“Listen and listen well,” I said, my voice low and threatening. “I am going to give you one more chance to accept what I have to offer. If you refuse, I’ll keep you here forever. Just like this. You’ll grow old, naked and alone, and every day you will think about this night, when I offered you a world outside this cell. Now, what will it be, Safira?”

She jerked from my grip, and I released her, but her fight was soon gone. Her shoulders fell and she looked very tired.

“You are offering a bath,” she said. “What else?”

My lips curled. “Are you bargaining?”

“If I am to trade this life for another, I want to know what I’m getting.”

“Well, I would not mind another lady-in-waiting,” I said.

She would never replace Violeta, but there was something very sharp about Safira. She was knowledgeable, and she had her pulse on palace gossip, which would greatly benefit me. Her brows rose. “Why would you want me as your lady? I am your enemy.”

“A woman who wants to sleep with my husband does not make her an enemy, Safira. It makes her annoying.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, resigned.

I took a step away. “Come along.” I walked out of the cell, and Safira followed without protest.

Though late, I summoned a bath for her, and while she sat in the steaming water, scrubbing her skin, I read through one of the spell books I had brought from the library. It was one Zann had set aside for me, and it contained a set of geometric shapes that were said to channel various types of energy for different types of magic.

I traced one of them with my finger—a collection of triangles and circles.

“King Adrian has not yet turned you?” Safira asked.

My finger froze on the page.

“He has not,” I said, without looking away from my book “Though, it is not from lack of wanting.”

Although, last time, it had been me who begged Adrian to change me. I understood why he had said no in the aftermath of the lake attack. I had only recently come to accept the use of my aufhocker form, but that acceptance had yet to help me shift.

“Is it you who are not convinced?” Safira asked. “Do you not wish for immortality?”

I paused for a moment and looked up from my book. She had stopped scrubbing her skin and now hugged her knees to her chest. “I wish for invincibility,” I said. “It seems more practical.”

Though no longer guaranteed, apparently.

I set my book aside.

“Why don’t you tell me who you are?” I said.

Safira straightened. “What do you mean?”

“You are angry like I am angry,” I said. “Why? Where did you come from? How did you end up as a vassal?”