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His words are anathema. So I shove him. “Of course you would say that.” My voice is hoarse. Had I been screaming? “You love the Dark.”

I think of that look in his eye when I catch his stare across a classroom, or across the Founders Hall tonight. Sleepless and intense, rimmed in dark circles too deep for his age. Until now, I didn’t realize what that look was. Now I see it. Wanting. His Darkness is invasive, and he wears his hunger like a cloak. That’s why he’s different from the other students, that’s the feeling I get around him—hair standing up on my neck, gooseflesh down my arms, a chill down my spine. Like he’s a phantom, something fiendish and preternatural lurking in our school.

“I do.”

No defense. No objection. There’s challenge in the words, though, so I meet it.

“I hate the Dark,” I tell him, my voice low and cold. “I will always fight it.” Even in myself. All my anger, all my pain, spearheads toward this one person.

But Lonan just nods. “You’ve been taught to hate it. But you can’t have Light without the Dark. This obsession with separating them and villainizing the Dark is what caused Gault’s war.”

Gault’s war. It’s never been called that to my ears before. It’s been called the war against Imaelhain, the last stand of the Light. But “Gault’s war”—there’s no doubt where Lonan places the blame or where his loyalties lie. Saints, his brother is the prince of Gault. To turn his back on his kingdom like this . . . It’s unthinkable.

I have been treading too close to the Dark. I should run. I should keep fighting. But even if Light and logic tell me to get as far away from him as I can, when he’s looking at me with all that wanting, the furious dark fire that burns in his eyes, when the memory of his lips still lingers on mine, I can’t turn away.

“My father died for the Light,” I say.

“Your father didn’t know the truth. It’s not wicked to feel, Vesper,” he whispers. And that is what my poetry is, what the Dark is—feeling. It’s the storm I keep buried inside. For so long, it’s felt safer to keep it hidden. But I’m getting tired of the struggle. “You don’t have to fight it anymore.”

“The Ridding—”

“Damn the Ridding. We can beat it.”

He extends a hand toward me. I stare at it, this offering, torn between two worlds. In one, there is the Light—goodness and reason and order. And people like Galvin who would twist it. In the other, there is chaos and madness and passion that could destroy . . . or heal. And there is Lonan.

I look into his weary eyes, and I see the loneliness. And I see someone who could be good, who could find their way back to balance. As I place my hand in his, I know . . .

I’m already in too deep.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“So you’ve chosen him.”

I break away from Lonan and jerk toward the door. Galvin stands in the tall frame of the gallery doorway. His eyes are clear—not a trace of the siphon is evident. But I see a different kind of monstrosity in his face.

This is a man slighted, far more dangerous than any fiendling.

Lonan draws his sword, crimson Light pulled to it instantly, but his shadows also circle his fingers, snaking up his arms. “One step,” he threatens. “One step closer. I dare you.”

Galvin smiles, that same charming grin Lonan possesses. “It must be so very difficult to watch me get everything you’ve ever wanted, brother—a crown, a home . . . our mother’s love . . . and now her.”

Lonan bashes his sword against the wall, sending furious red sparks flying. “Try me,” he says. “I fucking dare you.”

But he’s not the only one who’s furious. I’m already charging for him. I might not be able to kill him, but I can help Lonan do it.

I catch him off guard, swinging my scythe for his neck. It hooks around him, meeting his skin to no effect, like he’s made of steel, but I use it to yank him toward me while I launch my feet toward his chest. I have him on the ground, pinned beneath my knees, my blade against his neck.

“Lonan,” I call.

He’s at my side instantly, but his sword remains lowered. “We can’t,” he says. “It could kill you. You’re . . . you’re tied to him.” He sounds like it’s taking all his self-control to resist.

Galvin smiles beneath my blade. I press the curved edge of my scythe harder against his windpipe. “I’ll risk it,” I seethe.

Galvin swallows and struggles to speak under the press of my blade, but he still wears that slick smile. “Life is cruel to you, isn’t it, Lonan? My death means hers. And my life means she’s still mine.”

I shove the blade against his throat. “Say I’m yours again, and I’ll let him castrate you.”

“Students of Gossemort.”