But when I looked at him, no words left my mouth, and I understood that we were inevitable. Slowly, he kissed me.

For Adrian, that was our first night together, the start of something wild and passionate—the promise of a future he might build separate from the horror of his work as Dragos’s guard.

For me, I knew I had taken the first step toward my impending death.

Two hundred years later, he had brought me here for the first time as Isolde to witness the fires lit across Revekka.

The night High Coven was murdered, the world looked just like this, he’d said. Then, those words had hardly fazed me. Now, they twisted through me, a thousand knives in my skin.

I thought he’d hoped it would awaken some part of me, but I had only pitied his quest for vengeance.

The roof was snowy and slippery, and the air was so cold, it stole my breath as I moved to the edge and looked down on Revekka. As before, fires burned across the land, but they were no longer isolated pyres; they surrounded each village, large circles of fire that would hopefully keep monsters at bay, though they had done little to keep the aufhockers from Cel Ceredi.

But maybe I could…if I could force myself to change.

I closed my eyes and spread my arms wide, focusing on the part of me that had not felt the same since the night I changed. It was a jumble of thorns, a chaotic mix of feelings I had not been able to confront but needed to untangle, and I knew, at the center of it all, was anger.

Anger that I had not had control.

It had started from the moment I drew my first breath and my mother died and only continued when Adrian walked into my life. From the beginning, I’d had no command over my body, which responded to him like it knew him, but once I came to love him, I’d only ever assumed I’d be the same kind of monster as him.

I was angry because I had once been able to see the future, and now I could barely navigate the present without coming away bloody and broken and bruised.

I felt my resistance give a little, and as I began to relax, an arm came around my waist. I stumbled as my back settled against Adrian’s chest. His other arm crossed over my body, and he held me tight, his face pressed into the hollow of my neck.

It was an apology and I reveled in it.

We stayed like that for a while, silent and still. I was the first to move, turning in Adrian’s arms to face him.

“I have something to show you,” I said.

“I hope it is a good surprise,” he said, smiling.

“I never promised a surprise,” I said. “Or that it would be good.”