He enjoyed the way she said his name, as if it were an exotic wine with an unexpected bite. For a brief moment the rapidly breaking monster relished the simple elegance of their shared fabrication, this artful dance of words passed back and forth like cards on a table. He opened the game, and she gladly entered as a formidable player; nothing but amusement shimmered in her clear green gaze and nothing more than polite humor manipulated the attractive features of her face. It was clear she stood as Kershov’s equal when it came to donning a façade—in fact, the tundra dragon would go so far as to say this she-wolf savored the mastery she held over herself. As she should: power like that was the mark of a survivor. Power that Ker felt bleeding from his grasp with each passing second. Self-control that had once kept him together, and now stabbed at his insides with the jagged edges of its broken parts. The onxy-and-ivory fae, Madame Alaska, reminded Kershov of everything he’d once been and everything slowly being ripped from his consciousness.

And suddenly he found himself viciously abhorring the velvet cadence of her lyrics.

The violent stab of hatred flared for less than a heartbeat, yet it was strong enough to make the glacial gladiator visibly stiffen as he turned his bottomless glare toward the horizon. He attempted to play off his rigid posture as a reaction against the frigid wind that howled upward from the valley and swooped over the cliff’s edge, sending a shower of snowflakes into the air like ocean waves erupting with spray. “You’re right, Alaska. ‘Home’ is such a trite word. Perhaps ‘warzone’ would be more appropriate? Purgatory? It’s difficult to think of a term to apply to a place that simultaneously fills one with dread and nostalgia.” In his periphery he could make out the charmingly crooked smirk she wore. Even this impish expression was lovely.

“I miss it sometimes.” The alabaster gangster hadn’t meant to say it out loud; the words were as soft as frost and just as chilled when they leaked from between his exposed fangs. Then, realizing that they’d escaped, he forced himself to look at Alaska again to better gauge her reaction. Would she nod her head in agreement? Or would that pretty grin tilting half her visage wane, private bitterness for the world they’d shared slipping back into her mind? It was a stupid thing to obsess over, but then again Kershov was in a mindset where even silly things snagged in his brain like shards of glass in a net. If he’d done anything to shift the balance in her favor, to open a chasm between them and lose the magic of their banter, he feared he’d crumble. He couldn’t afford to relinquish even a shred of his make-believe power. “Things are simpler when everything is life or death . . .” His lonesome pitch-glass window narrowed, slicing toward the fae like a scalpel. “. . . or black and white.”

Another shrieking gale whipped ferociously up the cliff and poured crystals of ice into the air around them. For a moment Alaska and her clean jade optics were obscured by swirling white—but by the time the wind had settled back into a steady whimper, sounding so much like distant weeping, Kershov had strode another body length closer and now faced the czarina head-on. He was jealous of her. That explained the intense loathing that had struck him a minute before. Alaska was composed and cool and magnificent. At any other point in his life Kershov might have pursued her. But in her beautifully frozen presence he felt his wasting disease all the more acutely, all the more shamefully, and the demon caged within him snarled as it sighted more prey. If Kershov couldn’t have Alaska in her wholeness—if his seething deficits and insanity pushed them too far apart—then he resolved to own her in another way. He could not abide a creature so similar to himself, and still so flawlessly serene. He wanted her poise. Her ice.

Her blood.

Kershov’s secret monster now wore him like a skin, flexing its talons in his limbs while it smiled gently with his face. “Sorry about this,” the serpent purred—and he threw himself at her, jaws wide to catch her scruff and send them both tumbling over the lip of the precipice.