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“You’re going to die when you see the dress,” Amalthea declared as she burst through the door the moment I opened it.

An eruption of red engulfed the space between us. I blinked at the color. It was startlingly bright, with layers and layers of skirts in a vibrant red hue.

The exact shade of freshly spilled blood.

Gods, I don’t want to do this .

But time had run out. Tonight was the ceremony.

“They finished not a moment too soon,” Amalthea continued, strolling into my room.

“We’ve only hours before the eclipse.” She was comfortable in my space, which made sense since I’d spent most of the past week holed up in my room.

I went to training every morning, as instructed, using the practice to exhaust my body and escape the memories.

I napped right after, the only decent sleep I got.

Sometimes I hoped the music might help chase them away, but I didn’t want to spend any time lingering in the halls before retreating to the safety of my room.

Then Amalthea would knock on my door with supper and join me, carefully avoiding the topic she most wanted to discuss: my fight with Raphael.

Any time she brought it up, I ended the conversation, so she learned to dance around it while filling the otherwise oppressive silence with lighthearted court gossip.

This week, the focus had all been on the eclipse.

Which was tonight.

I swallowed. The last thing I’d said to Raphael was that I would go with him, but I hadn’t heard a word since. A part of me still hoped he wouldn’t take me up on it, would show me it wasn’t as inevitable as Amalthea insisted. But her presence said otherwise.

“Let’s get this over with.” I hoped my vague disinterest would cover the fact the thought of the evening’s ball made me increasingly nervous.

Amalthea gave me a look I couldn’t quite decipher and gestured over to the vanity. I scratched my palms, anxious.

Could she see what was coming?

I hadn’t heard back from Titus, but when I caved and checked yesterday, the note was gone. I’d thought he would make a move immediately, but I was waiting in suspense.

And in the interim, I was going to play the role of Raphael’s Chosen in the bloodiest way possible.

Around Amalthea’s side was a satchel of cosmetics. She spilled the contents over the counter, turning each bottle over, looking at me, and then discarding or setting aside the acceptable options until she had picked out a suitable selection for this occasion.

Normally I enjoyed talking with Amalthea, and she was eager to oblige, but both of us were fairly quiet.

She murmured directions to me—close my eyes, open them, part my lips, shut them, tilt left, tilt right.

Under her direction, my face transformed from plain to striking, with bright red sparkles around my eyelids, and sharp crimson on my lips.

She artfully arranged my hair into a swept-up design, pinned in place with a silver ruby clip and ornamented with other jewels.

To complete the ensemble, she clipped long, pinching earrings to my lobes.

“Now your dress,” she instructed, pushing me to the bathroom to change. Too tired to argue, I slipped behind closed doors, shucked off my day-wear, and pulled the dress on. Amalthea entered the room and laced the gown, looking at me in the mirror.

This is what the king’s Chosen would wear.

I hardly recognized myself. From my crown to my feet, I was bathed in red. My skin was pink, my face painted. It was as though I appraised a stranger— beautiful , I thought at once. A prize for a vampire.

I wanted to light the dress on fire.

Instead, I thanked Amalthea for everything, for arranging my makeup, for fixing my hair, for seeing the dress through. I thanked her even as I wanted to ask her why this was happening. To ask if her oracle powers could let her look to my past and find where it had all gone so wrong.

“You could come to my room while I finish getting ready,” she offered as she gathered the cosmetics and went to the door.

I stood, awkward in my own space. “No thanks. I think I could use a little quiet before the commotion this evening.”

“It’s a celebration, not a commotion,” she corrected, though I hardly saw the difference. She pressed her back against the door, giving me an understanding smile. “But I thought you’d say that. Raphael will be by in an hour—I’ll see you at the ball. Save me a dance.”

And then she was gone, the door clicking shut behind her as the lock fell into place.

I exhaled, the corset of the dress suddenly too restrictive for me to inhale properly.

“Women,” said a contemptuous voice behind me.

I bit back a scream at the sound. How?

“Titus.”

Invisible spiders crawled down my spine.

It was unnerving to realize someone invisible lurked around you, and a thousand times worse to realize he had been in my bedroom.

Amalthea hadn’t had the door open long when she left, which meant he either slipped in at just the right moment… or he’d been here the entire time.

“My, and don’t you sound pleased to see me, Samara.” His voice had moved—not closer, but now at my other side. I forced myself not to flinch, to not give him the satisfaction. “Disappointed your little dress-up adventure was cut short?”

“What do you want?” I demanded.

The king’s spy was in no hurry to answer my questions.

“I despise that woman, you know. An abomination. You’d think the worst thing in the world would be being born useless without magic like the voids, but those heretics are worse.

And here she is, proving we were right to hunt them down.

Betraying her own kind, and for what? To spend hours preening in front of the mirror?

Vapid, useless thing. A waste of magic.”

I stiffened at his derogatory tone. I might be working with Titus now, but that didn’t mean I no longer loathed him.

