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Kylian laughs. The darkness in it makes my skin crawl. “You are right,” he says. “He could not have harmed one of us. But why would I let him go?” He stalks closer, stopping in front of me. “You lied to me. You lied to my face. And then I learned you’ve been sneaking out to visit him. So tell me, why should I show mercy to the man you’ve been sneaking out to see?”

“He is a friend from the farm,” I state. “We’ve grown up together. I was trying to help him. His wounds were infected, and he needed medicine. That is all it was, Kylian. He broke no laws that warrant death.”

“Not even treason?”

My breath catches.

“Did you think I wouldn’t smell him on you?” His voice rises, carrying the full weight of the Vampire King’s fury, and I recoil automatically. “You thought that I would not know you were lying? That I would not feel his lips on you through the bond?”

Tears spill fast down my cheeks, hot and fast, blurring the torchlight into smears of gold and orange, and I feel each one tracking over my cold skin.

He waits for me to deny it. I can feel the waiting in him, the coiled tension of a man holding open a door that he is about to slam shut, offering one last chance for a truth that might change what comes next. And I have nothing to give him because the truth is that Arlo kissed me, and I kissed him back.

Kylian turns to the executioner below.

“Kill him.”

The two words detonate like a bomb in my chest where my bond to Kylian pulses with his fury. The pain of them is so complete and so immediate that I cannot move, cannot breathe, cannot do anything but stand at the railing and watch the guards below take hold of Arlo’s arms and drag him toward the platform where the blade still glistens with the blood of the men who came before him.

A scream tears from my throat before I know it is coming. I lunge for the railing, my body throwing itself forward as if I can reach him from this height, as if the distance between the balcony and the square below is something I can bridge with desperation and outstretched hands.

Kylian’s arm catches me around the waist and hauls me back against his chest, his grip crushing the air from my lungs. My cuffed hands beat against his forearms. My heels slam backward into his shins. My nails rake across the fabric of his coat as I twist and thrash and try to break free of hands that will not release me.

Below, Arlo thrashes against the guards holding him, and when my name tears from his lips, it splits something inside me as the guards drag him forward.

“Why?” Kylian’s voice vibrates through his chest against my back. “Why should I spare him?”

“Because I love him,” I choke out.

The crowd below goes still. The guards holding Arlo hesitate. The general’s document lowers to his side. Behind me, pressed against my back with his arm still locked around my waist, Kylian’s grip loosens by one fraction of an inch, and the breath that leaves his chest carries the sound of something breaking that will never be whole again.

His arm falls away from my waist, and I tear forward, gripping the railing with both bound hands. Below me, Arlo is on his knees at the base of the platform with a guard forcing his head forward into the curved wooden brace while another straps his wrists into the restraints on either side.

The sight of his hands being locked into place beneath the blade empties my lungs of every breath I have ever taken. His shirt hangs in strips across his back, and even from this height, the angry red welts crossing his skin are visible, lines that I know all too well because he earned them by protecting me.

I round on Kylian, his face carrying a cold composure that sends my panic soaring.

“I’ll let you mark me, just set him free, please.”

My eyes are on Kylian, but my mind has retreated to a place inside me that can still picture warm hazel eyes and the butterflies I used to get just from seeing them.

I can still hear Arlo’s laugh and feel his hand in mine. He protected me, even when I had no idea, without question he provided for me, even if he risked losing a hand for stealing. He killed for me, knowing what it could cost him. Every part of our past is entangled in everything I am.

In this moment, I would trade anything, sacrifice anything, give away whatever remaining piece of myself that still belongs only to me, if it means the blade does not fall on Arlo. Because if I’d never walked into his life, he’d be home on the farm with his mother and sister, whole, unharmed.

The square is silent as they wait. Kylian does not move. Does not blink. Does not breathe. He stands at the railing, eyes locked on my face.

His hand lifts. A single gesture, fingers raised, palm open, directed at the executioner below. The guards on the platform freeze, their hands still gripping Arlo’s restraints. For one trembling heartbeat, everything balances on the edge, teetering between violence and mercy with the weight of my confession still ringing in my ears.

The composure on his face cracks, and beneath it, anguish so raw it makes my ribs hurt to look at. “You would let me mark you, for him?”

The guards loosen Arlo’s restraints. His hands come free, and he is on his feet, moving with a speed that should be impossible for a man with an infected back and days of confinement weakening his muscles. He shoves past the nearest guard and takes off, fighting through the crowd, his voice rising above the stunned silence as he shouts my name with a desperation that tears through the night air and reaches us on the balcony.

“Don’t do it!” Arlo yells, his eyes finding mine, his face twisted with the same fury rolling off Kylian in waves. “I would rather die than watch you bind yourself to a fucking monster!”

I don’t even have a chance to process what just happened before Kylian is gone. He was standing in front of me, his hand still raised from the signal that stopped the blade, then in the next blink, faster than my eyes could track.

A scream rips from me because I know where he is going, and I know what he intends to do. I reach for my magic, but there is only cold pressure, only the cruel grip of the shackles clamping down so hard that the power inside me folds in on itself.