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“You allowed him to escape.” The accusation landed harder than she meant.
“Yes.”
His admission startled her. Lucan did not look away, holding her gaze until she blinked first. Averting her eyes lest he see the tears gathering, she pushed his hand aside and pressed firmly against her wound until her blood sang. Why? she wished to ask. Why am I more important to you than the one you wanted me to kill?
Instead, she only sighed. The thought of what he might say in reply terrified her.
“You hesitated.”
Finally, she sighed. The reason she deserved the disappointment burning beneath his tender expression. Gods, hearing those two words relieved her more than she cared to admit. She could handle disappointment. Failure made a blade sharper—if they survived.
“You trusted the wrong person,” she whispered.
Pain broke across Lucan’s face.
“No,” he said slowly. He grabbed her by the chin and forced Elarian to meet his gaze. “I trusted the right person.”
Lucan seemed to realize what he had said only after the words had already escaped. His expression closed immediately, the walls rising again.
Too late.
She had seen it—that flicker of humanity. The broken, shattered part of Lucan that she found herself drawn to like a moth toward its demise. Buried beneath centuries of fortified walls and horrors beyond her imagination, a man still clung to life; and goddess help her, Elarian found him impossible to ignore.
“You should not trust me.” A bitter smile touched her lips as she spoke.
“Trust an assassin?” Lucan’s gaze hardened. “Or just you?”
“Trust someone who believes she deserves to die every time she fails.”
Lucan looked down as he pressed fresh linens to her ribcage, his movements precise despite the tremor hidden beneath his fingers. After centuries of learning exactly how to survive monsters, she had become exquisitely skilled at noticing when one was afraid.
And Lucan Valmere was more afraid than any creature she’d ever seen before.
“Don’t.”
His voice wavered, that one word carrying more emotion than anything he had said to her over their long years of scarring each other.
Melistra, save me!
The vampire she’d spent nearly a century hunting—the one she dreamed of killing, of presenting to Melistra as an offering to cure her blood-borne curse…She meant something more to him than merely a useful prisoner.
“You should have let him kill me,” she said softly.
The bandage tightened.
“No.” Lucan kept his head down, gaze fixed firmly on her wound.
“You needed him dead.”
“I needed information, which I received.”
“You need him more than you should need me.” The words escaped before she could stop them.
“Elarian.”
She hated the way he said her name. Hated how her left wrist throbbed with tender pain, the bite marks from his strange visits in the night a reminder of just how deep his obsession ran. Elarian knew this; understood that Melistra would surely never extend her Grace again. That Reshva and the Knight-Saint would see her wrist—should she ever return to the Darkening—and cast her out yet again.
Once, any one of those truths would’ve been enough to make her shudder with rage. But now, Elarian struggled to summon the hatred for Lucan Valmere that once fueled her every action.
