I scowled, disarmed yet again. And her question needled at me, boring through that place inside me that both did and did not know how to articulate an answer for this particular inquiry.

“Did you expect me to be happy here?” she pressed. “Do you expect me to ever be? Or are you doing this to punish me because of Lucas?”

“He is unworthy of you,” I snarled.

“You don’t get to decide that!”

“If I was in your world,” I said, “if I was of your world, and your time, you would not have chosen him.”

“There was no choice, Erik.”

And what was this? Her way of saying she had never even considered me? Now who was the liar.

“I would have made you forget him,” I promised her. “I would have given you everything. I would have snatched you out of his grasp. I would have made you mine. I would have—”

“But you’re not any of those things,” she said, her words once more slicing through mine—rending me in two as well. For again, she was right. “By the way, you can’t make someone want to be with you. And I know you know that.”

I did. Powerfully so.

“That’s why I’m here, though, isn’t it?” she asked, her tone dry, brittle, and black as charcoal. “Because you do know it. You just don’t care anymore.”

Even in this mask, I could not hide from her.

“What is it going to take,” she asked, “for you to realize the truth? Erik, when are you going to let me go?”

Let her go? Could it be she still didn’t realize what she was to me?

“You wish me to release you.”

“I’m telling you that you have to,” she said.

Apparently, she had yet to learn that there was very little Wrath could be compelled to do. But if she wanted to make demands of me, I would of course oblige.

“Very well,” I said after a pause. “I shall release you on one condition and one only. Say that you are mine. Swear that you will stay in Moldavia. Better still, say that you will marry me.”

She went silent and still. The crackling of the fire filled the room, as did the ticking of the clock.

“What?” she said at last.

“My words were plain,” I replied. “They should not bear repeating.”

She shook her head, the fingertips of both bandaged hands rushing to cover her mouth.

“Erik,” she whispered, “you’re dead.” As if this was something I could have forgotten.

“And yet I stand before you,” I said, anger searing the edges of my patience. “I speak. I walk.”

I feel.

“You know that’s—”

“The request is a simple one,” I cut her off. “The answer should be, too.”

She drew a breath. And, like a well-aimed arrow, her expected answer split the quiet—and pierced me through.

“Never.”

The clock ticked, and Spite whispered some triumphant utterance to Envy.

The truth was that I had known she would deny me. Truer than that, I had been counting on it. If the growing pain in my chest was any indication, however, there had apparently existed some part of me that had hoped in vain for some other reply. Any other.