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I rose from my seat, taking a step toward him, and my thoughts drifted, pulling me back to sun-drenched days with my father, with Lydia and Anselm at the manor. I could still taste the spiced apple cake they’d made for my eleventh birthday. The sweetness of it haunted my thoughts. We had eaten it outside under the pear trees, and the sun had streamed through the branches. I’d thought that was how life would always be.

We’d always be together.

Anselm and I would marry. We’d have three or four children, our lives wrapped in warm contentment, reading together by the fireplace at night.

I’d never imagined that I’d start killing people with my touch. I’d never thought dead-hearted monsters would come, that they’d tear out my father’s throat.

I’d never imagined I’d become one of them.

The thought twisted inside me, sharp as thorns.

I wanted the blood desperately—but the moment I drank it, I’d never go back.

“Maelor was almost killed. What happened to him?” I asked hollowly.

I was stalling. We both knew it.

“He’s fine now. We killed the Luminari, you and I together. But we didn’t kill the archers. They managed to shoot you, even through the shadows. Just blind luck for them.”

Sion closed the distance between us, and the scent of blood carved me open with hunger.

I touched my chest, feeling hollow. “But am I dead? Are we dead?”

“It’s another sort of life,” he said quietly. “A different one.”

I looked down at my hands, my fingers trembling. They didn’t feel like mine anymore, as if they belonged to someone else. Perhaps they belonged to that madwoman who screamed in the castle.

Was I her all along? Was she my hunger?

Sion lifted my chin gently with his finger. “You will feel better when you drink,” he murmured, his gaze searching mine. “I promise. You will complete the transition, and you’ll feel better.”

My body went cold. Once I took a sip, there was no going back to my sun-drenched life, to the girl I had been under the pear trees.

But I hadn’t been her in a long time, had I? That girl was already dead. Father was long gone. Lydia had married Anselm, not me.

Even if I hadn’t turned into a vampire, nothing stayed the same. We couldn’t stay together forever, no matter how much I’d wanted it.

Sion’s eyes were locked on mine, and he reached out, handing me the cup.

I looked down and stared at the blood, and it was as if it called to me. It smelled like life.

My stomach tightened, but I couldn’t stop myself from snatching the glass. Hunger clawed at my throat.

With shaking hands, I pressed the cup to my lips, and I drank. My thoughts quieted, the blood a balm for my hurt, ananalgesic. This ambrosia soothed my hunger—a cold, sweet bliss that slid down my throat.

I felt my body pulse to life again.

But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough.

“Sion.” I gripped his arm hard, my fingers tightening on him. “More.”

His golden eyes flickered as I snatched the carafe from him. Ravenous, I drank it down, my body flooding with strength, with a surety in my limbs.

As I finished it, I looked up at him. For the first time, it was as if I were truly seeing him. His dark eyelashes were stark against the molten gold of his irises. Moonlight and shadows carved the curves of his cheekbones, his sharp jawline. A small, almost imperceptible scar marred his chin—a mark that must have been from his boyhood. Vampires didn’t scar.

I thought of the soldiers who had thrown his mother into the river, who had called him rotten.

I wanted to rip their heads from their bodies.