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You are the only person in this court I trust.

How casually he had said it, as though trust were something one simply offered—as though it had not been carved out of her piece by piece until nothing remained. Reshva trusted only in her blade. The Knight-Saint trusted her obedience above all else. Neither had ever trusted her; certainly not her heart and every desire hidden from the world. There was a difference.

A painful, deeply isolating one.

Elarian closed her eyes. He trusts me.

The thought should have been comforting. Only fools trusted assassins. Her mission here could be complete right now, the blade he handed her already buried deep in his heart, body twitching as crimson foamed at his mouth.

Instead, the concept of trust hollowed something inside her chest.

Because if he trusted her, then somewhere along the winding road between hatred and whatever grotesque thing they had become, she too had begun trusting him.

Gods.

That could not be true.

She had survived centuries by belonging to no one above Melistra. Trust was merely another chain mortals and elves alike used to bind themselves to delusion.

Wasn’t it?

Elarian pressed the thought into the same dark corner where she buried every fear she could not afford to feel. There was still a job to be done.

forty-two

Silvered Blood

Lucan understood patience better than any vampire in his court.

It was one of the few virtues he still allowed himself to claim—not kindness, or mercy, and certainly not goodness. Those qualities died centuries ago the moment his fangs sunk into his father’s neck and tasted blood.

But patience he kept.

Patience was survival.

For centuries, he waited beneath Aurelion’s shadows. Carved away pieces of his humanity like the doting adopted son he was supposed to be, never forgetting that one day the blade would turn against his master. Lucan learned to wait while enemies revealed themselves one careless word at a time. Waited until every person he loved either abandoned him or became another weapon aimed at his heart.

He learned to do anything necessary to survive.

But this…this felt impossible.

Behind him, cloaked in shadows, Elarian waited with the poisoned dagger he gave her. She would move like smoke over water, plunge the blade into Vaelor Thane’s heart, and sever another thread between them and Aurelion.

This was what he told himself.

So why did he suddenly feel like a little boy waiting for his father’s approval again as he demonstrated his sword skills?

Gods.

She had fucking infected him, and now he willingly encouraged the disease.

Just in front of the shadows of the broken alcove, Lucan waited for Vaelor Thane to arrive. He walked slowly down the dimly lit corridor, gait relaxed as if those blood-stained halls had once been his inheritance, not Lucan’s. A lazy smile spread over his pale lips, a knowing look settling in eyes far too ancient for the youthful face he wore.

Vaelor Thane had served the Bloodlord for nearly six centuries. A sun elf from beyond the Far Sea, he had almond-shaped eyes and hair the color of spun gold. Delicate—that was the word most people first thought of when they saw Vaelor Thane, wrapped in white, gaunt frame moments from collapsing under the weight of silk.

The scar Lucan bore across his upper back revealed the truth.

Unlike the peacock preening within Lucan’s court, the pale-haired vampire had no appetite for unnecessary spectacle. Every measured word he spoke hinted at his restraint. Idle glances concealed a vicious, calculating mind. Thin and spindly as he may have been, a warhound lurked deep within his black heart. There was a reason Aurelion trusted him with secrets no other court had been permitted to hear—even Lucan’s.