My fingers were clammy around the hilt. How long was I to stay there? I strained my hearing, but there was no sound I could pick out as coming from Raphael.
I risked a glance around the tree I’d hid behind. I didn’t know much of tracking in the woods, but I had been careless, entirely focused on putting as much distance between us as possible. I swallowed, studying the ground. Did the disturbed earth show a clear path of footprints?
There was no way Raphael would give up. An invisible clock counted down overhead until he found me. There would be no outrunning him. I might be fast now, but vampires gained strength with each year, and he had several hundred on me.
I could sit here and wait for Raphael to find me here, cowering against a tree with my knees shaking.
Or I could face him head-on.
“Don’t hurt me, Raphael.” I spoke the words rather than yelled.
Before I finished, Raphael stood before me. Fallen leaves flared in his wake.
“Didn’t I say I would never hurt you?” he murmured.
“That was before.” It was nothing more than a whisper.
“Before?” he prompted.
Did he want me to say it? Was he playing dumb? Or maybe he hadn’t realized what I’d done.
No, that was impossible. I wouldn’t kid myself.
I looked him in the eyes, summoning every lesson on compulsion he’d given me in the past two weeks. “Leave me be, Raphael. Forget you saw me here, forget you were even looking for me, and go back to the palace.” I focused on my intent, my needs, saying the words in the quickest rush I could manage.
But Raphael didn’t back up. Instead, he took a step forward, devouring the scant space between us. “Sorry, my dear viper, but that won’t work if I’m ready for you. I’ve had centuries to prepare for you.”
He took another step toward me, and I didn’t think, I just reacted. I had to fight. I swung my blade in a wide arc, trying to put distance between us.
It shouldn’t have worked. It never had when we sparred. But Raphael didn’t jump back, as if unwilling to put even an extra inch between us to dodge. I pulled my strike at the last second, scraping him across the cheek instead of cutting deep.
Blood formed across his cheek in a sharp line of red.
The instant my blow landed, he caught my wrist, slamming it above my head on the tree.
“So vicious,” he murmured.
“Why didn’t you dodge?” I demanded. It was the wrong thing to focus on, but he’d let me strike him when I’d never managed to land a proper blow before.
The blood dripped from the wound.
I hated that I wanted it.
Hated that I wanted him so painfully when I should be focused on getting away.
“Don’t you like when I bleed for you?” He leaned closer, so close I could have lifted my head and brushed my tongue overthe wound. “I’ll bleed all you like. It’s all yours,alwaysyours. But just talk to me, viper.”
“Talk?” My voice jumped an octave. “You expect me to believe all you want to do is talk?”
“Now that you’ve finally admitted to me that you’re the necromancer, I think it’s about time. Don’t you?”
His words were like a blow to the chest.
“Youknew?” Disbelief covered up any sense of self-preservation. When had I revealed myself? I’d been so careful, so terrified the grimoire might make me slip up around him. Terrified he would dispatch me as he had the last several necromancers. “What do you meanyou knew?”
“I suspected it the first night you came to my cell when I couldn’t thrall you.”
That soon?Ihadn’t even suspected. Hadn’t even known such a thing was possible. A pit hollowed inside me, a black hole of fear and anger. I’d lived in fear for months, scarcely convincing myself to confide in Thea—another witch—for fear she’d expose me to Raphael. For fear I’d be signing my own death warrant. And he was going to stand here, holding me against a tree, like this should come as no surprise?
