Shay gripped the edge of the table, nails digging into the silvered wood as she fought to stay seated, to avoid drawing attention. Amir’s scent bore no hint of a lie, though it was rich with fear. Her whips lashed the air behind her. Lady Montagal glanced briefly her way. Shay forced her new appendages still.

“Raj?” She hissed. “My brother? He’s—”

But Amir had already turned to serve the woman beside her, and there was no way she could continue speaking to him without drawing attention. She had to let him go, to just sit there as her veins burned and her mind burst with furious questions she couldn’t ask.

She took hold of her goblet in a vice-grip, feeling the softness of the metal, knowing she could snap it if she wanted to. Snap it like she could snap the necks of every single person who’d lied to her about her brother. Who’d done…whatever they’d done to him.

Perhaps the same thing they’ve done to Amir.

She’d barely thought of her brother at all since her transformation, and when she had, it’d been to marvel at how strange it was to be free of the weight of guilt she’d carried with her every single day since the doctors said he’d died. Strange not to miss him every waking minute of every day. Strange not to wallow in endless regrets and what-ifs. But now, learning that he may be alive after all, that she’d been lied to in the most egregious of ways, she was not free of fury. And that small but tenacious connection to her old self—that strange sense of loyalty—fueled the flames.

Even knowing she’d have to forge it in blood herself, she would have justice. But first, information. She’d learn everything she could of what had truly befallen Raj. Where he’d been taken, what had been done to him, who’d done it. And then she would act. Get Raj somewhere safe…and then get far away from him. Destroy the people who’d hurt him, who’d lie to her, and every other noble she could get her claws on while she was at it. But that meant she’d have to make it through the night, that she couldn’t take the sorts of immediate risks she’d planned to. Which meant postponing her ambitions of devouring her spouse.

More Mistmarked poured in with platters of food, and the scent of cooked human flesh filled the dining hall. Shay’s attention was forcefully averted. The meat was dead, but fresh. Prepared, judging by the rich and varied aroma of it all, not only with an array of spices but with fresh herbs, too. Her mouth watered. The drink-bearers trailed toward the exit, Amir among them, and Shay’s gaze snapped from the procession of food servers to follow him.

I’ll find him later.

Lady Montagal turned to her then, making some small talk that Shay barely registered even as she forced a measured response. Hunger and her newborn thirst for revenge ravaged her from within, tempered only by the knowledge that, if she didn’t control herself, she’d never truly satisfy either.

Soon, Amir had gone, and other Mistmarked crowded her view as each served her a portion from their platter. The first course, beginning with a “salad” of sorts—a special treat she hadn’t expected. Raw meat, finely chopped and mixed with a tangy-sweet sauce, aromatic herbs and green onions. According to Xavir, Saints could safely ingest things like spices and herbs as well as some grains, fruits and vegetables…so long as they were accompanied by human flesh.

Unable to stop herself, Shay dug in immediately. There was another sort of pleasure entirely in eating the meat prepared and served with other ingredients. It satisfied one facet of her hunger, but left the others all the more wanting.

Her rage didn’t cool, and the burning need for violent justice remained forefront in her mind. But the baser instincts of her body had seized control of her actions, and she readily devoured one dish after the other. First the fleshy salad, and then a stew with a broth of blood, wine and bone. Stuffed dates wrapped in thin strips of belly meat. Fried bread with curry thick in chestnuts, cheek meat and brains.

And then the main course. A parade of whole roast men, their crisped skin rubbed in butter and salt and sage, their headless necks overflowing with roasted fruits. Human cornucopias.

The general chatter continued, accompanied by the sounds of clinking cutlery as dinner was served. Crows and ravens flew down at will from their perches high overhead to snatch what they wanted from platters set out especially for them. The music quieted slightly to accommodate the excess noise while Saints socialized between mouthfuls of human flesh.

Shay wrestled for control of herself in an attempt to slow her eating. Better to savor the food, make it last, because when it was gone there would be little to distract her from Amir’s revelation, from her new and ravaging thirst. Regardless she ate her way through the first and second courses entirely too fast. Thankfully, dessert arrived shortly after. Bone marrow layered over a lightly sweet custard, served with a sprig of candied mint and a glaze of burnt sugar at the top.

