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“ Yes .” He dug his calloused fingers into the bedding. He strained as he held himself back from me, tears brimming in his gaze. “Yes, gods , I love you. With everything I am, I love you.”

I tore my burning eyes away from his and focused instead on my pale fingers in my lap. His confession of love opened the door to a place of tolerance I did not want to go to.

“How old am I?” I muttered.

“You’ve lived only nineteen years. But if you count the years you’ve been trapped and asleep… four hundred twenty-one.”

“And you?”

“Four hundred twenty-four.”

“How many years have you lived?”

A chilling pause. “All of them.”

I resented my heart for how it hurt for him. For that persistent loneliness in the brown eyes that just days ago had sparkled with love. The ache in my chest at the thought of him—or who I thought he’d been—alone for so long… I couldn’t reconcile it with the things I now knew.

“Are you Molochai’s son?” I pressed on.

“Yes.” His voice darkened. “He raped my mother, and she died in childbirth.”

I blinked out a tear. For her. Not for him. Not for him.

“Are you—” I looked up at him then, needing to see the look in his eyes when he answered this next question. “Are you the Butcher of Nyrida? ”

His tormented gaze dropped to his hands, then back up to me, where it steadily remained. “I am.”

“How many people have you killed?”

“I don’t know.” He swallowed hard. “I lost count.”

“And you killed Phillip and Oliver?”

He flinched but nodded. “Yes.”

I knew it. I did. But to hear him say the words thinned the air in my lungs, what was left of it whipping out of me with every horrified gasp.

He shifted toward me, hands flexing to reach for me, to comfort me.

But I abruptly withdrew from him, causing the raw wound in my belly to burn.

I cried weakly and held a trembling hand over my abdomen.

“ Breathe .” His helpless gaze raced up and down my trembling body. It was killing him not to touch me. “Please breathe.”

“Why did you kill them?” I groaned out, vision swirling, head dizzy with pain. “ Why ?”

“I made a blood oath with Molochai,” he confessed.

“I agreed to be his weapon. He says a name, and I don’t have a choice.

The oath takes over. I don’t have much time before my body is no longer mine, and then I lose control until it’s done.

But Ella,” he continued, compassion pouring from him like a warm silver stream, “I didn’t even know you were there with the Golds until long after.

Neither did Molochai. And it was not your fault they died. ”

I scowled, fury brewing low in my chest. He’d lied to me, turned my world upside down and left me hanging by my ankles and still knew me. Still knew I blamed myself.

“It was not your fault,” he pressed on. “They were descendants of Simeon and Christabel’s cousins— your cousins. Molochai wanted them dead, and it had nothing to do with you.”

I refused. Shook my head. Let shallow rage infect my heart because it was easier than accepting whatever convoluted mess my reality had become .

“You let me confide in you about their deaths,” I uttered hatefully. “You asked me to give you that burden knowing you were the one who did it.”

“Because it is my burden to carry, not yours.” He reached for my hand, pausing to see if I would pull away.

I should have, but I didn’t. He touched me, and I didn’t have it in me to recoil.

As if my mind couldn’t trust him but my body did.

So this time, I let him touch me, and though I hated myself for it, he soothed me.

Even as he spoke terrible truths, my breathing slowed, my pulse calmed. “It was never supposed to be yours.”

He was so close, so warm, so rich with the scent of fresh cedar and leather that I wanted to bury myself in his chest. My source of pain and place of refuge in equal measure.

Murderer , I repeated in my mind, over and over again. He’s a murderer .

But that was something I’d known from the beginning, wasn’t it?

“Why did you make a deal with him?” I jerked my hand away, resetting myself in resentment.

“Because it was the only way I could see you again.” His hand remained on the bed, reaching for me. “I agreed to be his executioner in exchange for immortality.”

Nausea churned my stomach. Molochai had said he considered having Gavin kill me but preferred to do it himself. Indeed, in Tovick, I’d overheard Gavin tell Damond that Molochai would want to kill me himself. And he had.

If killing—at least some of them, like Phillip and Oliver—hadn’t been his choice… what a special kind of torture.

“Did you give Oliver a toy horse before you killed him?” I sputtered out.

He exhaled shakily, eyes wide, but he didn’t ask how I knew. He nodded.

