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Then she gives me a crooked, trembling smile that cuts deeper than honesty. ‘Currently? The worst decision you’ve made all week.’

I know it is all I will get.

For now.

I grit my teeth as the stasis rises again, dragging cold up through the mark’s burning heat. But as darkness closes, I send one command through the bloodline, clear enough that every one of my Twelve will feel it etched into bone.

She stays alive.

Then, because even on the edge of collapse I am not foolish enough to trust obedience without consequence, I add the second.

Protect her.

The Vaults vanish. The last thing I hear is Eira’s voice, sharp with panic and fury.

My fingers tighten around her. ‘Stay… close,’ I rasp.

‘Then you stay too! Valentin? Don’t you dare do that dramatic blackout thing again.’

And for the first time in five centuries, I fall into darkness wishing I could obey.

4

EIRA

The first time Valentin growls my name, I assume I’ve finally lost my mind.

It’s not quite the dramatic, Tower-goes-black, vampire-king-nearly-dies-between-my-thighs kind of way. That ship has sailed, burned, sunk, and probably been cursed by three separate witches.

This is quieter. More dangerous.

Eira.

I come awake with my heart already pounding.

The sheets are twisted around my legs, the air too still. For one disorienting second I don’t know where I am. Then the Tower reminds me.

And beneath it, him.

Come to me.

I sit upright. ‘No,’ I whisper into the darkness. ‘Absolutely not.’

The command comes again, deeper this time, sliding through my skull and down my spine with the intimate pressure of a hand propelling me.

Come to me, little hunter.

The night I let him take my virginity and drink my blood for the first time, he introduced me to the vampire phenomenon that is mind-speak. So I know his voice in my head now. Unfortunately. Intimately. In ways I will be unpacking never.

But this is worse. This isn’t the blood phone ringing. This is the blood phone reaching through the wall and dragging me out of bed.

A shiver breaks across my skin. I shove the blankets away and stand too fast, swaying as the room tilts. My throat is still sore from his bite. Bride’s Mercy prowls silently beneath my tongue. My body feels hollowed out in all the wrong places, but the pull in my chest is precise enough to be painful.

‘You told me to stay away,’ I mutter, because apparently I have reached the part of the evening where arguing with an unconscious vampire through a curse tether counts as reasonable behaviour.

Come.

My bare feet are already moving. I don’t remember crossing the room, turning the door handle. And that should terrify me more than it does.