I shake the excess away, the sigil I carved burning in my vision.
SV. Sariah Vandenore. My initials.
It’s presumptuous, maybe. But this goblin belongs to me now, in some small way. In the same way I’ll carry his brand across my thigh, long after I leave this place.
“Thank you,” he says, his voice husky, though its roughness carries only a fraction of the need cascading into me. My gaze strays to where my hand rests against his shoulder.
The point of contact is a window, granting me access to the storm that rages inside him. I understand, now—finally—what he meant in my room.A goblin is just a need come to life. I’m my fae self’s darkest wish, the one that lives at the very center of his heart.
Because beneath that indigo skin, constellations wheel, each one blazing with a different need. Hunger, possession, devotion, lust. They spin and orbit, governed only by the common point around which they revolve.
The bond. His desire for his mate.
His desire forme. To protect me and possess me.
Our gazes tangle. I don’t know how he can stay so still like that. How he can keep from doing anything but chasing me across this hall and pinning me to the floor. Consuming me untilthere’s nothing left.
He wants to. Heneedsit, so badly I can feel it in the roots of my teeth.
A wan smile lifts his mouth, exposing the tips of his fangs. “Do you see now? How difficult it is?”
My voice no longer works, so I simply nod. If this level of desire consumes him at rest, I can only imagine what he must battle in those moments when he’s straining toward me.
With a lick of my lips, I peel my palm from his skin.
The soul-crushing need ebbs from my blood. I shiver at its loss, and yet I don’t know that I ever want to feel that again. It’s too much, tooabsolute.
And I know now why I can never turn my back on him. Why doing so would invite my ruin.
I cast the knife aside. It clanks against the mossy stone. When I step back, footsteps shuffle, the crowd parting to allow my retreat.
I hobble backward on my burning leg. Dried blood pinches my skin while my tattered skirts tangle around my calves, but I keep going until I hit the steps. I feel my way up with my heels, never turning, hardly even breathing.
The Shadow watches the whole time. I wonder if he’ll spend the night like this, surrounded by his castoff armor. If he’ll kneel until the sun peeks over the horizon and whisks him away to the Wildwood again, where he’ll spend his daylight hours hunting me, if in a very different way than he wants to here.
I reach the top of the steps. The fae watch from below, their faces upturned.
Calen’s companion catches my eye. I pause just before the lip of the stairs obscures her. She nods once. A clear approval.
I blink and step back, cutting off my view of the hall. But as I turn toward my room, I can’t help feeling as though I’ve just been tested.
And failed miserably, no doubt, in Ishanna’s eyes.
But as far as the fae are concerned, I think I might have passed.
Chapter 11
Idon’t return to the labyrinth the next day. Or the next.
I don’t even leave my room. Ican’t. My only suitable dress is in tatters, stained with grease and dirt and blood. Whether my blood or Amriel’s or the Shadow’s—I can’t tell anymore. I only know that no amount of mending will salvage the mess, and I refuse to walk around this castle wearing skin-tight leather or scraps of silk.
So I stuff the dress into a bottom drawer and hole up in my room. I dread seeing my mates anyway, and shout at the Shadow to go away every time his claws scritch against my door.
“I need to know that you’re okay.” Even a solid slab of wood can’t muffle the anguish in his voice. “I need to know that you’re healing.”
“I’m fine,” I grumble. “My leg isfine.”
“Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
