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“Damn it, Kosmina.”

“Oh, come on, you can make jibes about my death, but I can’t?”

He didnotmake jibes any longer. “You act as if you know me so well? Then you tell me what the tattoos mean.”

“They have to do with your past as an Inferi.”

The fuck?He leapt from the bed, snatching on his pants. “Enti told you.”

“No. She didn’t.” Kosmina was so calm in the face of his burning shame, he felt as if he’d been transported into some kind of horror tale where no one reacted as they should. “I deduced it. You’re a Sorceri, so it makes sense. Will you tell me about it?”

He began pacing. If Mina knew, then why had she proudly accompanied him to dinner? He pictured her with her chin up, her arm linked in his. “I’m not going to do this . . . this spilling of secrets between new lovers—the ritual exchange of woe. Other men do that. Not me.” Like that Ideal. The vampire king wouldsurely do the ritual. “Why should I peel off my skin just to show you what lies beneath?”

“Because we are friends. Friends share their pasts.”

“Friends?” Kosmina Daciano coursed through him like his very lifeblood, but she wasn’t godsdamned sold on him? He stalked to the bed and palmed her nape. “To hell with your friendship! You’re not myfriend. You fucking belong to me.”Until I’m done with you.The words might as well be hanging in the air.

Instead of agreeing with him and declaring herself his, she said, “You explained to me about the mechanical breakdown of stone into sand, but you won’t tell me about your woe?”

He dropped his hand and straightened. “What are you talking about?”

“Those processes aren’t unalike. They bothshape. But at heart, we—and stone—are still the same. Can you not reveal what shaped you?”

Using his element to convince him? His very language against him? “You have no shame, and so you can’t understand it. But that won’t stop you from prying mine out of me.”

“No, it won’t—just as I would draw a sword from your side and give you relief from pain.” Like some kind of catharsis?

Wait, if she’d known his secret, then had she kissed his tattoos for . . . succor? To communicate acceptance? The idea sent him spinning. He began to sweat, palms flickering.

And now she expected him to recount his history when he was blisteringly sober. He glanced to the door?—

“Adham?”

That fucking name. A sandstorm must be pummeling him inside. He’d never wanted to smoke more than he did right now. “If I do this, you’ll tell me you belong to me alone. You’ll say the words.” He wanted her to tell him that he was her mate. Or would she get over Silt as effortlessly as she had Kristoff?

Her gaze never left his face. He could all but see her calculating her way through this interaction, while his jagged feelings were a coil of razor wire around his heart.

“I will say something to you that I’ve never said to another.”

He made a sound of frustration. “Fine, Your Highness. You’ll have your way tonight.” Swiping a hand over his chest, he said, “This reads,Upon pain of death, I will never be parted from my soul again.”

“How did you lose it?”

Dare, Silt. Just dare.“When I was a young boy, my own parents conspired against me to break my connection to sorcery forever.”

Thirty-Nine

“Tell me about them.” Mina and Adham hadn’t committed to much of a shared future, but perhaps they could share his past. “Tell me what happened.” Right when she wondered if she ought not to have pushed him, he appeared to resign himself.

“Over the years, my mother and father had both been robbed of their powers, then enslaved by other Sorceri. The three of us shared a difficult life, but we found some measure of happiness. And I was a good son, a genuinely good child.”

She imagined Adham as a golden-eyed boy, and her chest tightened.

“Some of my earliest memories are of hunting game for them, keeping our larder full. In the market, I stole things they enjoyed, anything to brighten their harsh existences. I thought they loved me in turn.” His gaze grew distant, his complicated mind awash in memories.

“Please, go on.”

“When I was six, I wandered out too far into the desert, tracking a deer. I discovered my power over sand among those mysterious dunes. My sorcery was so absolute, I knew I was the king of that element. A slave like me was the King of Sand, and in a desert realm like Sorselan, no ability could be greater.I expected my parents to be thrilled when I told them. Yet they looked at me . . . differently. I felt the love they had for me change as if it’d been cleaved with a sword.”