Chapter Text
I wake to the press of cold steel against my throat.
The blade is small—a knife meant for slicing fruit or opening letters—but the edge is sharp enough that I feel my skin part beneath it, a sting like the first bite of winter. My heart seizes, then settles into something hard and calm. Fear is a luxury. Fear gets you killed.
"Don't scream."
I know the voice. I've heard it hiss insults across the Great Hall, seen it twist into a smile as I stumbled through a dance I was never taught. Valerian.
He is crouched on my bed, one knee pressed into the mattress beside my hip, the other foot on the floor. Above me, haloed by moonlight, his face is all sharp angles and shadows. His silver hair falls forward, brushing my cheek. He smells like wine and winter air and something else—something green and growing, like crushed ferns.
I don't scream. I don't move. I barely breathe.
"There's a good little mortal," he murmurs, and the blade presses deeper. A bead of warmth slides down my neck. "You know what I'm here to do, don't you?"
"Kill me," I say. My voice is steady. I am proud of that.
He laughs, soft and mean. "Smart and pretty. What a waste."
His face is very close to mine. In the dark, his eyes are black pools, but I remember they are blue—blue like the sky after a storm, blue like something that should be beautiful. Up close, I can see the faint shimmer of his skin, the way it catches light that isn't there. He is beautiful, the way all faeries are beautiful. It makes what they do to you worse, somehow.
I think about the knife under my pillow. I think about whether I can reach it before he slits my throat. I calculate the angle, the distance, the speed of a faerie's reflexes. The answer is no. Not yet. Not until he's distracted.
"Why?" I ask. It's a stupid question. I know why. Because I'm mortal. Because I exist where I shouldn't. Because Cardan looked at me, and that cannot be allowed.
But Valerian's smile falters. Just for a moment. Just a flicker, there and gone.
"Why do you think?" he says, but the meanness in his voice sounds forced now, like a note played slightly wrong.
"I think you're bored," I say. "I think hurting me is the only interesting thing that's happened to you all week. I think you're pathetic."
The blade bites deeper. I feel more blood, warm and wet, soaking into the collar of my nightgown.
"You think you're clever," he says. "You think because you can read a few books and memorize a few names, you belong here. But you're meat, Jude. You're walking, talking meat, and meat spoils."
"Then spoil me." I look him in the eyes. I don't blink. "Do it. But know that my sister will hear. My sister will come. And she will tell her father, and her father will tell the King, and you'll be explaining to the High King why you murdered a guest in her bed."
He hesitates. I feel it in the way the blade stops pressing, in the way his breath hitches.
"That's what I thought," I whisper.
"Shut up." But his voice cracks on the second word. His free hand comes up, and for a moment I think he's going to hit me. Instead, his fingers curl into the fabric of my nightgown at my shoulder, fisting it, pulling me slightly toward him.
And then his mouth is on mine.
It's not a kiss. Not really. It's too desperate, too wrong. His lips are cold and they taste like wine and something else—something sweet and rotten, like overripe fruit. His teeth scrape my lower lip, and I make a sound, a muffled thing that might be surprise or disgust or fear.
He pulls back as though I've burned him.
For a long moment, we just stare at each other. His chest is heaving. His eyes are wide, and in them I see something I never expected to see on a faerie's face: confusion. Pure, naked confusion, like a child who has done something and doesn't understand why it feels wrong.
"I—" he starts, then stops. His hand is still fisted in my nightgown. The knife is still at my throat, but it's shaking now. Slight tremors, barely there, but I feel them against my skin.
I should be terrified. I should be calculating my next move. Instead, I find myself studying him the way I study all faeries—looking for the wound, the crack in the armor. And I see it. I see it in the way he won't meet my eyes, in the way his jaw is clenched too tight, in the way his whole body is rigid with something that isn't anger.
"I don't—" he tries again, and then his face twists. Not into cruelty. Into something rawer. Something that looks almost like pain.
"You're confused," I say. It's not a question.
His eyes snap to mine, and for one unguarded moment, I see it: the boy beneath the monster. The boy who was probably told, his whole immortal life, that mortals are less than nothing. The boy who was taught to hate and fear and despise, and who now finds himself in a mortal girl's bed with her blood on his knife and her taste on his lips.
"I'm not confused," he snarls, but it's too loud, too fast. A lie. Faeries can't lie. So it must be true to him. He must believe it.
He leans in again. This time I turn my head. His lips brush my jaw, my ear, the wet blood on my neck. He makes a sound—low and rough and miserable—and I feel it vibrate through my skin.
"Stop," I say.
He doesn't stop. His mouth moves lower, to the hollow of my throat, and his free hand—the one not holding the knife—releases my nightgown and slides up, fingers spreading across my collarbone. His touch is cold, but my skin burns where he touches.
"Valerian." I say his name like a weapon. Like a command. "Stop."
He freezes.
For a long moment, neither of us moves. He's half over me, his body warm despite the cold of his skin, his breath coming in short, sharp bursts against my neck. The knife is still at my throat. The blood is still drying on my skin.
Then he pushes away from me so fast he nearly falls off the bed. He stumbles to his feet, backing toward the window, and in the moonlight I can see his face clearly. He looks wrecked. He looks like someone who has just realized the ground beneath him is not solid.
"Tell anyone," he says, and his voice is shaking, "and I'll kill you. I'll kill you slowly. I'll make you beg for death before I'm done."
It's the weakest threat I've ever heard him make.
He climbs through the window and is gone, swallowed by the night, leaving behind only the cold, the blood, and the fading smell of crushed ferns.
I lie there for a long time, staring at the ceiling. My heart is pounding now, finally, now that the danger is past. My neck stings. My lips taste like wine and rot.
I think about the look on his face. The confusion. The hunger. The hatred, so fierce and so fragile.
And I think: That is a boy who is going to get himself killed.
I just never thought it would be by my hand.
---
Later, when I drive a branch of rowan through his heart, I will remember this night. I will remember the weight of his body over mine, the desperation in his kiss, the confusion in his eyes. I will remember that he was not just a monster.
He was a boy who wanted something he was never allowed to want, and he hated me for it.
I will remember, and I will not hesitate.
Because that is the thing about Faerie. Wanting something doesn't make it good. Being confused doesn't make you less dangerous. And a monster, no matter how human their pain, is still a monster in the end.