Her chest rises and falls gently, a reminder that no matter what she has done, she is human. And she can die just like the rest of us.

“It’s the throat or nothing, Laia of Serra.” The Commandant’s voice is soft. “Unless you cut through my fatigues to the artery in my leg. But I’m faster than you, so you’ll likely fail.”

I lunge, but she’s turned toward the faint whoosh of my cloak as I fly at her. The impact of our bodies jolts my invisibility loose. Before I draw another breath, the Commandant has me flat on the floor, knees clamped around my thighs, one hand pinning my arms while the other holds Elias’s blade to my throat. I did not even feel her take it from me.

I cringe but the high neck of my shirt protects me from the poison on the blade. The silver skin of her chest flashes. She tilts her head, reptilian gaze boring into me.

“How will you die?” she asks. “In battle, like your mother? Or in terror, like mine?” Her hand is grasped tight around the hilt of the dagger. Talk. Keep her talking.

“Don’t you—” I gasp as she presses the weapon against my windpipe. “Don’t you dare talk about my mother like that—you—hag—”

“I don’t know why you bothered, girl,” she says. “I always kn-know—”

The knife slackens against my throat. Keris’s eyes dilate and she coughs. I squirm out from under her, rolling away. She leaps for me, and when she misses, stumbling instead, I allow myself a smile. She’s losing the feeling in her hands. In her legs. I know, because I tested the poison on myself.

Too late, Keris notices my gloves. Too late, she drops Elias’s blade, staring at the hilt, realizing how I got the poison onto her. If she’d ingested it, it would have killed her. But against her skin, it is more of an inconvenience. One just bad enough to give me the edge. The Commandant scrambles back as I yank a dirk from my boot.

But Keris Veturia has been at war nearly her whole life. Her instinct takes control and as I slash at her throat, she doubles me over with a quick hit below my sternum. My weapon falls, and I reach for my last knife. With a blow to my wrist, Keris sends it clattering across the floor.

Voices sound outside. The guards.

I lurch into her while she’s distracted and she throws me off with such force that I smack into the throne, head muzzy as I ooze to the floor. She opens her mouth to shout for the guards—likely the only time she’s called for help in her life. But the poison has stolen her voice and after struggling to stand, she finally collapses, limbs gracelessly akimbo.

Now or never, Laia. Where the skies are my blades? I’d choke the life out of her, but she might wake up in the middle of it. She’ll be out for a minute, at most. I need a weapon.

The hilt of Elias’s dagger pokes out from beneath the throne. Just as I get my hands on it, still gasping for breath, I am flung back like a rag doll.

My body slams into a quartz pillar. The throne room blurs, and then sharpens as a figure who is not the Commandant, but who certainly was not here a moment ago, makes its way toward me.

Pale skin. A dark cloak. Warm brown eyes. Freckles dancing across a wrenchingly handsome face. And a shock of red hair that’s nothing compared to the fire within him.

I know what he is. I know. But when I see him, I do not think Nightbringer! Jinn! Enemy!

I think Keenan. Friend. Lover.

Traitor.

Run, Laia! My body refuses to cooperate. Blood pours from a gash on the side of my head, salty and hot. My muscles scream, legs aching like they used to after a whipping. The pain is a rope wrapped around me, pulling tighter and tighter.

“Y-you,” I manage. Why would he take this form? Why, when he has avoided it until now?

Because he wants you panicked and off your guard, idiot!

His smell, lemon and woodsmoke, fills my senses, so familiar though I’ve tried to forget.

“Laia of Serra. It is good to see you, my love.” Keenan’s voice is low and warm. But he is not Keenan, I remind myself. He is the Nightbringer. After I fell in love with him, after I gave him my mother’s armlet as a token of that love, he revealed his true form. The armlet was a long-lost piece of the Star—a talisman he needed to free his imprisoned brethren. Once I gave it to him, he had no more use for me.

He puts a hand on my arm to help me stand but I throw him off and drag myself to my feet.

It has been more than a year since I’ve seen the Nightbringer in his human form. I did not realize what a gift that was until now. Such concern in those dark eyes. Such caring. All to mask a vile creature that wants nothing more than to obliterate me.

The Commandant will be conscious soon. And while the Nightbringer cannot kill me—he cannot kill any who touched the Star—Keris Veturia can.

“Damn you.” I look past the Nightbringer to Keris. If I could just get to her—

“I cannot let you harm her, Laia.” The Nightbringer sounds almost sorry. “She serves a purpose.”

“Curse your purpose to the hells!”

The Nightbringer glances at the doors.

“No point in shouting. The guards have found pressing duties elsewhere.” He crouches beside Keris, feeling her pulse with a gentleness that bewilders me.

“You wish to murder her, Laia of Serra.” He stands and approaches. “For Keris is the font of all your woes. She destroyed your family and turned your mother into a murderess and kinslayer. She annihilated your people and torments them still. You would do anything to stop her, yes? So what makes you so different from me?”

“I am nothing like you—”

“My family was killed too. My wife slaughtered on a battlefield. My children murdered with salt and steel and summer rain. My kin butchered and imprisoned.”

“By people a thousand years gone!” I shout. But why speak with him? He’s buying time until the Commandant wakes up. He believes I am too foolish to notice.

Fury floods my veins, numbing my pain, making me forget the Commandant. It colors everything red, and a darkness roars inside me. The same feral thing that rose within me months ago, when I gave him my armlet. The beast that lashed out in the Forest of Dusk, when I thought he was going to kill Elias.

The Nightbringer glares, mouth curling into an inhuman grimace. “What are you?” he says, and it is an echo of a question he asked before.

“You will not win.” My voice is an unrecognizable snarl that rises from some ancient, visceral part of my soul. “You have harmed too many with your vengeance.” I’m inches from him now, staring into those familiar eyes, hate pouring from my own. “I do not care what it takes, nor how long. I will defeat you, Nightbringer.”

Silence stretches between us. The moment is impossibly long, hushed as death.