He was close enough that the air between us shimmered, his natural temperature rolling off him in waves that would have been stifling to a human but was a lifeline to me.
The dagger rested across his knee, casual, like it belonged there.
“You need heat,” he said.
Not a question. A diagnosis.
“Yes.”
“The petals gave it to you.” He turned the dagger over, examining the edge. “And you took it from that killer. And from me.”
He stopped. Started again. “You’ve been starving since you arrived. Rationing scraps of warmth.”
I didn’t deny it. What was the point?
“I won’t use the petals anymore,” I said. My voice was a thread. A whisper. The cold had crept into my throat, my chest, my lungs. “The assassin’s heat burned through in hours. I don’t have anything left.”
“No.” He set the dagger on the bed between us. “You don’t.”
He pulled off his gloves. One finger at a time, slow and deliberate.
His hands beneath were pale, the skin roughened at the base of the fingers and the heel of the palm. A warrior’s hands, used to gripping hilt and rein. A thin scar ran across his left palm, old, silver, nearly invisible.
“Do you know what shifter blood is?” he asked.
I shook my head. The motion made the room spin.
“I knew you were starving. I didn’t know for what. Not until I watched you drain that hunter. Then I understood.” He met my eyes. “Our bodies run hot. Hotter than humans, hotter than most monsters. We burn from the inside out, every hour of every day. It’s why we can shift, why we can survive in places that would kill weaker creatures.”
A pause. “It’s why my touch hurts you. My blood is liquid fire.”
I stared at him. At the dagger on the bed. At his bare hands.
“You’re going to?—”
“Feed you.” He picked up the dagger again. Held it over his palm, the black blade touching his skin. “Properly. Not scraps stolen in the dark. Not petals that make you perform being alive. Real heat. Enough to anchor you.”
“That’s—” I tried to sit up. Failed. My arms wouldn’t cooperate. “You can’t. The pain alone would…”
“You’re already dying, little bride. I’ve been asking questions of the priestess, getting answers. The question isn’t whether you’ll burn. It’s whether you want to burn, or fade.”
The dagger moved.
A thin line of red opened across his palm, welling up dark and thick. Not the bright arterial red of human blood. This was darker. Richer. Almost black in the low light, with threads of gold running through it like veins of ore in stone.
The scent hit me before anything else.
Lightning and old stone. Every nerve in my frozen body sparked awake, reaching for it, desperate in a way I’d never been desperate for the petals.
This was what I needed.
This was what I’d been starving for.
“Drink.”
He pressed his bleeding palm to my mouth.
The first drop hit my tongue and I nearly screamed.
