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My breath quickened. “I’m not sure. Things like what?”

“Hang on. I can smell roasting vegetables coming from that cottage.”

Was he avoiding my question?

“What are you going to do about roasting vegetables?” I asked, hoping it wouldn’t involve more dead bodies, more black marks on his conscience.

Sion pulled Poppy to a halt and dismounted, leaving me seated in the saddle.

“Sion! Don’t kill anyone,” I shouted after him as he stalked up to the door, his dark cloak caught in the wind.

He knocked on the door.

A man opened the door, dressed in simple white and brown clothes. His forehead wrinkled as he looked up at Sion.

Sion spoke softly at first, his voice quiet, almost soothing. The man’s shoulders began to relax, but only for a moment. Within seconds, Sion’s demeanor shifted, and shadows spilled into the air around him. The man took a step back.

While I couldn’t see Sion’s expression, I could tell exactly what was happening by the look of abject terror on the stranger’s face. I had no doubt that Sion had flashed his fangs, his eyes turning black as ink.

Sion shifted, his shadows streaking the air as he disappeared inside the cottage. The screams from inside raised the hair on my nape.

“Sion?” I called out.

Moments later, the man stumbled out of the cottage, dragging a woman who must have been his young wife with him. She clung to him, trembling. “What was that thing? What was he?”

Sion’s head emerged from the doorway, the darkness I was sure had been there now gone from his eyes. With a sly smile, he beckoned for me to come in. “There’s food in here, and a place to sleep.”

My jaw dropped. “Sion, you can’t just kick them out of their house!”

“And why not? We have a higher mission. We are saving the bloody kingdom.”

I was too tired and hungry to come up with a good argument. So, I simply said, “Because.”

A few moments later, Sion was leaving their house with what looked like a freshly baked pie, steam still curling off its surface. The better part of me wanted to tell him to leave their food forthem, that we weren’t going to steal. But the darker, hungrier part of me just wanted the fucking pie.

Maybe Sion was bringing out the dark side in me, or maybe that was the hunger itself.

“Pay them for it, will you?” I shouted to Sion.

This was my moral compromise. Sion reached into his pockets, pulled out a few gold coins, and tossed them at the couple. They scrambled to pick them up. Gold coins were worth little to Sion, apparently, but for this couple in their peasant cottage, it would feed them for a year.

So, when Sion got back on the horse and handed me the pie, all my moral qualms had gone. I’d never been so hungry. I couldn’t think of anything except the pie before me. And although it was too hot to eat, I started eating it anyway, not caring if my tongue was burning. The crust was flaky and buttery, and when I bit into it, I tasted potatoes, leeks, and some sort of rich cheese. I moaned as I ate.

“I knew I’d satisfy you at some point,” Sion said from behind me.

“Thank you for the pie,” I said, my mouth full. I’d been so intent on it, I hadn’t even paid attention to the fact that Poppy was already moving again.

“A brutal storm is rolling in,” Sion said.

I looked out to see a wall of rain across the sea like a dark, misty beast consuming the water in its path. Iron-gray clouds churned in the sky, and a strike of lightning touched down on the waves in the distance—waves that were growing wilder, hungrier.

Sion nudged Poppy, and she sped up as we climbed a hill, thunder rolling over the horizon. As the wind rose, I huddled into Sion.

Another strike of lightning—this time closer, a blinding white light.

The boom of thunder rumbled through my bones.

“Elowen, darling,” Sion murmured, “you and I are going to stop for shelter in someone’s house, whether you like it or not.”