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“Galvin is my bloodmate,” I say, keeping my eyes on the teeth rather than look at him or the others. “We’re fated to be together, but I hate him. I hate everything that he stands for. I think he’s a weak, worthless, spineless, limp—”

“All right,” Galvin growls.

“She has to tell the truth, brother,” Lonan says with a note of pleasure.

My stomach twists—the flow of the paint doesn’t slow at all. I clench my eyes shut, digging deep for the truth. I search my broken heart for hidden truths I don’t even want to admit to myself.

“But I still want him.” My throat thickens as the words leave my lips, and silence descends on the room. “I still want him. I don’t want to want him, but I do. And I feel helpless against the bloodbond. Saints, I always feel helpless. I always feel like a tool, useful to others but not really living. My scythe is for Gault, and my poetry is for my godfather, and my soul is for my bloodmate, and I just want to belong to myself.”

I open my eyes. The paint has slowed, just short of the hem of my dress. The teeth pile over each other, some of them rearranging and joining other sets of jaws. Paint flows between them and over them in swirling earthen tones. My breathing turns ragged as I inwardly beg the paint to recede, the teeth to sink like it did with the others.

But then my feet fall.

The floorboards swallow me, eating my body up to my knees. The skirt of my dress bunches around me on the floor, and the teeth chatter excitedly. The paint begins to flow faster.

“More, Vesper!” Poppy shouts.

Saints, no. My breaths come in quick pants as I think. What am I hiding?

“We love you, Vesper!” Hugo shouts. “You can say it—whatever it is. Just fucking live!”

Tears begin to pool in the corners of my eyes as the paint surrounds me in a circle. “I’m afraid!” I shout. “I’m always afraid.”

It doesn’t slow.

I squeeze my eyes shut. “I don’t know if I can trust Lonan. I see how much he loves Dark magic and . . . I worry that Galvin is right, that he’s a traitor.”

The fluid flows, soaking the hem of my white dress, seeping beneath. The teeth begin to rip at the fabric, shredding it furiously, and I imagine those teeth against the skin of my thighs.

“But sometimes . . . I wonder if he’s right. I think maybe the Dark isn’t wicked, and the Light isn’t pure. And I’m so ashamed of thinking that because my father died for that truth, that the Light was goodness. The Light was the way. I don’t know what to think, and it’s tearing me apart.”

I open my eyes. I don’t meet the eyes of the others. I can’t.

But then the paint gushes from the portrait, crashing against me in a torrent. My feet are pulled downward, till I’m stuck thigh-deep in the floorboards. And then I feel the teeth.

No, no, no, no.

The first of them reach my trapped thighs, beneath my skirt. And then they bite. Dozens of nibbles slash into my thighs. Ripping, shredding, gnawing at any skin they can reach. The paint curls between my legs, and there’s nothing I can do to them as the teeth latch and puncture and strip the tender flesh of my inner thighs. I’m screaming. I’m screaming.

And then I realize Orla is shouting something.

“Why are you special?” she screams. “Why? Why were we ordered to protect you?”

“I—don’t—know!” I scream. “I don’t know!”

“We’re looking for something!” Lonan shouts. I open my eyes to see utter panic on his face as he watches the teeth devour me. “We’re looking for something! You’re the key to it! That’s what your godfather said!”

I shake my head. “I don’t know!”

The teeth climb higher, clambering over each other. They gnaw higher and higher up my thighs, and I’m screaming and writhing.

I try to push them away, and it’s a mistake. They latch hold of my hands now, and the floor pulls me farther into the ground. The teeth puncture the backs of my hands, my wrists, my hips.

I can’t think anymore. I’m begging. “I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!” I have no secrets left. What does the school want?

“You hold the truth!” Lonan shouts, his voice breaking. “What is it, Vesper? What is your secret?”

I’ve never seen Lonan so undone, so afraid, so chaotic. Charm, gone. Poise, gone. His expression is one of abject terror.