It’s the kind of line meant to disarm. But underneath the jest, there’s calculation. I see the wheels turning behind his eyes.
Gods, he hasn’t dulled an inch. He might even besharpernow. I’m speechless, struck by the powers of his perception. If I didn’t know otherwise, I’d think he was godkissed. That he could see straight to my hidden self.
“Don’t fucking look at her.”
Basten’s voice cracks like thunder, and before I can react, his fist is already halfway to Rian’s face.
Rian ducks with a soldier’s instinct, and then he charges at Basten, ramming his good shoulder into Basten’s bare stomach.
It knocks the breath out of Basten, who staggers back a step before recovering and swiping for Rian, but he slips right by, as wily as ever.
Rian darts toward a heavy brass candlestick, but I track his intention and launch myself onto his back, wrapping my arms around his neck. I slide my arm flush to his throat, pulling as hard as I can to choke him from behind.
“Fuck, songbird.” His strained voice wheezes as he tugs at my hands, trying to pry them off me. “There are better ways to say you missed me.”
Something twists sharp and deep inside me—because damn him,I did. Miss him, I mean. Gods, is that crazy to think? Of course, I didn’t miss the lies or the smirk or the thousand little manipulations. But I longed for some better version of him that might have existed, once.
Because there was a world where we could have been friends. Basten, Rian, and I. Gods, we were so close—right on the edge of something real.
And instead, he chose to play us both like a song.
Ihatehim for that.
So, I squeeze harder.
He wheels around and slams my back against the wall. Pain rockets through me. Dazed and aching, my limbs go slack. Rian slips out of my grasp, dancing backward to keep some space between us.
He massages his throat, rubbed red from my handprint, and spits out in a rasping voice, “If there’s anyone you should hate, it’s Basten. I gave you to him to protect. I trusted him. He fucking let us both down.”
His words echo hard against the room’s cold edges.
I can feel the energy in the room shift. Basten straightens, going deathly silent. The hair on my arms rise.
Rian, you idiot,I think.
With a cry, Basten hurtles into Rian, driving him backward into the map table. The sharp corner cracks against Rian’s skull with a sickening thud. He shouts, dazed—but still fast. His knee shoots up toward Basten’s groin. Basten twists just in time, catching the blow on his thigh.
Rian’s hand flies to the table. He grabs a pewter tankard and slams it into the side of Basten’s head. It hits with a wet, hollow crack.
Basten collapses face-first to the floor, groaning as blood pours from the gash at his temple.
Rian stands over him, chest heaving, the tankard still clenched in his fist. His hair rises at sharp angles, eyes wide and glassy. His mouth twitches like he’s about to laugh or scream—maybe both.
He looks feral. Half-starved. Completely unhinged.
Well, I understand why. He’s been living in the walls, spying in silence for weeks—it's clearly scrambled something in him.
“I didn’t want to do this, old friend,” he mutters to Basten. “You’re going to end up with a massive headache, but we both know you won’t fucking stay down.”
He starts to bring down the tankard again on Basten’s head.
And my world stops.
Another part of me takes over.
The fey lines on my limbs blister open, spilling silver light across the dark bedroom. An otherworldly howl climbs out of my throat with enough force to make the chandelier quake. I feel my human glamour fall away like I’ve clawed through my skin, shed the lining. My sharpened incisors cut against my tongue.
That’s what we gods are—predators.