“What is your counterproposal?” I cast my arms up theatrically, but really, I was trying to create space around myself so I could maneuver to the bed.

The one blessing of this dress was the volume of the skirt gave me at least a little distance from the spy.

“She’d be killed in the Witch Kingdom. Who could blame her for surviving?

” There was also the fact Amalthea was the furthest thing from vapid I’d ever encountered—and the Witch Kingdom had its share of vapid courtiers.

Thea spent hours each day in meetings, when she wasn’t with me.

She sat on a number of councils and advised Raphael.

Additionally, she was acutely aware of the going-ons at every level of court, not just in aristocratic circles.

Maids confided in her, dressmakers gossiped with her.

Overbearing? At times. But vapid? Never .

“Then she should have died with dignity before she could shame our entire species,” Titus snapped.

It was the first time his calm veneer had slipped.

Did I score a point? Or did I just make this situation more dangerous for myself?

“You’re so quick to defend her, Samara. It makes me wonder about that little note you wrote me.”

I swallowed, the sensation sharp and ugly. That was why he was here, after all. Of course he hadn’t given me a warning. He enjoyed my fear far too much.

Not for the first time since I’d left the note, a wave of doubt hit me. But it was too late to go back on the plan. If I confessed that for months I’d not only known the Storm-blooded King’s spymaster was in the kingdom but that I’d plotted against Raphael with him?

No matter what his affection, I’d be dead.

And when the memory of that girl came again, the doubt disappeared, replaced by that same, relentless anger that had been growing.

“She dressed you like his little meal.” His voice was closer now. I could smell the sweet almonds on his breath. “ No different than putting a shiny red apple in a roast’s mouth.”

The slightest graze of the gossamer that wrapped my arms. I jerked my hand back.

“What do you want?” I demanded once more. “You may be invisible, but Raphael will be here soon, and he’ll hear you. Not being able to see you won’t stop him from following the sound of your heartbeat and ripping your head from your shoulders.”

A pause.

Gods, I wish he would leave . I was beside my bed now, my hand aching to reach for the dagger under the pillow.

Titus had risked a lot to enter my rooms, with all the guards posted in the halls. He wasn’t invincible, no matter how he acted. He wouldn’t have come just to lecture me.

“Are you committed to this cause or not?”

I hesitated. I’d seen the cruelty of vampires firsthand, at every turn in my life. Raphael had condoned their actions.

I owed him nothing.

But still, I hesitated.

A folded piece of parchment fluttered to the floor in front of me, the royal seal stamped on it. I picked it up and opened it. The sprawling script, the golden ink. Exactly as I’d seen it in childhood.

“A pardon, Samara. All your sins forgiven.”

A royal pardon. I could go home.

Wherever that is , part of me chastised .

But that louder part of me craved this. To finally be absolved of guilt and welcomed into the land of humans once more. Once I helped Titus, I would flee with the book and scour the Witch Kingdom without the threat of imprisonment.

The parchment disappeared again as Titus snatched it back. In its place, he set another item.

A card.

Not just any card. The purple edges said this was made by a toximancer, a witch specialized in poisons.

“What am I to do with this?” I made no move to pick it up.

Titus let out an aggrieved sigh, as though he could hardly believe he was still talking to me. “And here your one redeeming feature is you were thought to be clever. It’s a poison card.”

Obviously. “And what do you expect me to do? Use it on Raphael?”

“In a manner of speaking. Such a card would never work on a vampire. Their bodies are too strong. But if he were to ingest it directly, even the demon king himself couldn’t withstand the toxins.”

When he drinks from me .

This was why Titus had seen such an opportunity in me being the king’s Chosen. With me, Raphael was vulnerable in a way he was with no other.

He hasn’t drunk from the source in hundreds of years , Thea had said.

Yet he was to drink from me, just as Thea had seen.

He was always meant to. If he was going to take my blood, as so many vampires took from humans in his kingdoms, he deserved this reckoning.

Or was I always meant to betray him? Was that why she had seen it?

My stomach churned, and I desperately wished for five minutes to think this through. Titus gave me no quarter.

“Besides. Just think what would happen if their kind knew who you really were. They’d hardly be so quick to welcome you, don’t you agree?”

My stomach rolled again. I snatched up the poison card. Such a light thing, between my fingers. Barely the width of my palm. Yet the magic in it was deadly. The symbols on it left no doubt of that.

“What happens after?” I said quietly. “If I help carry out this plan, how will I escape?”

“I’ll help you, of course,” he said soothingly. No doubt that syrup of his voice was meant to make me look past the fact I didn’t trust the spymaster one iota.

No, once I did this, I’d need to find my own way out.

I glanced at the grimoire’s hiding spot.

I’d need to take that with me. Returning to my rooms would be a foolish move, but there was no other choice.

I didn’t trust Titus with it. If the necromancer really could stand against the vampires, they’d need all the help they could get.

“Tick-tock, Samara.”

I activated the card.