He told Daniel about how the last two years passed like a knee pressing into his back. All the doctor’s appointments he could barely afford, and the three jobs he juggled just to manage that. The late, late nights deep in the stacks to keep on top of his classwork and hang on to his scholarships. The mocking jeers of his supposed peers, who regarded him like a sideshow attraction: the little boy who thought he was a man. His voice cracked well into his second semester at Princeton; he wasn’t gangly, or short, but he never seemed to fill out his suits properly all the same. He spoke of his papers that mysteriously went missing, the books he needed that always seemed to be checked out, and the thousand little taunts and slights that added up until they were a morass, threatening to pull him under.

Why shouldn’t he have seen Pitr as a life preserver tossed out to a drowning man? Secrecy was just the price he paid to have one good thing, one moment of solace in this world.

But after that night in Pitr’s room, the world grew darker, more hateful, more afraid—and Pitr with it. Liam had craved control—true control—for as long as he could remember. He craved it so much that he couldn’t see how badly Pitr wanted it, too, until it was too late.

Pitr thought the realm they sought demanded sacrifice. Not himself, of course—Pitr was too vain for that—but he theorized, correctly as it turned out, that the frequencies Liam’s oscillators generated weren’t enough. The shadows required blood. They demanded pain. A rift between the universes exacted a heavy toll, and Pitr was clearly ready to pay it, whereas Liam was not.

Into winter and the cold comfort of the new year, Pitr haunted Liam like a specter, desperate to persuade him it was worth the cost. “We can forge an opening to the shadow world,” Pitr said one night, catching him in the bathroom where they’d first embraced. “All we need is a sacrifice.”

“No. I won’t do it.”

“But, Liam.” Pitr paused. “Not everyone deserves to live.”

Still, his voice was a low rumble that brought Liam’s nerve endings to life. And because he knew Liam too well, because Liam had given him everything while Pitr had parceled out only the slimmest glimpses of himself, he knew just the toehold to seize in Liam’s thoughts.

“Some people aren’t deserving of life, Liam. Do you think your father is?”

Liam swallowed back a growl. His father was not up for discussion. “Why? Why do you want this so badly?”