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“How the hell could you say that? I solved your little Umbri problem, did I not? I’m going to try to kill Castemont, even without my powers. How is that giving up?”

“You’re giving up on yourself.”

“How–”

“Because you’ve made no attempt to understand the reasons behind my actions,” he snapped. “And that’s not you.”

My brows shot up, complete disbelief plastered on my face. “That’s notme?” I fumed.

“No, that’s not you!” he yelled back.

I inhaled a sharp breath, uncertain what he was getting at. I pushed Miles’ words from my mind, but they came back swinging as a persistent echo, over and over again.Choose yourself over Cal if you want to.I would do just that, thank you very much. I didn’t give a fuck if it was theeasy way.

“What do you want me to say? What are you looking for, Belin?” I snapped. “An apology?”

“Fuck an apology,” he shouted back. He let out an exasperated breath and turned away, pacing as he rubbed his jaw.

“What the fuck do you want then?”

He whirled to me. “Dammit Petra! I want you to understand!” he roared. Raw fury radiated from behind his eyes, the sapphire and emerald alight, as if wildfire raged within him. “You think I don’t wish I was him?” he growled. “You think I don’t wish I was Calomyr? I’ve wished every day for the past four years that Belin didn’t exist. Iwantto be Calomyr. He had everything I couldn’t.” His chest rose and fell as he stared at me, the muscles in his jaw twitching. “Don’t forgive me, Petra,” he breathed through his teeth, the flames within him now crawling up my spine where mine no longer did. “That’s fine. I don’t need you to. But youshouldunderstand, better than anyone in this Saints forsaken realm, that I was doing what I thought I had to do.”

My nostrils flared, fists clenching and releasing at my side. The truth scratched at the deepest parts of me. He was right. I didn’t want him to be right —Saints, I didn’t want him to be right. I wanted him to be my enemy. I needed him to be the villain. Because moving past what he did to me, moving past the hurt and the betrayal, choosing Cal…

What kind of person did that make me?

Fury and mercy battled within me as I glared at him. “I don’t care.” I spat the lie in his face, my resolve teetering dangerously close to slipping and tumbling headfirst into him. My teeth ground against each other as his stare threatened to set me on fire, the same damned way it always had.

“You do care,” he answered, taking a step toward me, the movement forceful. My heart hammered in my chest as if he was lightning incarnate and I was a summer storm. “And I know that because I hear the way you talk to Tobyas.”

“I haven’t forgiven him either.”

“But you understandwhyhe turned you over to Kauvras.” His words were clipped, coming from a place of anger. He took another step toward me, close enough now that I could reach out and touch him. “If you didn’t, you’d treat him the same way you treat me. Like fucking trash.”

I didn’t back away from him, instead I steadied my feet on the riverbank. For a split second, I thought my flames were returning. But these weren’t holy flames, no. These flames burned for him, and he could see it. They were bitter and resentful and all-consuming, but at the heart of the fire, buried deep beneath the embers, there was something reminiscent of need that I was fighting to ignore.

“Then explain it to me, Belin,” I ordered. “Castemont doesn’t have your blood anymore. His control over you is gone. So explain it.”

The glass vial of his blood had broken, and so had the floodgates on his explanation. He was no longer bound to Castemont’s will, so he told me. He told meeverything, every bloody detail of Castemont’s vision of the Daughter of Katia burning the world. Every gut-wrenching facet of Castemont’s plan, and how and why he’d agreed to it, and how the fear of transforming into a Bloodsinger and hurting me was enough for Castemont to control him. How he had no doubt that Castemont was in fact Noros, Saint of Pain.

“I would have done it for the good of the realm and lived with myself after the fact. But it wasyou,” he seethed, a finger pointed hard, landing just below my throat. Chills rippled from the touch, my entire body going still in its wake. “If it had beenanyoneelse, Petra, I would have ended their life for the good of the realm. But it wasyouwho had to be the Daughter of Katia. It wasyouwho I was ordered to kill. And it was you…” he panted, out of breath. “It was you who I loved.”

Loved. The word pierced my chest and twisted the knife. It watched me writhe in agony, sputtering and bloody. It pushed me to the dirt, kicked me in the ribs, laughed as I fought and pleaded. I was spiraling, cursing myself for betraying the steadfast resolve I was trying to portray. And it made me angry — it made me so fucking angry that he’dlovedme.Past tense.

Cold rage overtook me as I swiped for the finger still pointed at my chest, but he caught my wrist in his grip. I gasped, his expression malicious and impassioned andenragedas he stared down at me. That smoke and cedar scent wrapped around me, a dense fog obscuring my will to resist.

“Let me go,” I ordered, my voice firm.

He pulled me toward him, my wrist still firmly in his grasp at his side, our chests heaving against each other. My back arched of its own volition, my body so tightly pressed to his that his heartbeat resounded through me. “Do you really want me to?” His voice was a growl, low and feral. A different kind of heat shot through me now, radiated from every inch of my skin as the anger ravaged my body, his eyes darting back and forth between mine.

“Let me go,” I repeated, but my voice was a Saints damned whimper. The beasts of the Onyx Pass howled around us, a chorus of everything right and wrong about this moment.

His gemstone eyes softened then, his brows raising as he held my stare, desperation suddenly replacing the fury that had marred his features. But still his grip tightened on my wrist while his other hand found my face, his palm resting softly against my cheek.

I fought to keep my eyes from fluttering shut, fought like hell to keep myself from melting into his touch. I couldn’t give in to him.I had to choose myself.

“Tell me to go again,” he whispered. “Tell me again that you want me to stop trying. I will, Petra. We’ll go back to silence between us. I’ll be your sworn sword and nothing else.” He inhaled a shaky breath. “Tell me to go. But you have to understand.”

My very soul trembled within me as he stared down at me. His eyes followed his thumb as he dragged it across my bottom lip, the taste of anger and longing like saltwater on my tongue.