It was all delicious to the last bite, but none of it slaked her desire to hunt. To crack open the bones of a fresh kill and eat the marrow fresh from the source. She couldn’t understand how the other Saints bore it, never eating in the natural way. Unless they do, in secret, and all that talk of being “civilized” is just more of their usual lies.

That would make sense. So then how long did they intend to keep her outside of the secret? Until they came to trust her? Or was she alone meant to suffer indefinitely?

She ran over plans in her head as she waited for whatever the next act of her forced wedding entailed and tried not to vibrate visibly in her seat. A number of Mistmarked servants—not including Amir—returned to clear away the majority of their dishes, while others refilled their goblets. Shay hoped they’d bring in coffee next. She’d never had any herself before, but she’d smelled it in the kitchens in the morning and sometimes in the evenings, when Saints took it after a heavy dinner. Besides just wanting to try some, it would signal the end of the meal, and hopefully the end of this whole tortuous string of ceremonies.

But when the grand doors opened again, there was no sign of coffee platters, pitchers or cups. Instead, only two Mistmarked entered. One out of sight, identifiable only by his scent, his heat, and his energy. Hidden as he pushed the other ahead of him on a tall wheeled platform. The other, unconscious, hung in the grip of an ornate silver effigy of Saint Marta—metallic arms spread wide, her larger-than-life hands wrapped about each of the real woman’s delicate wrists.

Lady Montagal turned to Shay and smiled.

“Stand, dear, and go to them.” The older Saint gestured to Micah, now risen from their seat and striding toward her, a hand extended in Shay’s direction.

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Suppressing a growl, Shay did as she was told—even taking the seraph’s proffered hand in hers. They lead her, with the slowed pace of great circumstance, to the Mistmarked woman, and then up the small set of stairs at the side of her wheeled platform. There, they stopped—standing before the metallic Saint Marta and her living offering.

Mistmarked didn’t have the same visible auras of color which Saints possessed, but they did have a field of emanating energy, a sort of raw essence of life which varied in intensity by individual. Something she had only come to perceive recently, now that her whips had grown in.

This one’s life essence was especially potent, a pattern she was noticing in those heavily Marked. Shay peered up at the woman in awe. Where light shone across the pearly, armor-like plates of her shoulders, arms and legs, it revealed a whirling spectrum of pastel colors. Antler-like protrusions of the same bony, iridescent material grew from her brow. Her pale hair was swept back behind her shoulders, and she wore a simple, sleeveless dress that was open to either side of her waist, exposing soft, vulnerable skin.

“A gift from Lord and Lady Evinstrad,” said Micah, just visible in the periphery of Shay’s vision. “We are to drink together.”

“Only drink?” wondered Shay, still staring up at their “gift.”

“To do anything otherwise would be a waste,” replied her spouse.

“What will it do to me?” she pressed.

Micah flashed their teeth in a smile. And then they were bent at the woman’s side, teeth sunk into her skin, their eyes flickering closed with pleasure.

With the weight of a hundred pairs of eyes upon her and little other choice, Shay followed. She positioned herself at the woman’s other side and bit in, her whips wrapping around the Mistmarked of their own accord. She did nothing to stop them. It felt too beautiful, too right—the sensation of the woman’s life essence pulsing into and through her via the amplified sensory perception of the whips, even before she drew so much of a drop of her blood. And when the blood did hit her lips, it tasted…green. Reminded her of the verdant scent of life which sometimes blew up from down below. Of the teeming forests she’d never seen, may never see.

It didn’t satisfy her hunger for fresh human or ghoul flesh any more than wine satisfied a thirst for water. But it made her feel vibrantly, almost painfully alive. Her veins sang with energy, and she felt as though she could run from one end of the island to the other three times over without tiring. Like she could punch her way through a mountain. Or three.

She drank with gusto—forgetting, for the moment, almost everything else. The Mistmarked didn’t make a sound, didn’t so much as twitch as they drank from her. But her heart beat on, pumping the drug of her blood into their mouths until Micah pulled back, taking hold of Shay’s arm to draw her away, too. Reluctantly she allowed it, and the moment after they stepped off the platform, the attendant Mistmarked ascended. Opening and withdrawing a small jar from a pouch at his waist, he began to smear it over the woman’s wounds.

