I narrowed my eyes at him, allowing a growl to escape my mouth. I did not appreciate his humor so shortly after becoming the very same creature that had killed so many of my people.

I had become an aufhocker.

I was an omen of death.

Six

Isolde

When I woke, it was cold.

I sat up, holding my blankets to my chest, noticing the shutters were open. Snow had gathered on the ledge while flurries fell, languid and delicate, to the floor.

I rose, naked, and crossed to the window.

Adrian’s room overlooked part of the palace gardens. Yesterday, everything had glittered with a dusting of icy crystals. Today, nothing was visible above heavy drifts of red-stained snow.

Gavriel had been right. Winter did come fast.

I should close the shutters, but I couldn’t look away from the garden below as I remembered toiling through the snow to reach water, and when I had emerged, I had been something monstrous.

A darkness gathered in my chest, as I recalled that I had become an aufhocker.

The very thing that had killed my people in Cel Ceredi.

And while I was somehow once again in my human form, I felt different, altered. I looked at my arm, where the aufhocker had bit me, where Adrian had bit me—it was fully healed. I looked at my hands, spreading my fingers wide—fingers that had sprouted claws last night. Something gathered in my throat, a hysteria I wasn’t certain I could quell.

I did not want to be this—whatever this was. A shifter. A creature that craved extinguishing life.

The door opened and I turned as Adrian entered the room.

He stared at me, his eyes like embers, and as his gaze trailed my body, I warmed beneath it despite the winter air.

He was dressed in black, with gold accenting the clasps of his surcoat and securing his cloak, which draped over his right arm in a pool of deep red. There was always a sharpness to his features, but this morning they seemed far more menacing.

“Am I a monster?” I asked.

He chuckled, amused by my question, but his response only made me angry. “It would seem so,” he said.

“So you failed,” I said. It wasn’t a fair thing to say, but I felt like fighting because he had laughed and I…I was afraid.

Adrian narrowed his eyes and tilted his head to the side. It was as if I had slapped him. “If I had failed, you would not be here now in human skin.”

I cringed at his words.

“I am human.”

His smile twisted my stomach.

“Not anymore.”

“What is this pride you have?” I demanded. “I am a monster.”

“So am I,” he said. “Does it make you sick to be like me?”