I shuddered as a graveyard wrapped around me. Air rattled in my swollen throat as I breathed in the taste of wet dirt and cold nights, and when I exhaled, I jerked in surprise when my breath didn’t turn into a vaporous cloud.

And the source, somehow Valere, had fled with a decree of his ruinous project, or nothing.

Valere had yelled at me — yelled — before thrusting himself away in a cloud of dark, dead power. I clenched my hands.

I rushed out of the library after him, the librarian shrieking from his office, “Running is prohibited in the library!”

I shouted back an apology, but the librarian didn’t particularly appreciate that either. I reached the cavernous corridor outside, windows dark with the night sky, just in time to catch a flash of silver disappearing down one end.

Why was I even running? Valere was sabotaging me. But Valere had yelled.

I followed the flashes out of the school and onto the rear grounds. The forest separating West Ridge from the headmaster’s private estate loomed beyond, impenetrable shadows against the night sky.

The look on Valere’s face before he’d left… That tsunami of power…

The barren gardens gave way to skeleton hedges. No glimpses of silver now. I slowed, my breath so heavy from running it felt solid at the back of my throat. I bent over and coughed, as if I could expunge the plug.

I should just leave him and start a new project. I shook my head. Impossible. After taking several deep breaths, I hobbled forward again. Nothing for it, but a long, wasteful search.

But I continued forward. A low stone gate gleamed white in the moonlight, marking the boundary between lawn and forest. It was probably part of the wards protecting West Ridge, the stones hiding the spellwork Le Savant had laid eight centuries before.

A cherry tree guarded the gate to an overgrown path, the soft pink flowers beginning to bloom like phantoms perched on its branches. The wind tousled the leaves and a rain of petals fell over a pale, trembling figure. The figure hunched over, hands pressed to the cold dirt.

I clutched my stomach with clammy hands. “Valere!”

The figure flinched and his arms collapsed under him.

My feet tripped over each other, but I managed to run and drop to my knees at his side. I reached out to — what, calm him? Help him? I didn’t know, and Valere didn’t give me the chance to figure it out.

He jerked up and growled at me. Honestly growled. His eyes shone silver. He snatched my wrist, his grip tightening until the bones almost cracked.

That terrible cold power from before had changed, had warped, and now burned like an inferno. I suffocated in the smell of ash and charred meat. My skin felt like it burned to black, shrivelled up, cracked like gristle dropping into the fire. I clenched my teeth to keep from screaming.

Valere grinned wickedly. A grin that knew I suffered and enjoyed it.

My eyes widened. I stopped struggling.

His lips moved. “Why do you persist?”

“Ah…” As much as I tried, proper syllables did not arrange themselves on my tongue. Instead, I gasped.

“Tell me!”

“I — I’m sorry.”

Valere released my wrist. I let it hang in the air for a moment, breathing out the pain, then clutched it against my stomach.

His grin had disappeared. “What is wrong with you?”

“I…” What was wrong indeed. I should have been running back to the safety of the school like I had a vampire nipping at my heels, demanding Roux to allow me to change partners.

Valere tightened his fists against his side. “I hurt you, I nearly break your wrist, and you apologise to me. A vampire attacked you because of me. You nearly died. I might have let you die if the apprentice hadn’t shown up.”

I swallowed.

“When you wake up, you don’t even ask what happened. You don’t even ask anything about me. What in the God Cursed is wrong with you?”

“I… I don’t remember what happened.”

“And yet you know I know vampires,” Valere said. “You don’t ask why. You don’t report me as you should.”

My eyes widened. “Do you want me to report you?”

Valere opened his mouth to answer, but seemed to think better of it.

I didn’t think so.

“Someone sent you after me. It’s the only explanation. By who? The queen? Who!”

I stared at him. “Fallion doesn’t have a queen.”

“Do not be obtuse. The vampire queen who rules L’Oeil and the surrounding region. Who sent you?”

“I don’t know what—”

The heat of a pyre flared around Valere, the only warning I received before Valere tackled me to the ground. In an instant, his legs pinned mine, his hands held mine above my head. Petals showered above us, like a twisted version of Le Savant’s dance of the cosmos.

“Who?” At my silence, Valere tightened his grip. I gasped, but it didn’t bring a smile to Valere’s lips now. “Tell me who!”

“Nobody — nobody sent me.”

Valere’s grip tightened until I heard my bones scrape together once more. “WHO?”

I trembled. “Nobody!”

Valere leaned down, his lips nearly brushing my ear, his breath hot on my neck. “No one suffers a vampire attack and gladly keeps it secret. Not when everyone already knows.”

How did his body remain so hot when his appearance was so cool? I felt his body heat radiating over my skin, pooling toward my pelvis.

