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Her hand went to the dagger at her hip. His eyes widened, but he didn’t move.

“I almost died. Twice.” The words trembled with more than anger.

A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Idonea—”

She slammed him back against the wall, the tip of her dagger driving beneath his ribs. His breath punched out of him.

“Stop.”

Lysander’s chest rose and fell hard, his hands spread against the wall as he let her pin him there.

“You think I wanted to leave?” he snapped. “You think I haven’t been ripping myself apart every moment since?”

“Then why?” The question was a raw wound.

He swallowed. He didn’t answer.

She pressed the blade deeper. “Tell me why.”

His throat worked, his jaw tightened, and he fought it.

“Because I couldn’t be the reason they hurt you,” he said. “Because every time I look at you, all I see is the next way the world will take you from me.”

Her breath stilled.

His gaze dropped to her mouth.

“And I don’t know,” he whispered, “if I could survive that.”

The air between them tensed.

Idonea thought of Jovana, of the long months when the consumption took her piece by piece, and of how Jovana had never once asked Idonea to step back from it. Death had taken her, not fear.

Her hand trembled, not because she doubted him, but because she understood.

She dragged the dagger away from his ribs and slid it up, along his chest, his throat, until the blade rested beneath his jaw. His breath hitched. So did hers.

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “If you leave again, Lysander, I will hunt you. Because loving me is a choice, not a sacrifice.”

His pulse thrashed beneath the point of her knife.

“Good,” he said.

Her hand shook. That annoyed her. She kissed him before she could think better of it.

Idonea gasped, and he used the moment to deepen the kiss, his hand sliding up her spine.

She kissed him back, meeting him stroke for stroke, challenge for challenge. When he angled his head and pressed in again, slower this time, deeper, her whole body trembled.

He broke away only long enough to breathe against her lips, “Tell me to stop.”

She kissed him instead, longer, lingering until he groaned into her mouth. His hands framed her face now, thumbs stroking her cheekbones as he kissed her again and again, each one slower, more deliberate. Her thoughts scattered completely.

Idonea tore away from him the moment her breath shuddered, palms splayed against his chest.

His gaze dipped to where her cloak failed to hide the blood running in thin cascades down her arm. He dragged the fabric back with the barest scrape of his fingers.

“Witchling,” he said. “You’ll destroy yourself.”