“What color was it? ”

Without hesitation, he replied, “Black with a white diamond on its chest. I just…” His voice cracked. “I didn’t want him to be afraid. The children, I…” He released a tormented breath. “The oath was never meant to apply to innocents. It wasn’t what I agreed to.”

A special kind of torture, indeed.

“And the prophecy?” I croaked.

“The prophecy is a lie, but your power is not. Four hundred years ago, shortly after we married, Simeon abducted you, put you in a deep, ageless sleep to buy himself time. He convinced this whole world—save for me, Elowen, and Phillip—that you were Simeon and Elowen’s child.

Your people believe Christabel’s child died at three days old.

And until the other night, Molochai believed that too.

He’s been looking for the power of the Selvaren since the day you were born.

He can… sense it . But he had no idea you survived him.

He had no idea that power is you . His ignorance is the only good thing that came from Simeon’s lie. ”

“Christabel’s child?” My tearful face contorted with confusion.

Molochai’s words echoed in my memory.

“You aren’t Simeon’s daughter…”

“Filthy little mutt…”

“Of course, you don’t remember the day I gave you that scar… you were only three days old, after all…”

Gavin nodded and gestured toward the scar on my chest. “That’s where he stabbed you. Where he tried to kill you.”

Nausea curled in my stomach. I remembered how angry he’d been when he asked where I’d gotten the scar and I hadn’t known its origin. As if that knowledge had been stolen from me.

And when he’d told me about his wife, if it was true it was me or whoever I used to be…

“Brought up in a prominent, wealthy family… Protected but… stifled.”

Then he had not lied about that .

I lifted my hand to the thin, faded scar and tried to remember my life so that I could prove him wrong. So I could prove that this was the life I knew. That this life had been full . But that was a lie. And I couldn’t remember.

A part of me always had been numb, even when Ollie was my only source of joy. After his death, I was completely empty. I’d told Gavin as much that day he tended to the wolf bite.

Elowen had said it had been a fall that took my memories from me, and I wondered…

how stupid I had been not to question that.

Not to question so many things. Could a fall erase seventeen years?

Could it erase memories of Oliver as a baby, if they’d existed?

And she’d always seemed to resent me for something.

For being an unwanted burden—a responsibility.

And my nightmares… I’d always shoved away the feeling that they were horrible memories. I hadn’t thought it was possible. But in those nightmares, I was trapped. Always torn. Always terrified. Always… lost .

“It wasn’t a fall that erased your memories,” Gavin said softly, glancing at my fingers on my head. “It was Simeon.”

“Why would Simeon do that to me?” I whispered.

“He was afraid of you,” Gavin answered. “You struggled to control your powers. He couldn’t control them, and he feared what you might do if,” his throat pulsed with a hard swallow, “unleashed. He was not prepared to fight Molochai, and he didn’t think you were either.

So he locked you up, hid you, erased who you were, took his time learning about your powers, gathered an army beneath that mountain to fight with you, and woke you up with every intention of using you as a tool to destroy his nemesis. He made you his blank slate.”

I made every effort to not let that pathetic, devastated whimper loose from my throat .

I was a tool. A weapon. An object to be used. When I thought of Elias and my people—though determined to help them—I already felt like a grand idea rather than a person with thoughts and feelings.

Perhaps I’d never been wrong for feeling uneasy about that.

“But my memories. Why?”

“Because I was Molochai’s son, and you loved me. I was a distraction. A liability. Simeon couldn’t have that,” Gavin uttered. “But he underestimated the lengths I would go to follow you.”

True. Four hundred years. For me. My chest burned with compassion, with hope, but I tamped those feelings down. “If he hates you so much, why did Simeon send you to me now?”

“After four hundred years of being the Butcher, if he didn’t let me come to you…” His eyes darkened and chilled. “Well, let’s just say I made the consequences of that choice very clear.”

I shuddered at the man before me. What he was capable of. I realized now I could only imagine, and I did not want to.

“If it’s all true,” I whispered, “why didn’t you tell me?”

“When I saw how afraid you were, when Gemma told you that story, I decided I was going to. But then, despite your fear, despite your hesitation, you made the choice to help this world. You found purpose when you had none, and I couldn’t bear to take that away from you.”

“I could have found that purpose knowing the truth.”