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Her.

The word draws my gaze back to Eira. She holds still under it, but her pulse moves faster beneath the bandage.

‘What is your blood?’ I ask.

The question leaves the chamber cold.

Eira’s expression shutters. Too fast. Too practised. She knows something. Perhaps not all of it, but enough to hide. Enough to weigh truth against survival and choose silence.

My blood surges. The beast in me wants to cross the chamber, pin her to the stone, take her throat between my teeth and ask the question again with my fangs in her vein.

I drag the impulse back by the throat.

Her face changes by a fraction, as though she senses the battle. She probably does. She has begun to read me far too well.

‘My blood is human,’ she says. ‘Annoyingly popular this week, apparently, but human.’

‘You are certain?’ Malachi asks, venom in every syllable.

Her stare snaps to him. ‘I was there when I bled.’

‘Something has altered you. Tell me what it is.’

Eira’s mouth tightens but she keeps mutinously silent.

Malachi’s fangs flash. ‘Answer him.’

She glares at him. ‘I did. I’m. Human.’

I move before I think better of it. The sigils flare as I swing my legs off the slab and stand. And the whole chamber sways.

Gideon takes one sharp step forward, then halts when I bare my teeth.

I refuse my knees permission to buckle, even as pain streaks through my chest and down my spine. I stand, one hand pressed to the cracked obsidian slab, the other curling at my side.

Eira’s face goes pale but she hides her alarm almost instantly under a glare. ‘You look terrible.’

‘But still charming?’

‘Devastatingly. In a recently resurrected corpse prince sort of way.’

The corner of Luca’s mouth twitches again. I ignore him, keep my gaze on my lover. ‘Tell me why your blood is different this time, hunter,’ I growl.

Eira’s hesitation is damning. Too damning.

‘Did you put a blood veil on me, Eira?’ I push softly.

Her eyes flicker. ‘I have no clue what that is.’

My claws press beneath my skin. ‘Or something adjacent. Your scent altered between yesterday and today. It became stronger, but less readable. More alluring, less specific.’

Eira mutters, ‘Love being discussed like a wine.’

Malachi glares at her. ‘You knowingly concealed something in your blood from him?’

My command pulses through the room before he takes one step.

Still.