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Then I scream.

It’s agony. The leather-bound cover adheres to my hands, scalding them with fire. My palms blister and burst, skin turning pink and raw. I want to drop the cursed thing, but I can’t let go. It won’t let me.

Iestyn looks at me. He slides the last chunk of flesh into his mouth, licking his fingers clean as he advances. His lips are smeared crimson, his eyes fervid.

Once you’ve had a taste of it, no amount will ever be enough, he told me.

Before he reaches me, he stops. A violent shudder wracks my body, but he comes no closer, just holds a bloodied hand towards me. Towards the book.

I clutch the tome tight, even as it sears my skin. “I’ve seen this book before,” I mumble through trembling lips. “Or one like it. It was in your library. Only I couldn’t read it then. I can now.”

Something in him changes. He has always been so restrained. But for a fraction of a second, the deception slips, and I’m met with a glimpse of the creature underneath.

“Now, Alderose.” His voice is dangerously soft. “I won’t ask you a second time.”

I wrench one of my hands free from the book and scrabble on the floor for my rapier. The cool metal hilt is a relief against my blistered hand, and I grip it tightly, pointing the end at Iestyn’s ribs. “Come no closer, or I’ll do the same to you as I did to him.”

The words are all bluster, and Iestyn knows it. His expression is under control again, his ageless features smooth and indiscernible. “There’s no reason it has to end like this, Alderose. I thought we understood one another.”

“There are many things I wish to understand,” I say, unable to keep the venom from my voice. “Who was Llewellyn Price, for one? And what happened in Wreymoor Hall?”

Iestyn’s gaze flits between the book in my hand and the point of my rapier before falling on my face. He could kill me with a twitch of his fingers. He could bury his fangs in my neck before I had time to blink, much less thrust my blade at him. Instead, he curves his lips into a smile.

He is indulging me, toying with me. But I don’t care. I need the truth.

“Llewellyn Price was my son,” he says, clasping his hands. “He died at Wreymoor Hall, as I did.”

Something seizes in my chest, but my head is still clouded. “But I thought… The bone I dug up from the churchyard belonged to a man, not a child. The dreams I had at the manor… I saw the cot, the blood. I heard a baby crying. I assumed the atroti—”

“No.” Iestyn shakes his head. “What you saw in Wreymoor Hall did not happen the night I was sired. The child in the cot was not Llewellyn Price.”

“Then what happened?”

He sighs. “Long have I been enthralled by the power of infernal rituals. A few decades after I became a vampire, I found myself in need of a particular item I could only obtain by returning to my old home. The place I was turned.”

“The place you were killed.”

If I meant to stir some kind of anger in him, it hasn’t worked. Iestyn looks utterly disinterested, picking flecks of blood from his nail beds before he continues. “I had no memories of the life I left behind, the family who mourned me. But I discovered I had a son, a man now grown. And he had something I needed.”

The air in the room falls deathly still. I am back in the graveyard, my breeches stained with soil and wet at the knees, my hands fumbling in the dirt until they hit something smooth.

It’s not the first time I’ve needed to take something from him, Iestyn had told me.

A sinister chill prickles my arms. “His bone… Your own son…”

“I didn’t need him to invite me in, of course. Wreymoor Hall was my home, no matter whose hands it passed on to,” Iestyn continues. “His first thought was to protect the infant, but he needn’t have bothered—it wasn’t the child I came for. I needed a bone of my own progeny.”

“The screams,” I whisper. “The crying…”

“I killed him in front of his wife and child.” Iestyn’s voice is crisp and clear, utterly devoid of feeling. “I ripped out his carotid artery with my teeth and held him as he bled. The cradle was rather a mess after that, but the infant was unharmed. Though I fear his poor wife believed otherwise, judging by her actions.”

The noose of ragged bedsheets hanging from the frame. Her bruised neck, her glassy eyes.

I feel sick. My stomach seizes, but nothing comes up. I have nothing left to give.

“Once I took my fill of blood, I left Llewellyn’s body there, then exhumed him after the burial. His grave has served as a helpful repository ever since.” Iestyn fixes me with a measured gaze. “Does that satisfy you? Are you glad you finally know the truth?”

I don’t answer. I can’t. My mouth has dried up, my throat closed tight. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve thought him a monster these last weeks. I was wrong. He is so much worse.