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I pout. “Oh dear. We’ll have to work on obedience, won’t we?”

“I am bound to you, Vesper Fontaine,” he says, his voice dangerously low. “No part of that obligates me to handle you with restraint.”

“Oh darling,” I croon. “As if you could handle the lack of my restraint.”

He snarls, the sound and wrathful contortion of his face completely out of step with his princely appearance. He can’t resist any longer. “I am going to savor bridling that unruly tongue.” He takes a step toward me.

I slip my hand into my pocket, close my fist around the silver dagger, ready myself to plunge it into his heart.

But the Ridding has other plans.

As if moved by his words, the dummies turn as one toward us. A towering, faceless army.

Every practice dummy in the gymnasium leaps down from its weights, the tethers of rope holding them in place fraying and snapping. As a unit, the dummies charge toward us.

Reflexively I back toward Lonan, and he turns his back to me, just as we did in the hall with the siphons. We’re a team, he and I, familiar with each other’s fighting styles in a way that only seven years of combat training can produce. But there are so many. Just one gets through my perimeter, reaching for me. It grabs my hair and yanks me toward the floor. I arc my scythe up to meet it, but it’s already bringing a hard wooden foot down on my face. Pain explodes in my cheekbone, in my jaw, and my vision turns to stars. I fight through the pain.

I rip through the dummy, even as another grabs at my ankles, dragging me across the floor. I swing the scythe toward my feet, narrowly catching the edge of my shoe before relieving the dummy of its head. But then another body is atop mine—this one not made of wood.

Galvin’s eyes flare, that deep blue covered in opaque white film as his hand circles my throat, his other slamming down on the wrist that holds my scythe. He’s beyond language, beyond reason. The thing before me is pure monster, pure siphon. White canines flash, and then they’re buried deep in my neck.

My whole body tenses, like it can guard itself against the poison now entering my veins. I don’t know how much he gave me before, but this is so much more. It’s thick, painful as it hits my bloodstream. A scream is wrenched from my throat.

Fight. Fight.

But my scythe is locked down by the inhuman strength of Galvin’s arm. His hand is around my neck—I can’t breathe, much less think. The dummies pummel Galvin’s body as well as mine. They don’t spare him, but he doesn’t release me. His teeth sink deep into my throat, his latch unbreakable. I’m rendered useless, mentally flailing for both the Dark and the Light. Minutes ago I nearly decimated the hall with my nightmares. Now I’m as defenseless as the nonmagical.

Saints help me.

I do not pray, on principle. The Saints have never lifted a finger against the cruel hand of Fate for my sake. But when the Darkness surrounds, and there is little else to do but cry out, whether anyone is listening or not, I pray anyway, though not to any Saint. I call to my mother.

There’s a flash of scarlet. The mere sight of that color, the one that has meant death for so many, means hope for me. Lonan kicks Galvin and he falls to his back, his fangs ripped from my throat. I can breathe again. The venom is still thick in my veins, and my neck burns like he’s poured acid on it. But I sit up and lift my scythe, ready to attack the next dummy that launches itself at me . . . only to see them all in pieces on the floor.

Lonan did that.

He annihilated the roomful of them by himself.

It’s so easy to forget what he is, forget what he can do. But here is the evidence before me. He is the Great Nightmare. More folklore than living, breathing boy. And his boot is currently on my bloodmate’s throat.

Galvin hisses up at his brother, white eyes gleaming like a cat.

“I’m torn,” Lonan says, his voice low and full of lethal rage. “Between the desire to watch her gut you, or the desire to do it myself.”

Galvin laughs, his head resting against the stone of the gymnasium floor. “You can’t kill me that easily, brother.”

“Oh,” Lonan says, eyes deepening to darkest night, “I’m counting on it.”

He plunges his sword into Galvin’s intestines.

I scream.

The pain in my stomach is white hot, like my body is being cleaved in two. Galvin’s screams match my own. Horror dawns on Lonan’s face, and he tears his sword back through Galvin, ripping through both of us again.

I’m crumpled on the floor, tears streaming down my face. I had no idea—no idea—how cruel the sting of Lonan’s blade was. The Light is meant to be good, but it is horrid. It is death.

Galvin’s cries turn to laughter in my ears as the pain slowly subsides. I don’t understand. He crouches like a predator and licks his teeth. “Now you see the truth. Now you understand why you will not win this. However fiercely she fights it, she and I are bound.”

You reap what you sow. That is the thought pulsating through my mind as I lift a hand from my belly and it comes away crimson.