“We have always been such fleeting creatures,” Raj Ahten whispered. “We have always been so temporary. But together, Iome, we can become something more.”

The craving in his voice, the hunger, almost drove all reason from Iome’s mind. Almost she felt willing to give him her beauty. But a wiser voice in the back of her mind nagged. “No, I would die, I would be nothing.”

“You would not die,” Raj Ahten said. “If I become the Sum of All Men, your beauty would live on in me. Some part of you would always remain, to be loved, to be admired.”

“No,” Iome said in horror.

Raj Ahten glanced at the floor, where King Sylvarresta still lay in a foul heap. “Not even to save his life?”

Then Iome knew, she knew, that her father would tell her not to make this bargain. “No,” Iome shuddered.

“It is a horrible thing, to put an idiot among the torturers. All that pain your father would have to endure, never understanding why, never knowing that there is such a thing as death that could bring him release, with the torturers repeating your name each time they put the hot irons to him, so that in time, even at the mention of your name, he would cry out in pain. It would be truly horrible.”

The cruelty inherent in such an idea left Iome numb. She looked at Raj Ahten, her heart breaking. She could not say yes.

The Wolf Lord nodded to one of his men. “Bring in the girl.”

The guard left the chamber, returned quickly with Chemoise. Chemoise, who should have been in the Dedicates’ Keep, comforting her father. Chemoise, who had already suffered so much this week, lost so much to Raj Ahten.

How had Raj Ahten known what Iome felt for her dear friend? Had Iome betrayed the girl with a glance?

Chemoise had wide, frightened eyes. She began weeping in terror when she saw the King lying on the floor. Shrieked when Raj Ahten’s guard took her to the broken window, poised to throw her over the edge.

Iome’s heart hammered, as she watched her childhood friend begin to gibber in fear. Two lives. Raj Ahten would be killing two—Chemoise and her unborn child.

Chemoise, forgive me for this betrayal, Iome wanted to say. For she knew, she knew with her whole soul, that surrender was wrong. If no one had ever surrendered, Raj Ahten would be dead by now. Yet she also knew that to give her glamour to Raj Ahten would benefit him little, while it saved the lives of Iome’s friends.

“I cannot give you an endowment,” Iome said, unable to disguise the loathing in her words. She could not give it to him. Not to him personally.

“If not me, a vector, then,” Raj Ahten offered.