What I know with absolute certainty has nothing to do with observation.
It’s hunger. Or rather, the lack of it.
Bree is my bonded. The connection between us rewrote something fundamental—made her the only one who can sustain me. Mind, body, soul if I have one. Everyone else became inadequate. Unsatisfying. That’s how bonds work for vampire-class Feeders. Permanent. Exclusive. Absolute.
I’d expected the bond to settle slowly. To learn the rhythm of feeding from her, to adjust to having only one source after centuries of taking what I needed wherever I found it.
Instead, standing here watching that creature move through the room, I feel nothing.
Worse than nothing. My hunger—always present, always waiting—recoils from her like she’s poison. The instinct that drives me to feed, that’s kept me alive for centuries, turns away in revulsion.
It’s not her. My body knows it even if the others’ minds have been convinced otherwise.
And her Ether. Gods, her Ether.
Black threaded with silver instead of silver touched by shadow. An inversion so complete it should be obvious to anyone paying attention. But they’re not paying attention. They’re too busy being grateful she’s “safe,” too relieved she’s “back,” too desperate to believe everything’s fine.
Even Zira. I watched her approach the imposter earlier, saw the initial hesitation—that split-second pause where her eyes caught on the wrong-colored Ether curling around her feet. Her mouth opened, doubt flickering across her face.
Then the black mist touched her ankle, and she smiled. Relaxed. Leaned in to embrace “Bree” like the wrongness she’d felt had never happened at all.
Only Stellan sees it. I caught his eye earlier, that barely perceptible nod in the hallway outside her bedroom. Confirmation that we’re not imagining this. That something fundamental has shifted, and we’re the only ones who haven’t been convinced to ignore it.
She laughs at something Jace says, and the sound crawls under my skin like insects. Too bright. Too easy. Too wrong.
The imposter leans into him, and I watch Jace’s expression soften with trust that makes my chest tight with something between fury and grief. He has no idea. None of them do.
Except me. And Stellan.
The bond hums beneath my ribs—a constant, uncomfortable presence that’s been there since the Ashen Oath. Since Bree. The real Bree. My Bree.
And right now, it’s telling me she’s nowhere near this sanctuary.
I push off the doorway and slip into the hallway, moving with the silence that comes naturally after centuries of practice. No one notices me leave. They’re too focused on her.
My room is dark when I enter, but I catch it immediately—the pale edge of paper on the floor just inside the door. Someone slipped it underneath while I was watching the common room.
I pick it up. Three words in Stellan’s precise script.
Midnight. You know where.
The old stone well behind the gardens. We’ve been meeting there since we first arrived at the sanctuary with Bree—back when the others were still figuring out how to exist in the same space, and Stellan and I were mapping escape routes and defensive positions like the paranoid bastards we are. Far enough from the main building thatconversations stay private, close enough that we can reach the others quickly if needed.
I glance at the clock. Twenty minutes.
I tuck the note into my pocket and move back to the doorway, checking the hall one more time before I leave.
Good. Let them be distracted. Stellan and I have work to do.
The night air hits cold and clean after the stifling wrongness of the sanctuary’s common room. I slip through the kitchen—dark and empty at this hour—and out the back door into the gardens. The mist that usually clings to these grounds is subdued tonight, barely visible wisps that curl away from my feet like they know I’m not who they’re waiting for.
The well sits in a small clearing ringed by old stone markers, half-hidden by wild roses that haven’t been pruned in decades. Moonlight catches on the crumbling mortar, turning the whole space silver and shadow.
It’s always felt liminal here. Like standing at the edge between worlds.
I’m twenty feet away when pain steals my breath.
Heat flares sharp and sudden around my wrists—not external, but internal, like shackles of fire clamped tight and burning from the inside out. I stumble, one hand flying to grip my left wrist even though there’s nothing there to grab. Nothing visible.
