My throat closed. I stepped back. Stepped back again. My head was reeling, my brain stunned into incoherence.

“Why?” I whispered hoarsely. “All along, you could’ve done anything you wanted. Left me. Killed me. Let someone else kill me. Forced me to do whatever you wanted. Why did you protect me all this time?”

Shadows gathered in his eyes, dimming the crimson glow. Quiet sadness hid in their depths.

“Because I promised.”

I stumbled out of the bedroom. Everything had a strange, disconnected feel as I sank onto the floor behind the coffee table, returning to the same spot for no reason other than I didn’t know what else to do. Didn’t know what to think. Didn’t know what to feel.

Zylas wasn’t bound by our contract. He’d never been bound.

My shock cracked, and fury welled up through the fissures. How dare he hide this from me! How dare he mislead me! How dare he let me think I was protected by the contract when all along the only thing protecting me had been …

Him.

I pressed my palms to the tabletop.

He had protected me, not our contract. He had protected me even when I was annoying. When I was weak. When I was stupid. When I almost got him killed by Tahēsh. When I abandoned the infernus and got myself kidnapped. When I yelled at him for trying to keep me safe in ways I didn’t like. When I drove him so crazy he would snarl and slash at the furniture. When he thought I secretly wanted him dead. When I hid my thoughts and feelings so deeply he couldn’t fully trust me.

He’d protected me because when I’d put my hand across that silver line, and when he’d pulled me into his icy prison, we’d bound ourselves in a different way. Both facing death, both finding a chance in each other.

I bound myself to you. Only you, vayanin.

My hands trembled.

A shadow fell across me. The soft scuff of feet against carpet, the whisper of his tail following behind him. I kept my gaze on the open grimoire on the coffee table, trying to steady my breathing.

Zylas sank into a crouch, not quite in the gap between the table and sofa where I sat, but right at the edge.

“Vayanin?”

I concentrated, breathing in and out.

“Robin?”

My head jerked up. My gaze snapped to him, then away. Inches in front of me was the page with Myrrine’s last journal entry before her death.

I offered a demon my soul, and then I offered him my heart.

Part of me had hoped she was wrong. That her feelings had been misplaced infatuation. That her attraction had been imagined, not real. That her demon would never reciprocate her affection in the slightest.

It would have been better if she hadn’t wanted him and he hadn’t wanted her. Everything was so much simpler that way. No chance of rejection. No risk of hurt or heartbreak. No fear of whether it was right or wrong or a crime against nature.

Love is pain and it is hope.

The other part of me had wanted Myrrine to be right. I’d wanted her not to care what anyone thought, to forge her own path, to go where no woman had gone before. I’d desperately, fanatically wanted her to take the risk and try.

Dare as I dared.

I raised my eyes to the demon an arm’s length away.

“It’s called blushing.” I’d meant to speak confidently, but it came out in a fluttering mumble. “When my face turns red.”

His tail slid across the carpet. “Blushing?”

“I blush from embarrassment, and I’m usually embarrassed because of you.”

“Why?”

My throat tried to close against the words. “Because you … you get so close to me. And you touch me. And I …”

I stole a peek at him, and his confused frown sent blood rushing into my cheeks.

“And you’re … you …” Gritting my teeth, I scrunched my eyes and forced the words out. “And when you do those things, I think about you … and about things I shouldn’t think.”

He was quiet. Probably completely flummoxed. My explanation was a mess and I knew it.

“I do not know your thoughts about me,” he finally said, his voice quiet.

I couldn’t resist checking his reaction—frowning in a worried way, like he was wondering if he’d done something wrong—and at the sight, I had the wild urge to flee the room. But running away was what I’d been doing all along, and look where that had gotten us. I’d been undermining our trust from the beginning, all because I couldn’t admit this one thing to him.

Buying myself a moment to think, I grabbed a strawberry from the bowl beside me and bit the bottom off.

He shifted his weight. “Vayanin? What are your thoughts about me that are bad?”

“Not bad. Just … I …” I looked at the half-eaten strawberry between my fingers, dusted with sugar. “I keep thinking things …”

Things like his amazing body of hard muscle—dips and planes and smooth skin that I wanted to touch. Things like the feel of those powerful arms around me, and how his strength both daunted and thrilled me. Things like the way his husky voice could caress me, and how I always lost my train of thought when he murmured in my ear.

But I couldn’t speak those words. I couldn’t make a sound.

I stared at the strawberry. Dare as I dared.

My gaze lifted. Darted across his face. Settled on his mouth. Raising my hand, I slowly stretched out my arm and pressed the bite of fruit to his lips.

His eyes widened.

“What does this mean?” I whispered.

Lips parting, he took the strawberry with his teeth. He swallowed, watching me with half-lidded eyes.

“If you were a payashē, it means you choose me for your bed.” His hooded gaze gauged my reaction. “But you are not a payashē.”

A shiver started deep in my core and spread outward, trembling down my arms and curling my toes. My hand wasn’t quite steady as I selected another strawberry and bit into it. A drop of sweet juice beaded at the corner of my mouth.

His gaze held mine, intense and questioning. A hint of predator lurked in those faintly glowing red eyes.

“I’m not a payashē,” I agreed softly.

The tremble in my fingers grew more obvious as I extended my hand again, holding the strawberry in the space between us. An offer. Not choosing him, but inviting him.

He shifted forward. His fingers brushed my wrist, then curled around it, steadying my hand. His mouth closed over the strawberry—and my fingers. The fruit disappeared with a flex of his throat, then all I could feel was the heat of his mouth and the slide of his tongue.