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Rowan’s eyebrows rise. ‘At this point, why the hell not?’

That doesn’t sound medically reassuring.

The witch continues, dry as bone. ‘You will either be each other’s salvation, or you will drag one another so deep into the curse that Morrighan will applaud from her cage.’

At that, even the Heartshard Glass seems to hold the sentence.

Valentin’s face goes dark.

Rowan, apparently satisfied with having ruined the mood for every living and undead thing in the room, turns towards the door. ‘I need a proper ritual circle, salt that has never touched mortal water, three drops from the mark, a scraping from the Glass, and every record you have on Selphine Rousseau.’

‘You will have it,’ Valentin says.

‘I know,’ Rowan replies. ‘I was not asking.’

Then she leaves. Her words echo after her.

Salvation or ruin.

Very cheery.

Very witch.

I stare at the ceiling and consider closing my eyes for roughly a year.

The bed dips and Valentin crawls onto it beside me with a silence that should be impossible for someone carrying so much wrath. He sits with his back against the headboard, then draws me carefully against him. I consider objecting on principle.

But my body chooses treason and settles closer, wrapping one arm around his waist and breathing in his insanely delicious scent.

He starts to present his wrist again but the cut has healed. So he opens it with one fang.

Blood wells, dark and rich, and my whole body reacts with a humiliating little pulse of hunger.

I roll my eyes, or try to. It comes out weak. If you start calling this a balanced breakfast, I’m biting you somewhere inconvenient.

There’s no response, and that worries me.

I probe the bond, gently this time.

A tremor runs through him, small and violent. The kind of shudder a mountain might give before splitting down its centre.

Do not argue with me, Eira.

The thought is rough… stripped raw. My throat tightens for an entirely different reason as he presses his bleeding wrist closer to my mouth.

And until we find the solution to this, do not attempt to speak what you cannot.

I stare at him. ‘You’ve changed your tune,’ I manage to rasp.

His eyes close briefly at the sound of my damaged voice. When they open, they are black, silver and pained. ‘Yes,’ he says aloud. ‘I have.’

The answer unsettles me more than fury would have.

He looks down at my throat, at the faint traces of blood not yet cleaned from my skin, the mouth that tried to hand him the truth and nearly drowned in it.

‘When I put you in my dungeon,’ he says, each word controlled with visible effort, ‘I believed I was punishing betrayal. When you bled in my hands, I understood I had delivered you to the exact cruelty I should’ve been shielding you from.’

Fuck. This vampire.