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‘You will understand soon enough.’
‘No.’ Anger surges back, hot and blessed. ‘Fuck you and fuck that. You don’t get to stand there in this Tower, after everything you put inside me, and talk like some cryptic swamp fortune cookie. Why did you do this?’
‘Because survival required it.’
‘Whose survival?’
Her eyes flicker. There. A crack.
Valentin steps beside me, power coiled tight enough to warp the air. ‘I think we know who. Marek Volkov.’
Selphine’s face goes slack for a single moment. And I feel Valentin’s dark satisfaction.
‘We know you were seen with him,’ he says. ‘That you used Tavish Drennan. Should I go on?’
The old witch’s gaze remains on me. ‘You don’t know nearly enough, vampire. All of you use words like used because you like pretending there was a cleaner path.’
Valentin gives a soft, vicious laugh. ‘So what is this performance? A preview of nothing?’
The witch turns her head.
His contempt sharpens. ‘You appear in my Tower, taunt the woman you claim to protect, then hide behind “soon” and “survival” and theatrical warnings. Is this the part where we applaud your restraint?’
Her smile thins. ‘It is not nothing, vampire. It is a warning.’
‘Warnings usually contain useful information.’
‘Stop digging.’
‘No—’
‘And all will be revealed when revelation still has a chance of saving what matters,’ she continues as if the vampire didn’t speak.
‘What matters to whom?’ I ask.
Her eyes slice back to mine. ‘To you and him. To me and the one thing none of you arrogant, blood-mad creatures can see because you are too busy mistaking possession for protection.’
The force field ripples again and beneath the old woman’s face, the young one flickers again. I see grief there. Rage too. A longing so deep it feels like a wound dressed as a person.
For Volkov?
The thought moves through me before I can stop it. Selphine’s gaze narrows. ‘Be very careful, child.’
‘Don’t call me that. I hated it the first time, and believe me, I full on despise it now.’
The words tear out of me. The room falls silent and I realise I’m shaking.
Valentin moves closer, near enough that the bond between us tightens and steadies. Near enough that Selphine sees it and something like disappointment touches her mouth.
‘That is how he will ruin you,’ she says.
‘No,’ I whisper. ‘You have a fucking nerve calling out anything he does after what you did to me.’
That stings. And for one heartbeat, Selphine looks old in a way that has nothing to do with her face. Then she seals the crack. ‘You were always too hungry for tenderness. It made you predictable. Weak.’
Valentin’s roar tears through the room.
He throws himself at her force field with such violence that the Heartshard Glass screams again. The Tower lights black out, then flare back red. The mark at his throat burns almost entirely black, and panic rips through me because Rowan’s warning rings in my skull.
