He fiddled with the cuff on his wrist, pushing it around in circles. I wondered about his other uncuffed wrist. Did the leaders at the Mantle not know he could override one cuff? I wouldn't be the one to tell them.

After a few more seconds, I probed gently, "Is it because you aren't taking enough lifeforce? Or is this cuff sucking your lifeforce away?"

His tongue played against his teeth, a quiet wet sound that seemed to echo through the chamber. "No, neither. I only need extra lifeforce to use my powers. And when I'm wearing one cuff, it just dulls sensations."

I wanted to address the first part, but I found myself caught up on the last thing he said. "The cuff dulls sensations?"

"It's like wearing earplugs, but for all senses. I experience everything less intensely, so it's easier to control myself."

"Wait, just a few minutes ago when I was... you could barely feel it?"

His eyebrows shot up. "I think you could tell I could feel it."

"Well, yes. But you could feel it less?"

"Plenty to push me over the edge. You don't know how enticing you are, Remgar. Without the cuff, I would have lost all ability to reason."

Just the thought made my heart thump a little faster. "I'd like to see that."

He clucked his tongue. "No, you wouldn't. I would have killed you."

I wasn't convinced. I wanted to make love to the real Isalio, not a restrained half-muted version of him. But that was a topic for a later time; right now, I needed to prioritize a more important question.

"So if it's not the cuff, what's draining your lifeforce? Are you losing that much lifeforce from fighting? Or from controlling the Morgabeast?"

"I don't want to talk about this."

"Isa, please. What if we were talking about me right now? Wouldn't you want to know?"

His brow furrowed, but after a few seconds of silence, he blew out a sigh. "Fighting doesn't require too much lifeforce. Controlling the Morgabeast takes more, but even that was fine, until..." His fingers traced with the loop of his drawstring. "Over the last couple of months, the Morgabeast has started stealing my lifeforce."

Nausea swelled in my gut, cold and hard as though I had swallowed a stone. "I thought beasts gave lifeforce to their Demons, not took it away."

"Yeah, well, Demons are supposed to be able to control their beasts too, not the other way around."

I had known the situation was bad, but this was even worse than I had imagined. "The Morgabeast has control over you?"

His eyes remained on the string of his pants. "I don't think it can control me, but I can hear it in my head, urging me to do things. And each time I ignore it, it takes more lifeforce."

"Fuck. Isa, that's..." I realized I was clamping his shoulder too hard, and I forced myself to relax my hands. "Is it trying to kill you?"

"I think it... needs me, for now. Or at least, it's hoping to use me instead of destroying me. But the more I feel its desires, the more I see that I'm... I'm not in its final plans. It will kill me when it's ready."

Fear constricted my throat, tightening my voice. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"I didn't plan to ever tell anyone. If anyone found out I was battling my own beast, they might have decided that was the perfect opportunity to overpower me. One more pressure could turn the balance in the Morgabeast's favor."

"But was there no one you could tell? What about the Duchess?"

His lips pressed into a tight bloodless line. I realized that while the Duchess still clearly cared about her nephew's welfare, even she believed he had transformed into something unrecognizable from the boy she had loved. He was a nice boy, but that doesn't mean he's a nice man. If he had told, would she have believed him?

Drawing a breath, I changed course. "When the Morgabeast speaks to you, what does it ask you to do?"

"Earlier, it mostly wanted me to do the same things Danif asked me to do. Though the Morgabeast prefers killing over capturing, so it was always hard to force it to leave some villagers alive."

He said it emotionlessly, but I knew better. He did care—I caught glimpses of that now and then. But it had been going on too long and exhausted him too much, and he had too much practice at hiding emotion.

I swallowed to wet my dry throat. "You say that was earlier; what about now? What is the beast telling you right now?"

He bit his lip. "Well, actually... it hasn't spoken to me much recently."

That was the first thing he had said that sounded like good news. "Then it must be getting weaker."

"No, it is getting stronger, but in these last few weeks..." His eyes flitted to mine once more, then away again. "Let's talk about this later. I'm too tired and too sober for this."

He did seem tired—his eyes had become puffy and red, and his muscles were loosening—and I was tired, too. But if I left this question unanswered, it would fester beneath my skin all night.

I grabbed his hand. "Isa, if we stop the conversation right now, I won't be able to sleep."

"But if I tell you, you might... I don't want you to feel like you have to..."

"Feel like I have to, what? Isa, please, just say it."

He scrubbed a hand over his face and groaned. "Fine. It just helps, alright. You help. I can't figure out why, but... the beast is quiet when I'm with you."

My breath left my lungs in whoosh. Whatever I was expecting him to say, it wasn't that.

He breathed an awkward half-laugh and pulled his hand from mine, intertwining his fingers on his lap. "That's not why I chose to join you, though. I'm fine without you, so if you want to leave, it's no problem."

"Ah, so that's why you didn't want to tell me." I laid my hand over his knuckles. "Isa, it's ok to need someone."

"But I don't—"

"I need you, too."

He froze for several silent seconds before turning slightly to peer at my face. I waited for a denial, or maybe a taunt.

Instead, he said, "Oh."

Then he turned over one hand to thread his fingers with mine, and his shoulder dropped with a long exhale.

I wanted to ask a dozen other questions, like how much longer he could survive the Morgabeast stealing his lifeforce, and if taking my lifeforce could buy him time. But exhaustion now weighed me down, and the questions slipped away like sinking sand.

So I nodded at the mattress. "Let's sleep."

