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‘Don’t…’ She coughs, blood bubbling at the corner of her mouth. ‘…look so… dramatic.’

The words are barely there and yet they undo me.

Even now. Even with her body failing in my arms, she cannot resist using that mouth on me.

My throat closes around something too large for pride.

‘You foolish, vicious woman,’ I snarl, and the tremor in my voice enrages me more than any enemy has managed in centuries. ‘You will not bleed merely to insult me.’

Her eyes flicker with pain, fear, then with something softer she cannot hide quickly enough. She sees me. But even worse, she sees what this is doing to me.

I have known pain before in my centuries of life. But… in this second… I’m utterly failing to find a moment this drenched in savage anguish. This raw with terror. I don’t bother to swallow it down or suppress.

I simply lift my head and roar.

Somewhere above us, the fractured Heartshard Glass screams. Again.

Then the sound rips through the Tower like a thousand mirrors breaking underwater.

Eira flinches in my arms as the mark at my throat ignites and more waves of pain spear down my chest. I do not even need to look down to see that beneath my shirt, the lines of the Countdown Mark twist, darkening from red to near-black.

For two heartbeats, I feel the old clock inside the curse accelerate. A brutal forward lurch. A hand dragging the measure closer to its final stroke.

No.

Rowan approaches, pale hair loose around her shoulders, eyes already fixed on Eira’s bleeding mouth. ‘What did you do?’ she snaps.

‘I asked for truth.’

‘And the truth tried to kill her.’ Rowan’s mouth tightens. ‘Move.’

I bare my fangs and yank away the chains binding her. Then with one arm around my infuriating, fragile, breathtaking little hunter, and the other one around the witch, I snarl. ‘With me.’

The world blurs as I take us from the dungeon to my chambers.

My ruined chambers.

The room receives us in darkness and broken silver. The Heartshard Glass hangs fractured above the far wall, no longer a smooth mirror but a web of blackened cracks pulsing with red light. Its surface ripples as I lay Eira on the bed, and in each broken shard, her reflection appears differently. Hunter. Woman. Bloodied mouth. Eyes closed. A shadow of another face behind hers that vanishes before I can seize it.

The Tower trembles again.

Rowan’s sharp intake of breath tells me she sees enough.

I bend over her, one hand at her jaw, the other pressed to the woundless skin of her throat as if I can hold the blood inside by command alone.

‘Explain,’ I snarl.

Rowan reaches for Eira, but I catch her wrist before she touches her, a reflex I cannot contain. ‘You will take extreme care, witch.’

Her gaze snaps to mine. ‘If you wish to posture, do it after she stops bleeding.’

I release her. Barely.

I am rigid stone as Rowan presses two fingers beneath Eira’s chin, then over her tongue. Eira jerks, choking on another mouthful of blood, and the sound drags every predatory instinct I possess to the surface.

‘Careful,’ I growl.

‘I’m being careful. That’s why she’s still breathing.’