I half expect him to reach out and take it anyway. He doesn’t. He just waits there in the sand and stares at me with little emotion.

“I’d rather you go first.”

He gives me a chuckle, perhaps a bigger gift than the knives. Then more waiting.

Finally, I hold my hand out to him. He takes it and pricks the end of my finger before I can second-guess myself. In the half-light, my blood bubbles up black.

“It’s the same as drawing the magic to your knives, but you’re also calling it back. You just want something different from it. Tell it what you want.”

“I want to stop bleeding.”

He sighs. “Don’t tell me.”

I pull the magic down into my fingertips as they itch for my knives on instinct. No. No knives, I tell it. Fix me. It doesn’t. My finger throbs. I stare at the blood on it, commanding the power to come back to me and do my bidding. At last, it does. The tip of my finger grows hot, and I feel the moment the blood stops escaping. Roman produces a handkerchief from the air or from his pocket and dabs the blood off my finger. My fingers jerk toward my new sheath of knives, practically begging me to throw them.

“Focus,” Roman says. “You pulled too much magic for such a small wound. Don’t let it control you. That’s why blood magic is so dangerous. Once it’s outside of your body, it has a will of its own.”

He takes my hand in his as if inspecting my work. Before I get a chance to register the movement, his knife slices toward my hand again, plunging through the soft center and out the other side.

I forget how to breathe.

Roman’s grip on the hilt tightens.

“No no no—”

He yanks the knife back out in one fluid movement.

I scream and then scream again, hoping it will release some of the white-hot pain radiating from the center of my hand. The ocean takes my screams and swallows them, offering me nothing in return.

I bend at the waist, folding my hand between my stomach and my thighs. Pressure. Wounds like this need pressure. My head hits Roman’s chest as I fold in on myself. He doesn’t budge.

“Bastard,” I hiss.

“Yes,” he admits, and moves on. “You need to breathe.”

I am breathing. My breaths are just ragged and unfulfilling, leaving me gulping at the salty night air.

“Focus, Ava.”

Roman’s fingers find my chin, pulling upward until I’m forced to unfurl myself and look at him. In the dark, his brown eyes turn into cavernous black pits threatening to swallow me just as surely as the waves at my back. I let some of myself sink into those eyes and draw my focus away from my hand.