His jaw works. He chews on his answer for much too long before spitting it out. “Because you put it there.”
I blink, my mind cycling through those words, trying to find the order in which they make sense. “No. What? I carved my initials into the Shadow.”
He exhales slowly. “And whose Shadow do you think he is, if not mine?”
I lean back, pushing against his bare chest, opening space between us. With every inch of ground he cedes, I come back to myself. I descend from some dizzying height, my toes touching earth again, remembering how to answer to gravity once more.
“No,” I say. “You and the Shadow, you’re…brothers. Twins. Not… Not…” My mouth won’t finish the sentence. Won’t form the words my brain is scrambling to reject.
“Not cut-up halves of the same person?” Amriel supplies, his voice flat. “Not one man’s two forms, forever separated by this fucking curse? You didn’t thinkhemight also beme? You really thought we were two fae with the same face?”
I jerk back, shaking my head, trying to dispel the realization.
But even as I do, pieces slot into place with sickening clarity. The way everyone saysAmriel’s Shadow. Their identical heights, their matching eyes. The fact that I’ve never seen either of them change forms.
Goddess, what? Justwhat?
I give his chest a shove. I could have endured them, maybe, one at a time. Or maybe not, given that I was just about to let Amriel lay me out on this desk and take what he liked from me.
But if Amriel is the Shadow, and the Shadow is Amriel, if everything whirling beneath that indigo skin springs fromthisman’s heart, if those arehissecret wishes, then…
I scramble back, sliding off the far side of the desk. I hit the floor too hard, sending a jolt up my shins. The moment our connection breaks, Amriel recoils with a hiss.
I wince, can almost feel his pain slamming back into me, too. But I have to get away. The Shadow’s obsession, Amriel’s desire, the two of them together, one soul split across two separate bodies—it’s too much. Too much for me to withstand.
A trill of hysterical laughter flies from my mouth.
“What,” Amriel says through gritted teeth, “is so funny?”
I…oh, goddess. I just surrendered to him. Betrayed everything I stand for. Again.
I turn a meaningless circle, then reach for my pendant. What am I even doing? All this time, I’ve been holed up in this castle, thinking myself safe, watching the hourglass from my window. When really, it’s the countdownin hereI should fear. Because something is chasing me in Velindra, nipping at my heels even now. Something I can never come back from, something I clearly have no hope of resisting.
“I have to go.”
“What?” he says.
But I’m already moving, crossing the floor, pulling open the door before he can stop me.
“Sariah!”
I don’t slow. I flee from the sound of my own name, so gruff and desperate in his mouth. My feet descend the stairs with such haste that my toes barely touch the stone.
Heavy steps echo behind me, but I fly faster, away, away, away from the fae king and his mind-melting touch, away from the madness he brings, away from temptation and sin and all the things I just gave myself over to without a second thought.
I can’t let him touch me. Not ever again.
My gown billows out behind me as I careen through the stairwell. Down a flight of steps. Another. At the bottom, I break into a sprint, my injured leg shouting a protest, which I ignore.
I need out. Back to the Wildwood. Because for all that the forest threatens my life, this castle threatens my mortal soul.
I reach my room and hurtle across the threshold, slamming the door and twirling the lock. A moment later, Amriel’s fists pound against the wood. He jiggles the handle, but the latch holds.
“What’re you doing?” he demands. “Where’re you going?”
I don’t answer. I tear off my dressing gown, tossing it somewhere unimportant, then yank open the drawers of my dresser. A leather outfit fills my hands, the fabric supple. I pull the pants on, then the shirt, with its crisscross laces up the front.
The leather hugs me in all the wrong ways, but I no longer care how ridiculous I look. How immoral. I’m going to go back into that horrible maze. Break that stupid hourglass and escape through the Aethrolian door, because if I stay here… If I stay here…
