Heat rushed out of his body and into mine.
Not slowly. Not gently. A torrent of stolen warmth that flooded my veins, poured into the hollow aching space beneath my ribs.
His eyes bulged above his mask.
“What—” he gasped. “What are you?—”
I couldn’t stop.
The hunger was too strong, too desperate. Months of cold and stillness and fading, months of stealing scraps of warmth from petals and borrowed touches. And here was life.
Pure, hot, living life. Filling the empty vessel of my body.
I drank.
His knees buckled. The dagger clattered to the stones. His grip on my throat loosened, fell away, and still I didn’t release him.
Still I drank, pulling heat from his muscles, from his bones, from the blood that was slowing in his veins.
His face went slack.
His eyes went empty.
His body went cold.
A hand closed around my arm.
Wrenched me backward.
I stumbled, released the man, watched him crumple to the flagstones. He wasn’t moving. Wasn’t breathing.
His skin was the color of old ash, papery and stretched too tight over his bones. Not dead. Not quite, but close.
So close.
I looked up.
Cador was staring at me.
His wings were still spread, still bleeding from the bolt wound.
His expression…
Not fear. Not disgust.
Recognition.
“Guards.” His voice was steady. “Coming from the hall. They heard the commotion.”
I heard them too. Boots on stone, shouts echoing off the walls. Getting closer.
Cador moved.
His hands closed around the assassin’s neck. One sharp twist, and the man stopped breathing entirely. Dead. Fully dead now, not the half-death I’d left him in.
Then he reached over his shoulder, yanked the crossbow bolt from his wing with barely a grimace.
Black blood dripped for a moment before the wound began closing, shifter healing sealing flesh and feather. He tossed the bolt aside.
