The scent hits me first. Vanilla and honey, undercut with something wilder that makes my fangs ache behind my lips. But there's another scent too. Male. Unfamiliar. Wrong.
I move silent as shadow between the mira trees, violet-purple leaves catching moonlight as I track the voices to their source.
"—really is beautiful here," Seth is saying, his tone warm, genuine.
"I think it responds to emotion," Bree replies, and I can hear the soft smile in her voice. "Maybe it picks up on whatever we're feeling."
I stop breathing. That's the voice she uses when she's unguarded. When she's not watching every word, calculating what might be safe to say.
I've watched her use it with the others over these past weeks—with Wes when he brings her tea, with Jace when he makes her laugh, with all of them. Everyone but Stellan and me.
She trusts him.
Something cold and vicious unfurls as I catch sight of them through the branches. Bree sitting on the stone bench, relaxed in ways she isn't around me. Seth beside her, close enough that their knees almost touch.
Close enough to hurt her before I could intervene.
The hunger sharpens, but not for blood. For more. For something that might not exist anymore.
What if I can't feed from anyone?The thought surfaces before I can bury it.What if whatever she's done to me is permanent?
What if I'm broken?
"I should probably head back," Seth says, rising from the bench. "Thank you for showing me around. For... everything."
"Anytime," Bree says, and the easy generosity in her voice makes something twist behind my ribs.
"Goodnight, Bree."
"Goodnight."
The simple exchange shouldn't feel like a knife to the chest. Shouldn't make every instinct I have roar with the need to eliminate a threat that might not even be there.
Seth walks away, disappearing into the shadows beyond the garden. But Bree doesn't follow. She stays on the bench, tilting her head back to look at the stars filtering through the mira leaves.
Then she reaches into her pocket and pulls something out. Something that catches the moonlight and throws it back in fractured silver.
A mirror.
My blood turns to ice. Small, handheld, but there's something wrong about it. The frame is all spirals and curves that flow into sharp points like horns. The surface seems to drink light rather than reflect it properly, and even from here I can sense something ancient and hungry about it.
She's holding it up, studying her reflection in the moonlight, completely unaware of what she might be looking into.
What might be looking back.
Pain flares beneath my ribs, sudden and searing.
The Council summons burns through my flesh like acid, and I barely bite back a curse as the magic wraps around me like chains. Not now. Not when she's alone in the garden, unprotected, trusting—
The magic tears me sideways through space before I can do anything but watch her sitting alone beneath the purple leaves.
The Chamber of Five materializes around me in a rush of cold stone and calculated malice. Same black throne, same position of deliberate inferiority. But this time, something's different.
The tension in the room is sharp enough to cut.
Valdris stands perfectly still, flames dying to embers at her feet. Marcus sits rigid in his steel throne, fingers steepled. Nyx lounges with predatory stillness that means someone's about to bleed.
And Eris—Eris is staring directly at me with silver eyes that see too much.
