Page 124 of This Monster of Mine

Watching her shove both the glass and the bottle out of his reach, something extraordinarily playful unfolded on his face. “Drenevan,” he said softly.

She stilled, night concealing her scarlet flush. Blood thrummed in her fingertips. He’d given her his name that very first night too, in the garden folly. By the look in his eyes, he remembered it.

“I couldn’t. It’s strange enough calling you Kadra, when everyone else puts such respect into their Tetrarch’s titles.”

“We’re only people,” he said with a wry smile. “With far too much power.”

Sarai laughed. “I’d drink to that if your wine wasn’t poison.” She tentatively took the hand that wasn’t around her shoulders. He gave her an inquiring look when she squeezed it. “The next time you feel the need to drink, I’ll join you.”

Rough fingers closed over hers. “Why?”

“Because I’d like to think we’re … friends,” she said hoarsely.

“Friends.” He sounded unused to the thought.

“You can’t tell me you’ve never had a friend, Kadra. That’s ridiculous.” For all his cruelty, he was no loner, well loved by much of the public, and respected by his vigiles.

“I have people I speak to.”

Damned man.“To be friends is to not betray each other even when you have the power to. That’s what you’ve been asking of me this whole while, isn’t it? To choose you.”

“Yes,” he said starkly.

At long last, it all made sense, why he’d wanted her on his side, why he’d ordered her to his tower.She’d resided in hell for a long time, but this man had entrenched himself in its frozen depths.

“Then we’re friends,” she vowed.

He smiled softly. “Is that a declaration of allegiance?”

She tsked. “It’s determination to save you from blood poisoning, that’s what. I can’t have you dying when I’ve earned the enmity of half the Tetrarchy. Shield me, damn it.”

With a rough chuckle, Kadra leaned back on the couch, pulling her with him.

“I don’t know if I should thank you or stab you,” she muttered. “But I would’ve made the same decisions even if you weren’t here. Though the consequences would have been much worse if Aelius or Tullus had been my Tetrarch.”

All sardonicism vanished from his eyes. “Don’t thank me, Sarai.”

“Don’t play the monster, Kadra.”

He looked thoughtful. “I’ve never played at it.”

“You’re an infuriating man, Kadra.” She took a deep breath. “But I don’t think you’re an evil one.”

She knew evil. Had seen it in the crevices of many a soul. But it wasn’t the sum of the man holding her, who looked startled by the prospect that hewasn’tevil.

“And when did you decide that?” he asked softly.

Barely a handspan away, his cavernous eyes were even more all-consuming up close, but the perennial cruelty inhabiting them had vanished in favor of unadulterated hunger. Temples tightening, he stared down at her, and she ached to close the distance, to step closer to the abyss.

Her breath hitched. “After Helvus died.”

“The day I became ahavïdsadist.”

“I took issue with how you went about it. Not why you did it. And now … I can’t even bring myself to loathe the former.”

“Why?”

Sarai wet her lips. The answer he sought hovered on her tongue and she would have given it were it not for the grim set of his features. There was hunger there, but heavily walled behind gates he seemed to have no intention of opening.

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