Page 166 of The Blood Rites

He hesitates, then nods. “I dream of you,” he says, “but she always appears and takes you away. Sometimes in ways I can’t bear to describe.”

I shiver. “I dream about you too,” I admit. “She uses your face, but your voice and your eyes are wrong. Then you kill me, or you hurt me. It’s different every time.”

Kael’s mouth quirks, anger held behind a thin veil. “Maybe that’s what she wants.”

I think of the death counter, the way it pulses—indifferent and cruel. “I don’t think she cares who wins. I think she likes the spectacle of it all.”

He nods, but then his face goes blank. “I’m scared for you,” he says.

I’ve never heard him use that word before.

His grip tightens a fraction. “And I don’t intend to let that fear be justified.”

I sink further into his embrace. “I’m scared too,” I say. “Not of dying, not anymore. But of losing myself. I don’t want to become a monster.”

Kael’s jaw works, and he looks away. “Some of us were monsters long before the Rites.”

It should be easy to believe. I’ve heard enough from his own mouth, and from Nyxen’s. I know he is dangerous. I know there is blood on his hands. But he has only ever been kind to me. Protective, even.

A monster?

The image gets further away all the time.

“Nyxen and Vaelis—do you think they’ll really kill me?” I ask.

He almost laughs. “They’re supposed to do nothing unless I order it,” he says.

I shudder. “I suppose it’s their duty to make sure you win,” I say. “I guess I’d probably kill me too. If the roles were reversed.”

He makes a noise, low and wounded. “I wouldn’t.”

I look up at him, surprised.

“I wouldn’t,” he repeats, as if saying it louder will make it true.

A memory surfaces—Kael, broken, dragging himself toward me in the clearing, eyes on me, always, no matter that the world was burning around us.

He means it. That’s what hurts most.

“I don’t want to kill Atheron,” I say. “But I will. I want him to suffer for what he did to her.”

Kael nods, slow and deliberate. “I’ll get it done,” he says. “I’ll do it.”

We sit in silence for a while, two bodies in a cocoon of each other’s warmth, plotting a man’s death.

“I had a sister,” Kael says, out of nowhere. “My father said she was too weak. Just like he said of me. She never even made it to the Rites.”

I picture her—small, black-haired, shadow-eyed like him. A version of Kael before cruelty had finished shaping him.

“That’s awful,” I say.

He shrugs. “I barely remember her now. Sometimes I wonder if she ever existed at all.”

He pauses. “That’s the worst part.”

I want to squeeze him harder, to let him know that I’m real, but I don’t. It would be too much.

“Do you really think there’s a way out of this?” I ask, instead.