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“And you’re resisting it. You’ve proved you can. And you have to break the bloodbond.”

“Orla—”

“I’m turning,” she shouts. “I’m turning, and there’s nothing you can do. Don’t let me hurt someone.” Her expression is resolute, furious, a little fearful. And I wonder if she’s thinking of Hugo. “Think of what’s at stake. It’s not about us. Galvin is going to destroy Gossemort, Gault, everything. You—you and Lonan—are the only thing stopping him.”

I look between her and Poppy. “She could kill you.”

“I’m no coward.” She flicks her stiletto dagger from wherever secret place she hides it, in her hand faster than lightning. Its glow is violent orange. She smiles in a way that sends a chill down my spine. “I’m a bitch with a knife.”

I’ve trained beside my stepsister for years, and for most of that, I realize, I misjudged her. I thought her vain and breakable, like a pretty teacup. This teacup has teeth.

“See you at dawn,” she says, and leaps into the charnel house beside Poppy.

Overhead, the bell of the clocktower tolls twice.

Four Hours Till Dawn

LONAN

It was always about the girl. From the moment I learned who I was—that I was more than a king’s unwanted offspring, that I had greater purpose—it was always about her. I understood two things about my role—that I was meant to be the fatal weakness of the Gaultish royal family and that she would be the weapon I used to bring them to their knees. I didn’t know how. Those were secrets that my teacher kept close.

He taught me about the kingdoms, about the continent, about the Light and the Dark and the between. For him, it was also about her. She would be the tool I used to repair everything that was fractured.

And at first, I tried to see her the same way. But then she crept past my defenses with a knife against my neck and a tongue so wicked she could strip me bare with a single word. I’m used to being able to impress just about anyone. Never her. And I don’t know what it says about me that I enjoy it, that every time she delivers her particularly lethal brand of verbal abuse, it grabs my attention, makes me stand a little straighter. She dances through life laughing and setting fire to everything in her path, not knowing that I’m there to put the fires out.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Iam the girl with the broken heart. I have lost and I have lost and I have lost. My humanity. My mortality. My safety. Hugo. Now maybe Poppy and Orla as well.

The words of the Sisters echo through my mind like a steady pulse, overshadowing every move. A bargain I made. A fate I surrendered to. The thread of my life cut by the end of the night.

So I turn my heart cold. It is ruins, the stony remnants of what was once a home. Now no one can live there. I let my calluses thicken, let the numbness overcome me. I have to survive. Just till morning. Just till Fate catches up with me.

I twisted my ankle somehow in the graveyard, and the pain screams at me as I hobble through the halls. I’m only now coming down from the adrenaline rush enough to feel its throbbing.

I’m alone now. I have to find a silver stake. I have to end this, even if I can’t sever the bloodbond first. I have my father’s book of stories in my pocket, but that is a vague riddle at best. My stepsister and best friend are falling prey to the siphon’s venom, and I can’t risk them. No matter what it costs me, I can’t let them fall.

A silver stake. Think. Where—

I turn the first corner out of the cloisters and yelp. A pair of dark eyes and the flash of a sharp silver blade are all I see before Lonan’s arm is around my waist and he has me shoved against a wall, blade extended, eyes wildly searching the dark for danger.

His breathing is heavy. I can feel the pounding of his heart against my chest, the empty pit of mine dormant against the rapid pace of his. “Lonan,” I say, but he’s vigilant, teeth bared, surveying the shadows. “Lonan,” I say again, and this time I take his chin in my hand and force him to meet my gaze. “It’s all right,” I tell him. “I’m okay.”

I can feel the beat of his heart slow. He doesn’t look away. His eyes are fixated on mine, like every blink, every breath is reassurance, like my survival is his peace.

“I shouldn’t have left you,” he says. “It was . . . I thought it was better, but . . .”

He exhales, his shoulders dropping, and it’s then that I realize how closely our bodies are molded together, how hard his body is pressing mine into the wall, how delicious it feels to have the pressure of him against me. Lonan is stupidly tall. I’ve always known this, but now, with him towering over me, caging me in, his body like a fortified wall against the rest of the cruel world, his tallness feels different. And then there’s the brutality of him. This close I can feel the hardness of every muscle that he hides so well behind his fastidiously kept uniform. All the appearance of the erudite top student of Gossemort. All the power of a man trained for war. And the scent of him, the pulse of his blood, so close I can almost . . .

I shove him.

He stumbles back, and I have to cover my face, rubbing my eyes to shake off the thirst.

“Sorry,” he mutters. Saints, it’s even the sound of his voice—deep and smooth and rich. “What happened?” he asks.

I swallow and tell him—about Poppy and Orla’s fate, about the book on siphons we found in the library. Utterly useless. And I bring forth the other book, tucked into my dress pocket—the storybook that I’d spent so long believing was lost. I open it to the last story and hand it to him. “The library seemed to think it was pertinent.”

“It’s a smart library. Touchy, but smart.” He scans the page, reading quickly.