He hesitated. "I'm sure you have more important things to do than stay here for me. I'm not that cold, and they left blankets." This was much different from his earlier harsh dismissal; this was the obligatory 'I couldn't possibly accept that' of someone offered a gift they desperately wanted.

"Isalio, I'm too exhausted to do any more work, and I'm too suspicious of this place to leave you alone. Just let me sleep beside you, please."

He fought a half-smile. "Well, when you put it like that... ok, I'll allow it."

A minute later, we lay side-by-side. Though the lumps of the mattress propped me up unevenly, I was surprised by how good it felt to release everything—and even better for the presence of the man at my side. I half-turned toward him, and he replicated my action, so our legs tangled together and our hands rested on each other's arms or torsos.

As his chest rose and fell more slowly beneath my hand and his breath barely brushed my face, I slept off into dark beautiful warmth. Detachedly, I marveled at how comforting his presence was; at how perfectly his body fit with mine. He had once starred in my nightmares, and now he was the only one who could lull me into sweet dreams.

I felt a tinge of guilt at that, or at least guilt at not feeling guiltier than I did. He had killed my mother and Hefgar... but I had repeated that to myself so many times, and I just couldn't summon the hatred I had once felt. The nightmare that had covered me in cold sweat at night had been Isalio's nightmare, too. We had been victims of the same circumstances and were now haunted by the same beasts.

"Isa?" I whispered.

His eyes remained closed, eyelids relaxed, chest rising and falling evenly. Good—that was what I wanted. I wanted him to rest well, and I wasn't ready to hear his rebuttals against the vow I needed to say aloud. Because I didn't really have a plan yet; I only had burning determination.

"The Morgabeast won't destroy you," I said, "Because I'm going to destroy it, first."

***

I awoke to the boulder rolling. As light flooded the chamber, adrenaline sliced through my drowsiness, and I jumped to my feet. I was no longer afraid of being discovered sleeping with Isalio—Fraschkit and my father already knew, and theirs were the opinions I cared about most—but I did fear that our hosts at the Mantle could turn hostile at any moment.

Kardki stood beside Bakvar in the entry, face lined with tension. "Brother Remgar, it's your father. Something happened to him."

Panic compressed my lungs, as sudden and chilling as dropping into ice water. "What do you mean? Is he..." I couldn't say the last word aloud. I'd already lost my mother and Hefgar; I couldn't lose him, too.

She shook her head. "He's ok, or at least he's... he's still breathing. But he won't wake up."

I pressed my fingers to my temple, fighting a dizzying spiral of questions. "But how? What happened?"

"He was fine, and then he—wasn't." She drew a shaky breath. "I was right there with him when it happened. He started shaking, convulsing... having a seizure, I guess. He was saying something, but I couldn't understand him, except—well, it sounded like he was saying your name. I think he needs you, Brother."

I wanted to rush to my father's side and hold him in my arms the way he held me when I was little, but was that actually what he wanted? My throat tightened painfully as I remembered his last words to me. I am finished here. There is nothing more to be said.

"He doesn't need me," I said. "If I go to him now, it'll just upset him more."

Isalio's hand touched my arm. In the shock of the moment, I hadn't noticed he had arisen, but he now stood beside me, black hair disheveled and eyes wide.

"Remgar, you need to go to him," he murmured. "And you want to go to him. I know you do."

I swallowed over the hard lump in my throat. "It doesn't matter what I want. He made it clear he doesn't want to see me anymore."

"Kardki says he was saying your name."

Kardki had taken a step back when Isalio spoke, not out of fear of Isalio but out of respect for me—or out of realizing that Isalio stood a better chance at persuading me than she did. She now tipped her head at Bakvar, who nodded and strode off down the corridor. I turned back to Isalio.

"Maybe he said my name because thinking of me caused his seizure."

He furrowed his brow. "Or maybe he said it because he loves you."

The lump in my throat swelled bigger, and I blinked back tears. How badly I wanted to believe that. Once upon a time, I had been certain of my father's love for me, but that time was long gone. Now I could only see the disgust twisting his face. You're no Guardian.

"He used to love me," I said, "But that ended fourteen years ago."

Isalio shook his head. "He went after you when I brought you to the palace, even though he knew he stood no chance."

"Well, that was before he knew how I..." I hesitated. My father had said, you slept with him? But I knew he feared something far worse, something I wasn't even willing to admit to myself yet. "He thought I was being tortured. Now that he knows you kept me safe, he's just ashamed. He wishes I died in my brother's place."

"He doesn't wish you did, but I think he wishes he could. And I think he would die for you without giving it a second thought."

I clucked my tongue, wanting to tell him that he didn't understand my father's feelings. And yet... yet even after I had defended Isalio at the trial, my father had stormed into the cell planning to save me. He had thrown the Lord of the Night up against the wall as though his power were as infinite as it had felt when I was small; as though he were still a young dad defending his little boy.

For a second, I was eight years old again, wrapped in his embrace, moaning and clutching my twisted ankle. The pain had felt relentless and overwhelming—yet his embrace had outlasted and overpowered it. 'You're good, Remgar. You'll be fine.'

I didn't know if he still loved me, but he certainly had, and... and despite the years of disappointment and the harsh words we had exchanged, I still loved him. The last time I had spoken to him, I had blamed him for the death of the wife and son he adored more than anything in the world. I couldn't let that be our last exchange.

Sickness rose up in my gut, thick and acidic. No, not last exchange. He wouldn't die. He couldn't. But maybe it would help him to feel the presence of someone who loved him, whether or not he still loved me.

I drew a breath and nodded at Kardki. "Bring me to him, please."