Her sob catches in my shirt, ragged and raw, and it shatters something in me. She shakes her head, still pressed against the seam of my shoulder. “It’ll take all of you.”
“No. It won’t.” Rian drops beside us, kneeling on the blood-slicked stone. He rolls back his sleeve, revealing a gash already weeping red. “Not with both of us.”
Sabine looks between us, her eyes impossibly wide, and then she makes her choice. She grips Rian’s arm, where blood already flows, and drinks.
Deep. Desperate. Hungry.
Rian leans back, his breath hissing through clenched teeth—pain and something darker, sharper, humming beneath the surface.
Slowly, his face pales. His eyes sink.
Still, she drinks, and I see it—that fever in her eyes. The same reckless fire that nearly consumed Tòrr when the wildness took him.
“Enough!” I pull her off Rian and twist her toward me, pressing her face to my neck, to the spot where my pulse hammers. “Now me.”
She struggles at first, but only briefly.
Then she sinks in.
Her lips part, her teeth find the artery, and the pain flares before it fades to something else entirely. Something electric. Her breath shudders against my throat, and the world tilts sideways. It’s intoxicating, transcendent.
But I can feel it—how much she’s taking.
Too much.
A heavy hand latches onto my shoulder, and I’m roughly pulled away from Sabine. She growls, angry and still hungry, eyes flashing, and starts to lunge toward me again.
But Rian presses a hand against her chest. “Sabine, you’re going to kill him!”
She sways on hands and knees, hair blood-soaked and streaked around her, blinking hard to try to center herself. She licks a trace of my blood from her lips.
Her fey lines throb, but they aren’t as bright as they need to be to defeat the entire fae court.
She knows it, too. “More.”
I don’t hesitate. I yank open my shirt, baring my chest to her. If she needs more, she can take all of me. When I swore I’d sacrifice myself for her, I meant every gods-damned word.
But Rian steps in, scowling, and shoves me backward. “You’re the king. People need you. Let me.”
He starts to unfasten his shirt.
I stop him—grab his hands, steady and firm. My breath shakes, but my voice doesn’t. “It’sbecauseI’m king that I have to do this. This is what a true king does.”
Rian looks at me with wide, confused eyes.
“It’s not about the throne,” I continue. “It’s this—sacrifices no one will remember but matter more than anything.” My throat tightens as my gaze shifts to Sabine. “There was a time I didn’t care about kingdoms. About anyone, really. But you changed that, Sabine. You made me care.”
Sabine’s eyes flicker with a brief flash of understanding, breaking her hunger.
Then we hear them.
Hoofbeats thunder down the alley—sharp, rhythmic, determined.
I spin just in time to see him.
Tòrr.
He charges through the chaos like a comet. He crashes his battered body through the ranks of the dead, sweeping them aside with bone-snapping grace. Silver blood streams down his sides from claw marks and bite wounds. His solarium horn, once flawless, is cracked, splintered in half, barely hanging on.
