His hand went to his throat again, pressed against the scars there.
"Then she bit me."
"Thaine," Sian said softly, but he kept going.
The words came out rough. "I felt her teeth break skin, felt her drinking, and I could hear screaming starting from the pavilion. There was so much screaming… and all I could think was that I'd left them, I’d left Isania. I'd followed this thing into the gardens like a fool while—"
He stopped and took a deep breath.
"I had a dagger. Ceremonial thing, mostly decorative, but sharp enough. I stabbed her." His voice had gone cold. "Over and over until she dropped me. Until she fled."
No one moved.
"I staggered back to the pavilion and found..." He struggled to finish the sentence. "Isania, the real Isania, was already gone. Everyone was. There were more of those things, dozens of them, feeding on the guests. Beautiful until they weren't. Until the glamours failed and you could see what they really were."
His jaw clenched so hard Briar could see the muscle jump.
"That's what Malus wants to free," he said finally. "That's what we're trying to keep sealed."
Briar watched him, saw the way his shoulders had gone rigid, the way he wasn't quite looking at any of them anymore.
Silence stretched across the clearing. Halian looked stricken. Sian had her hand over her mouth. Even Karse had lost his usual lazy amusement, his expression dark.
"Their glamours," Arion said at last, his voice quiet. "They fail during feeding?"
"Eventually." Thaine picked up his weapon again, hands moving automatically through the cleaning motions, anything to do that wasn't looking at their faces. "Takes concentration to hold. When they're caught up in it, in the blood, that's when you see the truth. But by then..."
He didn't finish, he didn't need to.
"We should set watch rotation," he said, and his tone had shifted back to his usual practical, distant tone that said without saying that he was done with this conversation. "Two people per shift. No one goes anywhere alone. Karse and I will take the first watch."
The group dispersed slowly after that, moving to bedrolls with considerably less ease than before. Eliam guided her to their shared bedroll, his hand warm on her lower back. She settled onto the blankets, pulling her cloak tighter around herself as he moved to check the perimeter one more time.
The fire had burned low, casting the camp in deep shadows broken only by ember-glow. Around them, she could hear the quiet sounds of people trying to settle—shifting bodies, whispered conversations, the rustle of blankets being adjusted.
But no one seemed to be actually sleeping.
Briar lay on her side, staring at the dying embers. She couldn't stop imagining it. The thing wearing Isania's face, the glamour falling away to reveal the monster underneath. The way Thaine's hand had gone to his throat over and over, five hundred years later and he still carried those scars. Still saw it when he closed his eyes.
That's what they were riding toward. Hundreds of those things, sealed away, waiting.
Her chest felt tight, breath coming shallow. The darkness beyond the firelight suddenly seemed full of possibilities—movement that might be wind or might be something else, shapes that could be trees or could be wearing faces she trusted.
"You're not sleeping," Eliam said quietly, the bedroll shifting as he returned and settled behind her, close but not quite touching yet.
"Can't," she admitted.
Briar felt him move closer, his chest warm against her back, his arm coming around her waist. She should probably pull away, maintain the distance she'd been trying to keep all day. But she was cold and scared and tired of fighting herself.
Instead, she turned in his arms and pressed her face against his chest.
His arms tightened around her immediately, one hand moving to her hair. He didn't say anything. Didn't ask what was wrong or tell her everything would be fine. Just held her.
"I keep seeing it," she said against his shirt. "What Thaine described. The way it looked like someone he loved until it didn't."
"I know."
"We're riding toward that. Toward hundreds of those things." Her fingers curled into his shirt. "What if Malus is already there? What if we're too late and they're already—"
