates.”

Stelian raised his flask. “Cheers to them.”

Mina said, “I might not even see his memories.”

Stelian took a swig. “One way to find out, niece. Face the coming onslaught with your usual bravery. You can’t stay awake forever.”

Ellie added, “Sweetie, this anvil’s gotta drop.”

Mina knew that, but . . . “If Adham attacked Mirceo because he was bound by a vow he barely remembered making in the first place, it will break me. If hewasn’tbound by a vow, it will break me.” Either way, she could never be with him again.

Yet wasn’t there another alternative she couldn’t quite put her finger on? She needed to think!

“You still want him?” Mirceo pointed to his injury and said, “I would shake my head with consternation, but it still might fall off!”

She winced.

“If you witnessed Silt as we did during his capture, you would not feel this way.” He looked at Caspion. “Tell her.”

The demon ran a hand through his shaggy blond hair between his horns, then reluctantly said, “It was a scene. Even by our former standards of . . . high-living.”

“As you two have changed, so has he.” Or hehad. Maybe.

“He nearly killed me. He screamed that he was going to do it!” Mirceo cleared his regenerating throat. “He told you he’d torture you to get to me. Why won’t you believe he’s evil?”

Because he made me a rose.For what reason would he have created that token for her other than love? Which meant he was suffering somewhere right now from what he’d done. “I know in my heart he’s not.”

Mirceo blew out a breath. “When your arm got clawed, Ifeltit. I feared you had the plague the whole time we were searching for you.” He and Caspion had worked tirelessly to find her, never giving up. “But you beat it on your own. And then you beat ghoul contagion! Why can’t you defeat these feelings?”

Gazing at her boots, she said, “Because Iwantedto defeat those other things.”

Sounding as if she’d struck him, he said, “Talk about a loyalty conflict. You’re so innocent that you can’t understand what he is. He was only using you. That’s what his kind does.”

“I’m not innocent. And I wasn’t used,” she murmured, but no one seemed to be listening.

Caspion said, “Even now Harea is out there hunting both Mirceo and Mina, like some killing machine.” According to the demon’s bounty hunter network, Adham searched for Dacia, spending a fortune on spies and informants. If the kingdom hadn’t been mystically hidden, he might already have found it.

Lothaire sat back in his throne. “Hag, what do your bones say?”

“I can’t get a read on him,” she answered. “He’s empowered as never before, using his sand to travel, and such a constant sorcery outlay cloaks him from my sight.”

That would explain how Adham had escaped so quickly from that cliff. By the time Dacian sentries had arrived to apprehend him and guard the opening to Nightside, Adham had already vanished.

“You’re no Nïx, are you?” Lothaire said, earning a glare from everyone in the court. “So two options exist: either the sorcerer is bound by a vow he didn’t mean to make—which I can empathize with—or he’s evil and bent on revenge. Which I can also empathize with. But in the end, his motives don’t matter. The sorcerer won’t stop targeting Mirceo, so I hereby decree Silt Harea’s death.”