let him burn. “Nice to see you, too. I’m trapped too, genius. They jailed us, then the Le Tallec runt took her into the castle. The ceremony should begin soon. Within the hour, I’d say.”
Garin groaned and cradled his head in his hands.
She crossed her arms, leering at him. “That’s all I get, then? After all these years, no ‘hey, you look great’?”
“I was hoping to skip the dungeon small talk, but yes, you do, Adelaide. You look rather lovely for your age, in fact.”
Adelaide bristled at the compliment. “And, aren’t you going to ask me how?”
Garin sighed. “I’d love to know your skincare routine. It’s obviously the most pressing matter at hand.” With a grunt of frustration, he slammed his head against the bars with force that would have instantly crushed any human skull.
“I did the Faerie king a favor,” she answered, ignoring his sarcasm and posing deftly with her chin in her palm. “In exchange, he gave me a magical fruit, and with it I wished for every decade in my aging process to match one year’s time. Of course, basic skincare counts. Milk and honey baths, calendula serum, sticking to my marsh and keeping out of the sun…”
“That last one is my secret as well. Works wonders.”
“Does it now?” Adelaide said, twisting her torso to glance back at the brightening window behind her.
Garin’s jaw fell slack, and all traces of mirth instantly vanished.
Serves him right, Adelaide thought grimly. He had absolutely no right to pester her with his senile sarcasm.
He examined the window and then turned to examine his cell. Upon finding no shelter, he whirled back to Adelaide. “Bugger me.”
As if on cue, the first thin beams of sunlight slipped through the narrow window. The line of light illuminated floating dander at the front of Garin’s cell. Adelaide watched with indifference as Garin failed to step back in time.
A spiral of smoke drifted from his exposed knuckles. Releasing a guttural roar, he clutched his hand to his chest and scooted to the back of the cell.
“Fuck,” he mumbled, sucking on a knuckle as if it would heal him faster.
Adelaide suppressed a grin.
“They can’t do this,” he bellowed at the slowly encroaching strip of sunlight. “This is inhumane!”
“Oh? And the things you’ve done to others weren’t?”
“This isn’t the time,” he said, pacing like a caged animal. “Can’t you use your shawl? Cover the window up?”
“This,” she said, holding her arm out, “is silk from an Orb Weaver, dyed with squid ink.”
“What happened to your fox fur?”
Adelaide raised a black brow. “You always loved that piece on me. And off me,” she added sweetly, ignoring his scowl.
“Adelaide,” he snarled.
“Alas, the sun would burn right through this one, I’m afraid. It is much too thin.”
He glared, his lips curled away from his teeth as if he were about to say something cutting. But then, the vampire slumped to the floor against the far wall in defeat. “I’m sorry.”
“What was that? I couldn’t quite hear you.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
She looked up, finally. “Save it, Trevelyan.”
“For everything,” he continued quietly. “For hurting you—”
Her perpetual scowl suddenly did a poor job at concealing her emotion.
“Hurting me? You killed my parents. My sister—” Her voice broke. She stood abruptly, angrily blinking through the beginnings tears that wouldn’t flow and no longer caring about the state of her appearance, nor the shawl hanging half off her shoulders in disarray.
She yearned for this day. Watching the sunlight burn right through him would be a treat.
“I—”
“And don’t you say you didn’t mean to,” she shot back, waves of long-suppressed anger surging in her heaving chest. “Nobody ever means to do anything that dreadful, do they? No one is that evil, and I refuse to believe any creature I once loved was. But it doesn’t erase the fact that it happened. I allowed you into my life at the denial of my parents—yet this happened to them, at your hands.”
Every bone, every aching joint in Adelaide’s body ached to destroy him as she strode toward the gate. She held his desperate gaze steadfast, gripping the bars with her slender fingers. “My family’s demise might have been my own doing, vampire, but it is you who deserves to burn.”
“Adelaide,” he said, shaking his head helplessly, “I have nothing to say to defend myself. That much I know. I made a horrible mistake. You told me to never follow you. I respected your wishes, only hoping we’d eventually cross paths. Now, I wish I’d been brave enough to seek