“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Lucien’s voice cuts through my bloodlust, but barely. I flick my claws, the hunger tilting my head with bloodthirsty curiosity as I watch the prince move to stand next to Fione, his eyes squarely on his sister.

“And why not?” Varia laughs. “Someone has to show you she’s no good for you.”

Wordlessly, Lucien looks to Fione. Something passes between them, and she nods her curled head back. She moves aside her cloak, her undercoat, to reveal the thin white muslin of her undergarments just over her heart.

HER HEART, the hunger screams, and I can’t help the lick of my lips. WHICH DO WE LOVE MORE—OURS OR THEIRS?

The faint human side of me watches in abject horror as Lucien raises his hand and places it gently against Fione’s chest. She’s quivering, but her expression is unbreakable, her defiant, tear-studded gaze riveted to Varia.

“Step down from the Tree,” Lucien says clearly. His fingertips grow black, darkness spreading and subsuming the whites of his eyes.

My mind stutters, but my body and the hunger controlling it only lowers itself closer to the snow, ready to strike.

“Step down,” Lucien says again, harder this time, not a grain of pity or softness on his face, in his two pitch-black eyes. “Or Fione will become my Heartless.”

…

A witch.

Lucien is a witch.

HE WILL DIE THE SAME. The hunger doesn’t care what he is, but the fragments of me still left do. When? How? What is his true name? He’s blackmailing Varia with Fione’s safety. Heartlessness is pain. Heartlessness is hunger, unending. She would suffer so much. She has no idea how much, and yet she’s standing there, determinedly holding her clothes aside to make it easier for him to take her heart. She is terrified of Heartless.

And yet she is willing.

He’s doing what I nearly did to him.

With his other hand, Lucien pulls out a bag from his coat. A silk bag. There, stitched with clumsy needlework, is the word friend. Varia’s fury—I can feel the instant she lays eyes on the bag, the instant she understands what’s going on. It’s as if some furious switch has been flipped in my mind.

HOW DARE THEY THREATEN US, the hunger thunders, an echo of her rage. BLOOD WILL RAIN. BLOOD WILL SNOW. HIS LIVER TORN FROM HIM, HIS EYES PLUCKED NEATLY OUT OF THEIR SOCKETS—HE WILL BE THE BIRD PREYED UPON

Varia plays it differently—laughing brightly, none of the nervousness in her voice anymore, each word ribbed by sharp fury.

“Is this what it has come to, brother?” I hear her boots crunching on snow. “Must we fight each other like storybook clichés?”