He crouched beside me. His hand cupped my jaw, lifting my face, forcing me to meet his eyes.
His palm was warm against my frozen cheek, and I couldn’t even flinch away from it anymore.
“You’re dying.” He could see it, the static consuming whatever was left of my borrowed existence.
“You’re lying here dying, and instead of calling for help, you wrote me a note.”
His thumb traced my cheekbone. The touch should have hurt. Should have burned. Instead it felt distant and muffled.
“I chose you because I thought you wouldn’t care,” he read aloud, his voice heavy with contempt, but not for me, I realized. For the words themselves. For the assumption behind them.
He released my face, stood, and paced to the window and back, his boots striking the marble with hard, angry sounds.
“You think deathscaresme?” He spun to face me, and his eyes were black pits in a pale face, void-dark and endless.
“I am the Raven King. I speak to the dead. I feel them passing, every single one, every soul that crosses through my lands on its way to whatever comes next. Death is my inheritance. My birthright. My currency.”
He crouched again. Closer this time. His face inches from mine, his breath warm on my frozen skin.
“And you,” he said, “have spent my coin without permission.”
I managed to make my lips move. Managed to force out a single word, thin and cracked and barely audible.
“Sorry.”
His laugh was not kind. “Sorry. She’s sorry.” He sat back on his heels, ran a hand through his dark hair.
“You’re not sorry. You’re terrified. You’re convinced I’m going to cast you out, or burn you, or do whatever it is humans think monsters do to things that shouldn’t exist.”
He reached past me and picked up the bone box. Turned it over in his hands, he examined the carved bone, the delicate hinges, the two dried petals visible through the gap in the lid.
“Two left,” he said. “One more dose of your poison. One more chance to deceive.” His eyes met mine. “Take it.”
I didn’t move.
“Take it,” he repeated. “Put on your mask. Show me the performance. I want to see what you’ve been hiding behind.”
I held his gaze. Let him see the gray creeping through my irises, the frost on my lashes, the blue tinge spreading across my lips.
“No.”
The word surprised me with its volume. Clearer. A sudden flare.
“No,” I said again. “I’m done performing. I’m done pretending. If you want to know what I am, look. This is it. This is what’s left when the petals run out and the stolen heat fades and there’s nothing left but the truth.”
I let my head fall back against the stone floor. Let my eyes drift closed. Let the cold take me, degree by degree, breath by breath.
“ At the market. I chose you because you were cold,” I whispered. “Because I thought you wouldn’t notice that I was colder.”
His hand found my throat. Pressed against the place where my pulse should have been and wasn’t.
“I noticed,” he said. “I noticed from the moment you stepped off that auction block. I noticed when the ravens called you sister. I noticed when the mirror cracked and you didn’t flinch.”
His voice dropped. “I noticed, little bride. I just didn’t care.”
The words didn’t make sense. Couldn’t make sense. I was fading. Slipping away into the void that had been calling me since I crawled out of that graveyard, and he was saying…
“You didn’t care,” I repeated.