Oh no…

“Tell me.” Valere’s hands flexed. I bucked. “Tell me.”

“I don’t know. I just…”

“Just? Just were told to follow me around, make me trust you? Report back them the minutia of my life? Lead me to them when they are ready? As if I would trust you again.”

Again? No, I had bigger problems right now, like that certain parts of me really enjoyed the way Valere pinned me down, completely at his mercy. Even the way he screwed my wrists seemed merely a sharp pleasure. If Valere shifted just a little, he’d feel what he’d done to me.

“If you do not tell me,” Valere said, “then I shall use your body as my personal toy.”

“My toy.” Like the vampire in my nightmare, the words brought a gasp to my lips. My limbs sought movement, sought compliance, just wanted him to…

“You can’t escape,” Valere whispered.

I didn’t want to escape. I wanted him to follow through on his promise, to use me however he cared.

“Tell me.”

I swallowed.

“Tell me.”

“I just…”

“You just?”

No! “I need this project to get into the guild.”

Valere sat up, hands still trapping mine, but it shifted his pelvis lower along my body. I fought with everything I had not to arch into him. “Liar. That’s not what you wanted before.”

Before? “Of course it is.”

“Nothing else has changed,” Valere said. “So why have you?”

“I haven’t changed.” It’s what my father had always wanted.

Valere shifted again, getting closer to my cursed appendage. “No one changes unless there’s some profit in it for them. So, what do you gain?”

“The guild!” Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move, don’t move. “I don’t care if you associate with vampires. I don’t care, so long as I get into the guild—”

“At any cost?” Valere asked.

“P-please.” I started to squirm, before freezing. “We need a better project, we need—”

Valere started to shift again, about to move lower.

“GET OFF ME!” I struggled to free my hands, twisting them in his, only succeeding in pinching my nerves. I pummelled my knees into his back, but he easily rode me like a bucking bull, that wicked grin returning.

“Then tell me.” His soft voice cut through my cries.

“I’ll — I’ll continue on the project,” I stammered. “I swear. Just please—”

He tightened his thighs. “Why?”

“I told you — to get into the guild.”

“Stop struggling.”

I stopped, just like that, as if I were a marionette, my strings attached to the whim of his tongue. He stared down at me, lips curled, and his eyes… his eyes heavy with something, but it couldn’t be, not that…

“Swear to me you’ll never argue again,” he said.

“I swear I won’t.” I closed my eyes. There went the guild. But if Valere discovered the weight still hanging between my thighs, the guild would be a distant dream. I’d make the project work somehow.

“Swear you won’t tell anyone else about it.”

I nodded. “I swear I won’t tell.”

For a long moment, Valere didn’t breathe. Neither did I.

“Please,” I said.

Valere breathed out, a long line of warmth that seemed to curl down the collar of my dress shirt. Valere released me, collapsing on one side of me.

I curled onto my side, away from him, pulling my legs into my chest before he noticed the damage he had wrought. Why, Le Savant, why must I be cursed this way?

Without Valere pressing against me, my body cooled and returned to the way it should be, whether a man of divine beauty tackled me or not. Valere did not stir behind me.

I rose to my knees, just in time to see Valere clawing at the dirt. “Are you… all right?”

My hand hovered over him, before I winced and took it back. I mustn’t touch him. I already knew how hot he was, his body radiating heat like a pyre. Hotter than anyone had a right to be.

Valere took in a breath that rasped all the way down his throat. “It’s not cold enough anymore.”

The nights still dropped below… Wait, he’d said something like that before. In the shower room, when that blasted water had nearly frozen my fingers off.

I placed my hand on his forehead, as chaste as any mother. Valere bared his teeth. I snatched my hand back, but instead of biting or grabbing me again, his fingers dug further into the earth.

He was obviously ill. Feverish, even. I’d been pressing my feelings onto a sick man. How disgusting was I?

“We need to go to a chirurgeon.” The nurse had aptly demonstrated how useless he was.

Valere squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not—”

“I’m fine.”

“But—”

“Go away,” Valere said. “Just go away.”

I should have run away as fast and as far as possible after my body’s betrayal. It would have been better for everyone involved. Yet I couldn’t just leave him there, ill and in pain and all alone.

“No,” I said. “I refuse. Something must help.”

Valere winced. “Cold…”

“You’re burning up.”

“Cold shower,” he mumbled.

I blushed. Water streaming down Valere’s firm, supple limbs, his skin bared for my eyes to roam. The showers were the last place I should be, but I had to take him.

I reached around him to help him up. He jerked away from me. “I’ll take you there.”

His shoulders trembled for a long moment, before he nodded.

I helped him to his feet, with only one particularly perilous moment when I imagined holding Valere under the shower head and I nearly lost both of our balances. Even ill, he helped me recover, and we stumbled toward disaster.