There was a great clamor as the other guests rose, and for a moment Shay thought they meant to drink from the woman too. But then the Evinstrads and Montagal parents came forward, and Micah linked their arm in hers. The guards at the doors opened them as, drawn once again into a procession. The corvids stayed behind, descending upon the tables with their scraps of meat and bone. Shay marched along with the others out of the dining hall and down another long corridor, up a stair, down another corridor, and on.

As they traversed what seemed the whole of the castle, Shay’s curiosity swept her up. Her thirst for new information—sensory and otherwise—served as another welcome distraction. She drank in the sights, committing the floorplan to memory even as fury gnawed her insides, growing ever fiercer.

On the sixth floor of the north tower, they came to a halt. Lord and Lady Evinstrad and the Montagals all stepped aside as the pair of posted guards pulled open a set of grand double-doors. Shay peered past them and into the chamber beyond. A bedroom. The largest she’d ever seen. Larger than the main floor of her childhood home. Micah drew her past the outer guards and through the doors, where another set of guards stood vigil.

Shay scanned the room, taking in an immense bed partially enclosed by green curtains, multiple seating and dining areas, and gilt-framed oil paintings of lush landscapes and animals. One door at the chamber’s other side clearly led to a balcony, but there were three more.

“Our flesh is Their grail!” roared Lord Evinstrad, his deep voice barreling over all others. The rest echoed his words as one, with vigor.

”Our flesh is Their grail!”

”Our blood is Their wine!”

“Our blood is Their wine!”

Her spouse loosened their hold on her arm, and Shay spun on her heel to face the crowd in the hall. But the door was already shutting, and then very quickly closed. The latch twitched. In an instant Shay was there, the guards doing nothing to stop her as she snatched hold of it. Not again. Not again.

“It’s locked,” said Micah, watching impassively from a few paces away, shrugging out of their cloak.

“Why?” snarled Shay. The guards bristled. She cleared her throat.

“Tradition,” drawled Micah. “They’ve all gone off to dance now, but we’re meant to spend all our energy consummating.”

Shay laughed so hard she choked.

“Yes, I’ve lost interest in sex since the change, too. We all do. Along with a number of other human qualities.”

“As if I would want you even if I hadn’t been changed.”

“Theoretically, I could order you to, and you’d have no choice,” said Micah, thoughtfully. “But I’ve no interest in that. Even Mistmarked blood won’t change that, once it kicks in.”

Straightening, Shay inhaled sharply. Narrowed her eyes.

“What happens when it kicks in?”

Micah chuckled. “There’s quite a lot to be gained from drinking the blood of the Marked or eating their flesh, actually—more from some than others. But there’s one thing that’s the same every time. Are you feeling it yet?”

Shay just glared at them, waiting.

“The temporary return of some of our human faculties. Emotions and instincts that are lost in the change.” Their lips quirked up to one side. “Of course, they don’t feel exactly the same as before. Everything is intensified for us, as you’ve surely gathered. But I never was one to be led by my lust. Were you?”

The blood drained from Shay’s face. It was all she could do to hold her rage in check as it was. But to regain her human emotions, and intensified? Her love for her brother, her guilt, her death wish, the full scope of her hatred for nobles…after what she’d just learned?

True, her old self had been fearful and timid in ways she no longer was, but it had never mattered when it came to Raj. She’d demand to know at once who’d taken her brother from her and why. And when the answers were refused her, and when all the guilt and shame of her latest sins came down on her, she’d rampage. Already empowered by her Sainthood, by the blood of that woman…there was no end to the carnage she might cause before the others took her down. She’d never find out what had really happened, never find Raj, and most likely never properly avenge him.

Nothing—no plans, no fear, no sense of practicality—would have stopped her from taking immediate action. Nothing, of course, aside from the order of her oath-keeper…if what the Saints taught was true. But she didn’t want it to be. Wasn’t ready to find out.

“Fuck,” said Shay.