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Enough.

I am Lyra Hannigan.

The thought burns. Bride’s Mercy turns cold under my tongue, as if it hears me.

Let it.

Valentin’s arm tightens around me.

Eira?

I open my eyes and stare at the broken Heartshard Glass, at the largest shard where our reflection sits fractured together in the dark.

I don’t answer him yet. Because if I speak now, the spell will tear me open again. But the choice has already been made.

And this time, whatever Selphine built inside me is going to have to break before I do.

18

EIRA

The shower should be practical. Necessary even, especially after the poison-by-proxy, dungeon-without-room-service, mind-bond, bite-me-or-save-me shenanigans I’ve been through.

We’re both adults. Allegedly. We have blood on our skin, sex in places sex has no business lingering with this much drama attached, and a Tower full of vampires pretending very hard they’re not wondering whether their unstable sire has forgiven me, imprisoned me, fucked me to death, or all three in an emotionally inconvenient order.

So yes.

Practical.

Until Valentin follows me beneath the water.

The shower is built like everything else he owns, which is to say excessive, beautiful and quietly threatening with black marble and steam thick enough to blur the glass. Water falls from overhead in a hot, relentless sheet that slicks his hair back from his face and turns his body into something carved from shadow, gold and old violence.

He looks better after feeding me but that doesn’t reassure me.

The mark at his throat still runs too dark beneath his skin, and the shadows under his eyes remain. His strength is present, but strained around the edges, a blade honed so thin it might sing or snap.

I reach for the soap. He takes it from me. ‘Bossy,’ I say.

His gaze drops to my mouth. ‘I’m keeping you alive.’

‘That’s becoming your favourite argument.’

‘And it remains convincing.’

He washes me with slow, infuriating care. The place where my thumb had bled, the hollow of my throat where magic tried to tear me open. His fingers linger there for one charged second, and the grief that crosses his face is gone too quickly for pride to examine properly.

Then I feel him in my head.

Does it hurt?

‘No,’ I say aloud, because I can. Because my voice works again, and the miracle of that still sits under my ribs like something fragile. ‘My throat feels fine.’

His hand cups the side of my neck. Be certain.

‘I am.’

The bond hums with all the words neither of us wants to touch.