The way he looks at me is a mixture of wonder and envy, and not a small amount of hunger. I resist the instinct to retreat.

“You gonna stare at me all day to make sure I’m real, cuz that’s really not necessary.”

Valec grins. A flash of fangs. “I like how present-minded and witty you are.”

“I don’t feel that witty right now.” I shake my head. “I feel… like I’m tired of almost dying.”

He nods slowly. “The best thing you can do is get strong enough to defend yourself, and keep living. No kinda life running, looking over your shoulder all the time. I heard about what happened with Erebus and Davis. Remember what I said about becoming the deadly thing yourself?”

I pick at the wood railing. “Yeah. I remember.” Nick has became the deadly thing. A killer. I don’t know yet how that changes what’s between us.

His eyes stray to the woods again, and he tilts his head in a direction the way I’ve seen Sel do. Listening.

“When you’re a cambion, you’re caught between two worlds. Always. Not just two cultures or two communities, but literally two states of being. Life. Death. This plane, and the one that calls us back home in the middle of the night.” His eyes return to me. “Most of us go a very long time without feeling like we belong anywhere.”

I look over his shoulder, knowing that he’s not just talking about himself.

“Sel belongs to the Order. To his chapter.”

Valec sighs, shaking his head. “You can’t belong to an idea, Bree.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re a smart girl.” He claps a hand on my shoulder and opens the back door to go inside, calling behind him. “Figure it out.”

It’s still morning. Chilly, but warming up under a lazy sun behind clouds. Someone put a ward up around the house. I’m not sure if it was Valec or Sel until I pass through it and taste the cinnamon whiskey of Sel’s power—but the burn is welcome; it means Sel’s aether abilities are back.

They’re back because the cyffion are gone, and the cyffion are gone because I burned them away.

I may be mostly healed, but my body knows I’m not at one hundred percent, and slows my steps into the woods before I’ve even gone ten feet. I listen to it, and stop.

“Sel?” I whisper. I stand waiting for thirty seconds, nearly a minute, and wonder if he’s too far away.

I shouldn’t have worried.

I’m surprised; even though, as William said, he’d nearly died to save me, he looks much better off than I do. Even his hair looks thick and shiny in the shafts of sunlight.

He stops a few feet away, hands at his sides, and lets me study him.

“You saved my life.”