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He raises the weapon, its pale slant of light flashing over my eyes.

And even though everything inside me wants to resist, to thrash like a trapped animal and bare my teeth, struggling until the very end, I let myself deflate. Let myself sink deeper into the snow, my muscles relaxing, my arms stilling.

“All right,” I whisper. I cannot bear how near he is. His scent is not like the rust of blood or a blade, as I’d anticipated, but the wind in the mountains, the grass thawing in winter, something eternal and clean and mildly sweet. “All right, you win. But could you at least let me do one thing?”

“You are in no position to ask for favors,” he says coldly.

“I know, but it is just one small thing,” I say, softening my tone into a plea, lifting my gaze up to his. Searching in those black depths as I would for a glimmer of light at the end of a passageway—and, by some miracle, finding it.

He falters.

That’s all I need.

With a burst of strength, I hook my ankle around his leg and roll to the side, swiftly reversing our positions so that he is glowering up at me, and I am suspended above him. I wrench the sword from his hand. The hilt is warm from where he’d held it, and I do not know why this surprises me, this evidence of life even in death, but I refuse to let it sway my grip or my heart.

“Let me kill you first,” I say, pressing the blade down to his throat.

He swallows, the movement rising to meet the kiss of steel. But his expression is unchanged, his gaze hard, free from any fear. “Do it, then,” he whispers.

I feel myself frown. “What?”

“Do it.” He lifts his chin, as if to offer a clearer view of where to point the blade. “Kill me.”

A trick. This must be a strange trap of some sort. I cannot be so easily distracted. I clench my jaw and press the sword harder until a bead of blood swells from the line and trickles down the pale column of his neck.

He is not even resisting.

“I would be relieved if you were to succeed,” he says, staring calmly up at me from under his long lashes. I fear my mind might break. Even with him at such an obvious disadvantage, his body trapped underneath mine, his blood tinting the sword, he seems to enjoy the upper hand. The idea is so infuriating that I nearly drive the sword down out of sheer rage. Such vehemence is unlike me, but as I stare back at him, I have the sense that there is something stirring to life under my skin, a strange heat curling around my ribs. I have not felt any emotion so simply and sharply since centuries ago. Perhaps since the beginning of forever.

“You cannot scare me,” I warn him.

“Good,” he says. He closes his eyes, and I am almost grateful for it. I do not think I can hold the intensity of his gaze any longer. “Go ahead.”

I apply more force to the weapon, and he makes a small sound with the back of his throat, not so much out of protest as natural reflex. A perverse satisfaction flickers through me, almost as vivid as my terror. I cut deeper, watching as his blood rolls slowly down the side and lands in the snow, the crimson dots spreading like stains, stark against the white. Still, he does not resist, does not even attempt to move, and the more his certainty solidifies, the more mine dissolves.

Then I look down more closely, and suck in a shocked breath.

Above and below the fresh, bleeding cut I’ve drawn, there are dozens of lines running parallel to one another. Scars, faded silver over time. Some long and smooth, some short and jagged. Dozens of failed attempts at his life. They wrap around his neck like a gruesome necklace, and all of a sudden, his calm makes terrible sense.

“These are . . .”

His eyes flutter open. “Most are from others. Those who believe that by killing me, they will never have to fear dying again,” he says quietly. We are so close that I can feel the warmth of his breath on my frozen cheeks; strands of my hair graze his face. “A few are my own handiwork. You can tell, because they’re much neater. Prettier. Unfortunately still not effective, though.”

The next beat of my heart is agonizing.

“Why?” I ask.

“Why?” He turns the question over on his tongue, and when he speaks again, he sounds exhausted. “Because everyone wants to escape death, but as I’ve said, nobody can. I am no exception.”

Snow starts falling around us, scattering over the mountainside, catching in my eyelashes, melting over the surface of the blade in my hand. I barely even notice the cold anymore.

“What would happen?” I say, my numb fingers fumbling to steady the sword. “If I were to continue?”

“I would keep bleeding for some time,” he says in the same tone of indifference, as if we are discussing somebody else. “But no matter how deep, how grievous, the cut would heal itself. If it is of any consolation, I can still feel the wound.”

“That—that is no consolation at all,” I snap, appalled, though I cannot even be sure at who.

“No?” This, of all things, he absorbs with some surprise. “Many derive great pleasure from my suffering.”