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Lucan’s hand rose slowly, hesitating for only a moment before brushing a strand of silver hair away from her cheek. Featherlight against her skin, she only then realized just how hot she burned beneath him.

“I failed,” she said, chanting it in her head as if she could somehow force him to agree. Failed Melistra. Failed Reshva. Failed myself. Failed…you.

“No.” The word was barely a whisper. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her closer. “But you frightened me.”

Deep within her caged heart, something shattered with his admission. Lucan’s thumb lingered against the inside of her wrist, tracing the faint constellation of half-healed punctures scattered among hundreds of faded scars.

“Why have you been biting me?”

“I-I’ve been trying to understand you,” he murmured, as if confessing to some great sin. His eyes darted up, catching hers.

“My fever…” Elarian frowned, unable to finish her thought. Should have killed me.

“It is no simple fever, Elarian. There is no mortal or elf alive who can survive weeks ravaged by this as you have.”

Silence settled between them. Lucan gathered the discarded, blood-soaked cloth in his hands, staring at the silvery crimson staining the linen rather than at her.

“The bloodwine stopped working days ago.” His voice had gone strangely quiet. “The bloodletting buys you less time each night.”

Elarian’s stomach tightened. Bloodwine. Bloodletting. Those were sacrilegious words. She cut herself to relieve the pain, but begged for Melistra's forgiveness each time. Long had her faded scars marked her apart from the moon elves. Blessed, but at a terrible cost, her soul wavering between grace and sin.

But this strange care between vampire and moon elf, between a creature cursed by the gods and one given life anew…These were terrible, evil, monstrous things that would damn her, not save her.

Weren’t they?

“Why?”

Lucan hesitated. It was the first time she had ever seen him appear reluctant to answer a question. When he wished to hide, an acidic retort wrapped in elegance spilled from his lips. His eyes would dance with delight, masking the pain underneath it all; yet he did no such thing tonight.

“Every time I bit you…” His jaw flexed. “The fever eased.”

Her brows knit together.

“The first time…gods, the first time I wanted to hurt you, wanted to make you bleed for every vile word that dripped from your mouth at court that day. You had called me a pig in front of Drevain, flaunted that you knew yourself untouchable—protected by Aurelion even from afar. To invoke his name so freely in my court…I almost beat you bloody right there, Elarian.” His grip tightened at her wrist until her bones ached. “Never say that name again if you wish to live.”

A strange guilt curled around her stomach until her breath caught.

“I wanted you to hurt me,” she confessed softly.

“I know.”

Lucan inhaled deeply. He smiled as his hips pressed into hers, pinning her against the bed. Breath ghosting over her throat, she arched her neck, pulse quickening at the thought of her blood touching his lips.

“You only bit me?” The words struggled to escape, mind clouded with a desire so thick, her thoughts blurred.

Lucan nodded.

“Yes,” he whispered. “I watched as your blood traced the slender length of your fingers, dripping to the floor below. May Gairan curse me again if I try to deny that it was not a most beautiful sight in those dark hours as you slept by my side.”

“But…your bite should have poisoned me.” Elarian’s chest tightened as the words left her mouth. Darkness unfurled inside, that malevolent voice rising from the ashes.

You know why you survived his bite, child of the profane.

“I only know that each morning afterward, your pulse steadied. Your breathing slowed, and the fire left your skin for a few hours.” He finally met her gaze. “Long enough to keep you alive.”

Elarian instinctively touched the fading marks along her wrist.

Four matching sets of perfect punctures dotted the pale skin there, each one left during another fevered night she scarcely remembered. Every morning after, she always awoke weaker, yet somehow less consumed by the fires coursing through her veins. The fifth lay hidden beneath the collar of her gown where Lucan had bitten her in Drevain’s apartments—the night when she rested without pain or ghosts for the first time in three long, aching centuries.