The second she winced, he stopped. “Too much?”

“No, it’s wonderful,” she murmured. “Please keep going.”

There were a pair of cracks from his knees as he knelt down, and he was so big that his face was in front of hers even though the rest of him was on the floor. And as he fell into a rhythm of pressure and release, her torso moved back and forth, becoming a wave, as opposed to an intractable I-beam of stress.

It was hard to say when relaxation turned to awareness.

When she started to focus on how close he was to her.

When her eyes, which she hadn’t been aware of closing, slowly reopened.

Sahvage was staring at her face instead of where he was rubbing, and his harsh features were a mask, showing nothing. His stare, though . . . it was full of heat.

I take lives against the will, but never females.

“I think you’re good,” he said as he dropped his magical hands.

In the silence, he didn’t rise to his full height. He didn’t move in to get closer. He just stayed where he was, showing her nothing and telling her everything with his obsidian eyes.

And that was when she realized . . .

“Not black, but blue,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Your eyes.” Her voice got huskier. “I’ve been thinking they were black. They’re a very dark blue.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“How can you not know what color eyes you have?”

“Because I don’t care.”

Their voices were low and soft in the silent cottage, but not because either of them was worried about waking up Tallah. At least that wasn’t on Mae’s mind. No, to her, they had created a separate space from the entire world, and there was no reason to speak any louder than it took to cross the infinitesimal distance between them.

“How can you not care?” she said.

“I don’t like to look at myself.” He reached up and brushed a strand of her hair back. “Mirrors are not my friend.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “I can’t stand my reflection.”

Her hand lifted of its own volition to his face. The second she made contact with his cheek, his breath seemed to catch—which seemed strange given how powerful his body was.

With careful fingers, she traced his jaw . . . and lingered at his chin. “You have a five o’clock shadow.”

“Do I.”

“Do you shave without a mirror?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “How?”

“I do it in the shower.”

Sure as if he had implanted the image in her mind, she pictured him under a cascade of water, his head tilted back, his hair slick from the moisture . . . his naked body the peaks and valleys the spray traveled over. Glistening. Glossy.

As it rushed down his torso toward his—

“Do you ever cut yourself?” she breathed.

“No. I’ve been doing it that way for years.”

She stopped with her hand cupping the side of his face. And as she fell quiet again, he turned to her palm . . . and pressed his lips to her lifeline, to the place she had scored herself with the knife so she could bleed into the silver basin and call the Book that had yet to come.

“I’m sorry,” she said roughly.

“For what.”

“I don’t know.”

Sahvage took her hand down and ran his thumb over the already-closed cut. “I thought you hurt your finger, not here.”

“No, this was from before.”

“You’re not very good with knives, huh.”

“Guess not.”

Lowering his head, she closed her lids as he brushed his lips over the healed slice.

She stayed exactly where she was for what felt like an eternity.

When she opened her eyes, he was staring right at her—and she spoke one and only one word:

“Yes.”

Sometimes you had to go in for a second look.

Or twelve.

Deep in the Black Dagger Brotherhood’s sacred Tomb, Lassiter elbowed his way through big male bodies to get to the coffin’s edge. But it wasn’t like proximity changed what he was seeing.

Which was absolutely fucking nothing . . . except half a dozen old bags of—

“What is that?” someone said.

V outed one of his black daggers and stabbed at the discolored burlap sack. As a white powder was exposed, he speared some onto the blade.

“I’d think twice before throwing that in your nose,” somebody else remarked.

“Oat flour,” Vishous announced as he scented it. “Really fucking old oat flour.”

What the fuck, Lassiter thought.

No skeleton surrounded by spiderwebs. No mummy. No zombie with perpetually rotting flesh and a hankering for fresh meat. Not even a generic set of remains where there was a collapsed death shroud and some dust over a bunch of discombobulated bones.

But no, they had something Fritz could make a bread loaf out of.

And not the weapon Lassiter had brought them here for.

“Someone better tell me what the fuck is happening,” Wrath growled as he yanked the hood of his robe down.

“Nothing is happening.” Lassiter looked over at the King as the other brothers likewise lost the coverings over their heads. “There’s a couple bags of flour in there. Otherwise, the coffin is empty.”

The happy little announcement made the great Blind King register surprise behind his wraparounds. “Sahvage. Is gone.”

“If he was ever in there.” Lassiter backed away and ended up looking at the wall of names. “Maybe we have the wrong coffin.”

Tohr picked up the lid. “His name is carved into the damn thing. Along with all the warnings.”

“So they didn’t kill him,” Wrath said with a shrug. “Those guards must have not killed him, after all.”

“Warlocks aren’t immortal, if that’s what you mean,” Lassiter said absently. “Just because you practice magic doesn’t mean you live forever. It doesn’t work like that.”

“And just because you say you killed someone and nailed ’em into a coffin doesn’t meant that’s what you did,” Wrath shot back. “The glymera lying. Imagine that. That never fucking happens.”

“He must have used the supposed death to his advantage,” Tohr said. “He disappeared and stayed that way because he knew nothing good was going to come from what happened with that aristocrat, at that castle. He would have wanted to spare the Brotherhood the problems—”

Phury spoke up. “For those of us who don’t know the story, can anyone please explain?”

As Lassiter went over and checked out the names that had been inscribed into the marble wall, he listened to Wrath lay out the fact pattern: Sahvage with the hocus-pocus in the Old Country. Local glymera leader gets spooked. A hunt-down that supposedly ended in the slaughter of an aristocrat and his guards, and Sahvage’s own death. The brother put in this coffin along with the Gift of Light.

Except not so much, as it turned out.

“And what is the Gift of Light?” Phury said.

“It’s a source of energy,” Lassiter replied as he found Sahvage’s name in the lineup of inscriptions. “But more than that. It’s incredibly powerful, and if you want to fight evil, it’s really fucking handy.”