MasukEMBER’S POVFor a moment I think Hale’s going to push it.But she just gives a tight little laugh and turns toward the door, and I think that’s the end of it, until she pauses at the threshold and glances back at me, and her eyes drop to the closed book in my hands, and that bright knowing sharpness comes back.“That recipe you found.” She says it lightly, coyly, like she’s offering a sweet. “You won’t be able to finish it, you know. Half of it’s scratched out, and the rest is in grandmother’s cypher.” Her smile widens. “You can’t make it without me. You’ll get the ingredients wrong and poison your friend instead of saving her. So.” She tilts her head. “When you’re done pretending you don’t need me, you know where to find me.”And then she’s gone, the door drifting shut behind her.The three of us sit in the silence she leaves.“…She’s not wrong about the cypher, is she,” Queenie says finally.“No.” I look down at the book. “She’s not. I cracked some of it. Not all. And the scratched-
EMBER’S POV“You’ve been in here for hours,” she says, drifting closer. “Marjorie said you’d holed up with my grandmother’s old things. I did wonder.”I snap the book shut, dragging it off the table and into my lap.“Good for you. Do you usually track guests through the house, or am I just special?”“Prickly.” Hale tilts her head, her bright, unsettling eyes dropping to the leather cover in my lap. “Why the hostility, Ember? I thought we established a rapport yesterday. I helped you, didn’t I?”“You led me straight into a dead woman’s bedroom, Hale.” I hold her gaze, refusing to back down. “That is fucking creepy.”“Creepy.” She tests the word, rolling it around on her tongue, and a slow, entirely unbothered smile stretches across her face. “I get that a lot. But that shouldn’t bother a girl like you, should it? Remember, we are very similar, you and I. If you would just drop that exhausting guard of yours for a single second, we could share so much.” She takes a slow step closer, dro
EMBER’S POVI sit with that. It’s enormous. It’s too big to hold all at once, so I do the thing I always do with things too big to hold — I set it down, gently, and reach for the thing I can do.“Then I should start reading,” I say. “Now. Today. While we wait for Friday.” I look up at him. “And while I’m in there, I might find something for Rayana. Something to buy her time. That’s worth a hundred dead birds, Knox. That’s a thing I can do with my hands and a book, not with the wolf. Let me try.”Something in his face softens, the worry losing to the part of him that, despite everything, can’t help but be a little proud of me.“Go read your terrifying books,” he says. “But two things.” He holds up a finger. “Avoid Hale. I’m going to look into the Celeste’s-room business properly, but until I do, you stay clear of her.”“Hale is unavoidable,” I point out. “She’s everywhere. She was outside my door yesterday morning with her precious muffins.”“Fair.” He concedes it with a tilt of his he
EMBER’S POVKnox sits up properly now, and there’s something almost careful in how he does it, the way you move when you’re about to set something down that might break.“We found Devika.” He says it plain. “Your mother.”The whole world tilts. I’m gripping his arm before I’ve decided to.“You — what? Where? How? Is she—”“Found is a strong word.” He covers my hand with his, steadying. “We haven’t got her. But Nathaniel’s been working it since before we left Alaska, and he turned up a pattern. There’s a place she’s been circling. A casino, in the next city over, big and ugly and exactly the kind of golden trap a woman like your mother can’t stay away from. She’s there every Friday, regular as a tide.” His jaw sets. “I intend to go and collect her.”“I’m coming.”“And that—” Knox drops his head back with a groan, “—is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you yet.”“Knox.”“There’s a plan, Ember. Nathaniel has eyes on the place; he’s got the patterns; we don’t just walk in the front door a
EMBER’S POV“You’re insane,” I manage, wiping my eyes.“For you. Comprehensively.” He pulls me back in against his chest, and I go, easy this time, no bracing left in me. “I love you. I should have said it before the candles and the heart attack. I love you, Ember. More than my own life. More than my own sense, clearly.”“I love you too.” I tuck my face into his neck. Then, because I can’t help it: “A little less than you love me, though.”He goes still. “Excuse me?”“It’s just math. You said more than your own life. I love you a normal, healthy amount. Possibly slightly above average.”“Slightly above—” He pulls back, genuinely affronted, and it’s so funny on his terrifying face that I start laughing again. “I orchestrated a heart attack and a hundred candles and got Marjorie to lie to your face, and you love me a slightly above average amount?”“The candles were nice,” I concede. “I’ll bump it to moderately above average.”“Moderately.”“Don’t push it or I’ll go back to slightly.”H
EMBER’S POVHe tilts my chin up.“So here’s what’s going to happen. You have my entire library at your disposal. Every record this family has ever kept. You have my best teachers, the finest in my territory, and you’ll have them the second you want them. And physical strength? Easy.” His eyes gleam. “I’ll teach you combat myself. Personally. Every dirty trick I know, every way there is to win a fight you have no business winning, because Goddess knows I’ve won enough of those. I will pour everything I am into making you exactly as dangerous as you already secretly are.”He shakes his head, and there’s something almost fond in it, almost awed.“Because Sapphire might come from a long line of warriors. Fine. Good for her. But I have never in my entire life met a woman as stubborn, as unrelenting, as flatly impossible to kill as the one in my arms right now. She thinks you’re not worthy of her? She’s got it backwards. She has no idea what she’s been put inside of.”His words strike a mat
EMBER’S POVMy mother stands in the doorway, draped in designer everything as always.A silk dress in garish emerald that probably cost more than she can actually afford. Jewelry dripping from her neck, her ears, her wrists, every piece fighting for attention.Hair and makeup done to perfection, no
EMBER’S POVThe mattress dips sometime after three in the morning.I’ve been lying here for hours, staring at the ceiling, my mind running circles around the photo of Queenie still burning a hole in my phone.Sleep feels impossible. Every time I close my eyes, I see Rayana bleeding on the marble. S
EMBER’S POVI nod desperately.“Liar.” He pumps into me slowly, his thumb circling my clit with featherlight pressure that’s nowhere near enough. “You’re never quiet. It’s one of my favorite things about you.”“For goddess sake, Knox, please—”“Please what?” He’s smiling now, the bastard. Enjoying
EMBER’S POVI stare down at Knox on his knees, my pulse slamming so hard I can feel it between my legs. He's grinning up at me like a wolf who's already tasted blood, gold eyes glowing, fangs just barely peeking past his lip.I fold my arms, pretending my thighs aren't already trembling."What do I







