Lucien’s gaze faintly drifts in my direction, and the joy in his face dims. In a blink he sends up that hard, indifferent shell—his princely shell, the one I worked so hard to penetrate. The one the witches demanded I slip past and steal the heart from even as my own was torn in a million directions.

“Who do you belong to?” Varia asks. It hurts to answer her, to breathe. The locket around my neck feels like it’s full of lead.

“Nightsinger,” I manage. “The witch Nightsinger.” I catch a glimpse of my hands soaked in blood, the taste of it still on my tongue. The things I did—I can’t bear to look around me. If I see it with my own eyes, it’ll become reality. How many bodies? How many men with families and children and dreams? I ate Gavik, his throat— I can’t look. I can’t look.

And you thought you could escape me, the hunger sneers. You can’t even resist me. Look at what you’ve done—

Vomit burbles in my gut, and I choke out a plea.

“P-Please, Princess Varia. Get Lucien out of here—away from me. Before I turn again.”

Lucien’s midnight eyes, full of searing affection for me not an hour ago, are so cold now. Unreadable. He doesn’t speak, or move, or glance in my direction at all. He is a statue.

In its place in the jar over Nightsinger’s witchfire hearth, my heart must surely be bleeding. But I knew. I knew it would end like this.

Varia smiles at me, pity clear in her eyes. And yet there’s more than just pity there—something inquisitive, something strange.

“What shall we do with her, Lucien?” Varia asks him. “She betrayed your trust, didn’t she? I saw that much.”

Lucien looks at me then. He looks—thank the gods he looks—but I’m not reflected in his eyes. I am glass, a window he’s merely peering through.

He’s furious. He must be. I burn to beg him to forgive me, but I’m long past forgiveness. I knew that the moment I put on this dark dress to take out his heart. No. I knew that the moment I first laid eyes on him at the Spring Welcoming, and I certainly knew that as I was tearing into the lawguards and Gavik, who threatened his life.

I knew it every moment of our time together.

I had every second to prepare for it. So why do I still arrogantly hope for a happy ending, even with the blood of a dozen men on my hands?

Because you’re selfish. The hunger slathers rock salt into my wounds.

Lucien turns, the sight of his back driving me mad in an instant, and the precipice my two halves teetered on for fourteen agonizing days suddenly rips away, tearing me down the middle.