“And when did youknow?”
He held my gaze, unapologetic. “Not long after.”
How long wasnot long? I certainly hadn’t known while I was living. “Did you also know how scared I have been every day since I learned I was the same scourge everyone praised you for hunting down? Did you like knowing I was convinced you would kill me if you discovered what I was?” I was reeling, spiraling, screaming. “That I think even now I’ll be dead by the end of this conversation?”
“You won’t be,” he growled. “Of course not.”
Of course not.Like I was irrational for thinking the vampire king would do such a thing. “And when did you decide you weren’t going to murder me?”
“At first, I was going to let you go.”
When, when, when? When we’d parted ways in Apante? When we’d gotten the grimoire? “Why didn’t you tell me you knew what I was? That I was the necromancer you were hunting?” Instead, he’d avoided even telling me the purpose of his trip, always dodging the questions. I’d thought it was because he hadn’t wanted anyone to know he’d taken the grimoire.
“I wantedyouto tell me. I wanted you to confide in me the way you wouldn’t before.”
“I didn’t even know! You knew before me. You should have told me.” I’d made choices only in self-preservation. Keeping secrets, planning my escape. Refusing to give in to my feelings for him—even fleeing this night because I’d accidentally used my powers on him. But he could have told me! Could have told me he knew what I was and that he wasn’t going to kill me.
Before that, I’d thought I was a void, and he’d known otherwise. I’d studied the damn grimoire with no clue it was my birthright. And he’d let me, encouraged me, without ever letting on I had the magic I’d so desperately craved, power I’d been denied.
If I’d known—if he’d told me he knew I was the necromancer and had no plans to hurt me—would I have ever considered allying with Titus? Would I still be alive, a living, breathing witch instead ofthis?
“Perhaps,” he conceded. “I never meant to scare you.”
“Scare.” I scoffed. Like that single word could encompass what it meant to have lived the past months petrified with fear that someone would learn my true nature and end me.
I threw down my mental shields. Not fully, but enough. Enough to let him experience the crash of terror inside me evennow. If I still had a heartbeat, it wouldn’t be racing. It would have stopped moments ago.
I watched it hit him. The sick feeling of an inevitable death closing in, the panic of a trapped animal desperately looking for a way out. The fear I had of him.
“Samara,” he breathed. His jaw softened, tightened, in sequence as my emotions rolled into him. “I’m so sorry.”
I locked the feelings behind my mental walls once again.
“You don’t have to hide it.” He ran a thumb over the tattoo on my wrist, a featherlight touch countering the harsh emotions I felt. “Give me your fear, your pain. I deserve it. But don’t pretend there isn’t more there. You’re not just afraid for your life. You’re afraid I wouldn’t want you, wouldn’t choose you, but Samara, I will always choose you. Let me choose you.”
I couldn’t help myself.
I kissed him.
It was an angry, furious kiss, and just like my strike before, Raphael bore it. He took every scathing demand I made and kissed me back with fervent intensity that made my knees weak all over again. My pinned hand finally released the blade to the forest floor, and Raphael’s grip shifted, too, lacing his fingers into mine as the kiss changed. Still intense, but now with desperation.
I was horrifically eager to be a fool, to believe this kiss, to believe his words. To believe that the vampire king could ever be with the necromancer.
“I’m still angry,” I breathed against his lips.
“Samara.” My name was a plea, a prayer, as he kept kissing me. “Be angry. Cut me, hate me, rage at me, just don’t leave. Please don’t leave.”
The king of vampires, begging. Begging me to stay. I lost myself in him for a moment, then another. Each an intoxicating sip of poison.
“We can’t do this,” I finally said. “I know how your kind feels about me—about what I am. I was always planning to go. I still have to.”
He kissed me again, softly against my lips this time. “You can go, Samara. I won’t stop you. I could never truly make myself stop you.”
Something in me tightened at the words.
“But you don’t have to,” he continued, still pressing kisses against my jaw. “You have a place with me. You canchooseto stay. Don’t you want that?”
It was a sweet, impossible offer. “Wanting isn’t enough.” It was never enough.
