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In the corner stands a dark figure. When he turns to face me, my chest caves in.
“Blaise,” he says, and when my name falls from Nox’s lips, when the shape of it forms in the timbre of his familiar voice, I can almost, almost pretend it’s him.
My heart flutters, though its wings are soon clipped when the glistening lights fall over Nox’s face, across the smirk that is cruel and devious and not at all belonging to the man I love.
He’s as beautiful as ever, perhaps more so, strictly by shallow standards. He stands tall and confident, like he owns the ground upon which he walks.
It suits him, in a cruel sort of way.
I can’t help but notice that there are no shadows left underneath his eyes, that the dark bruised spots have been wiped clean.
That he’s been feeding.
I think of the wails rising in plumes over the village in the story Asha told, and my stomach turns over.
He opens his mouth, but I’m ready for it. I’ve spent every night of the harrowing journey back to Mystral preparing for the moment I run face to face into Nox who is not Nox.
“You’re not to command me,” we say at the same time.
“So that confirms it,” I say. “I suppose your mommy told you about the little bloodsharing ritual her parasite forced me into.”
I expect my words to rile Farin, but he only takes a step toward me and whispers, “You came back.” It comes out in a breathless huff, his breath fogging in the chilled air, and it sounds so much like him, those three little words take turns stabbing at my chest.
“Not fast enough,” I say, shifting my weight onto the balls of my feet, feeling the slickness of the stone floor against the soles of my boots.
Nox, who is not Nox, cranes his head, examining with those snow-pale eyes of his. “So it seems,” he murmurs, tucking his hands into the pockets of his black pants.
I can’t stand it, can’t survive being raked over with those beautiful eyes, the mingled butterflies and nausea that course through me when his gaze brushes my every curve.
My mind knows that the male standing before me is not the male I love, but my body can’t tell the difference. It doesn’t know any better than to beg my mind for permission to throw myself into the embrace I know I can never feel again, even though he’s there, standing right in front of me.
“Where’s your mother? Off using the latrine somewhere?” I ask. “Though I’m shocked she even lets you out of her sight for that long.”
I expect my words to strike, to extract the Farin in Nox’s face. For a sneer to warp Nox’s features so that perhaps I can look at him without my chest turning to ice, but he simply watches me, unruffled.
“My mother and I had a bit of a falling out,” he says.
I can’t help the exasperated huff that escapes my lips. “After all the trouble she went through to free you, and you had the audacity to fight her.” A cruel, satisfied grin tugs at the edges of my mouth. Is that who I’ve been reduced to, someone who revels in the pain of another?
But the queen ruined Nox’s life, then she took him away from me, so perhaps I’ve earned the right to relish her pain like warm blood from the artery.
“I didn’t ask her to bind me to this body,” he says simply, as if he had requested a pecan tart and was offered a lemon scone in its stead. “We quarreled over it, so my mother has returned to what she does best, dallying in the business of others. Fancying herself a Fates-ordained protector of this realm. I imagine she’s on her way to Avelea now, tracking down that Red she’s been obsessing over.”
A shiver snakes my spine, but I don’t want to discuss Abra at the moment.
I don’t ever wish to discuss her again.
“Nox asked you to come here to kill me, didn’t he?” Farin says, and the stillness in his posture has me tensing in preparation.
Still, he doesn’t move. Doesn’t try to close the space between us.
I’m more than happy to keep that distance, because as soon as he draws near, I’ll have to kill Farin, and Nox with him.
And then I will shrivel.
So I do what I do best, and I pretend I’m not drowning. “Why?” I ask, and my voice is so convincingly unfaltering. “Think you can mock me out of doing it?”
Farin shakes his head, causing a strand of dark hair to fall into his forehead. “No. I simply think it’s a cruel thing to ask of the one you love.”
