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I wanted to hate it. But I’d seen the other side of him. The one I suspected he rarely let anyone see. The one that drove him to fighting rings after the Battle of Damenal and kissed like he wanted to consume you. It was possessive and passionate and—Spirits, heat gathered in my core at just the memory of it.

I’ll take the floor.

“Valyrie’s tits!” I cursed, throwing the pillow across the room. It knocked a statue carved of blue stone from the mantle, sending it shattering to the floor. I didn’t bother to pick up the pieces.

If I could go back to those long nights in Damenal when we’d begun cracking open wounds, to the eve of Daminius, when a fear I’d never seen in Cypherion turned those blue eyes gray, I would.

“I need your help.”

“I’ll do whatever I can.”

Perhaps I could have found a way to help while still keeping Titus’s secrets.

Titus…his name crawled along my skin.

A captor, a pseudo-father.

A teacher, an iron fist.

A savior, a friend.

No matter how much it fogged my brain, he was all of those things.

But his decrees over my readings had torn apart the safe haven I built for myself within the arms of Cypherion Kastroff, and despite all the chancellor had done for me, resentment burned through me at that fact.

And Titus’s silence now only confused my thoughts more.

Reflexively, my fingers drifted across that tattoo on my shoulder. The brand I’d been given as a child to mark me as property of Lumin Temple. A ring of eleven stars inked over in glittering silver when I was taken in by Titus. A burn made beautiful.

I didn’t have the answers for how I should feel toward the man, but losing Cypherion had deepened the hole the chancellor’s actions dug within me.

Perhaps it wasn’t too late, though.

Cypherion had avoided me as much as possible on this journey, but he was here. And that meant something, even if honor was forcing him into it.

We needed answers if I was truly going to prove my alliance with the Mystiques and read anything of the Angelcurse and the darkness I’d once seen surrounding the Revered.

He is only here on orders, I reminded myself. And to get the answers his friends need. Because he loved them fiercer than most loved in their entire lives.

But Cypherion had been there each time my readings malfunctioned. When I woke in the Labyrinth in Mindshaper Territory, dazed and weak, he was the face looming above me. His was the voice whispering it was all right.

He has barely spoken to me or looked at me since.

I dropped my head into my hands. I kept coming back to Cypherion’s actions rather than his lack of words. The gentle—reluctant—care he sometimes showed.

Rising from the bed, I drifted back toward the window. Placed my palm against the glass, blocking the temple.

And I swore, if there was a part of Cypherion Kastroff that still cared for me, a part not completely scorned by my lies, I would find it.

And I would earn his heart back, even if only as a friend.

Be meek, be quiet, be observant, Titus had instructed me when we first went to Damenal. I was done with it all. I was blessed by the Fates, and I would let that starlight burn through me.

Chapter Three

Cypherion

“Anything else?” the barkeep asked, a different one than the man with large ears. This one’s voice was soft, her eyes dark as coal and hair somehow darker.