The cool night air hit my face like a benediction, washing away the garage's trapped heat and the lingering tension of the past hour. I breathed it in—exhaust fumes from the distant street, wet asphalt from a storm that had passed hours ago, the faint green smell of the garden Kaelen kept behind the workshop. Freedom, almost. The first step toward something that felt like forward motion.
My boot was already lifting, the gravel crunching under my weight, when fingers closed around my wrist.
Not tight. Not desperate. But firm enough to stop me mid-stride, the touch warm and deliberate, a contrast to the night air. I froze, my heart lurching into my throat before my brain caught up.
Dorian.
"One thing before we go." His voice had changed. The lazy drawl was gone, replaced by something quieter, more serious. The kind of tone that made you listen even when every instinct told you not to trust the man wearing it.
I turned, and found him closer than I'd expected. The garage's dim bulb caught the honey-amber of his eyes, made them glow like embers in low light. His hand was still wrapped around my wrist, and I could feel the warmth of his skin against mine, the faint callus at his thumb's base.
"What?" The word came out sharper than I meant, but I didn't soften it.
"Your blood." He said it like it was the most natural request in the world. "A single drop. I need to know what we're walking into."
Behind me, Sera's voice cut through the night like a blade. "Absolutely not."
Her hand landed on my shoulder, and I felt her step up beside me, her body a wall of tension and suspicion. "You don't get to show up out of nowhere, drop a bomb about assassins and courts, and then ask for her blood. That's not how this works."
Dorian didn't look at her. His amber eyes stayed fixed on mine, unblinking, as if she hadn't spoken at all. "The wards on the Whispering Wood will read you as Thornheart, or they'll read you as prey." His thumb moved, a slow, almost absent stroke across my pulse point. "I can't guide you through if I don't know which scent you carry."
"Then we find another guide," Sera snapped.
"There is no other guide." Kaelen's voice rumbled from the threshold, and I looked past Dorian to find the satyr standing in the garage doorway, his broad silhouette blocking the light. His horns caught the glow, the curves like ancient oak branches, and his hazel eyes were unreadable. "The Whispering Wood doesn't welcome strangers. It eats them."
My stomach tightened.
"Kaelen—" Sera started.
"He's not wrong." Kaelen's voice was heavy, reluctant. "The wood has its own will. Its own memory. If you carry Thornheart blood, the paths will open for you. If you don't..." He trailed off, and the silence said everything.
Dorian's hand was still warm around my wrist. I could feel my pulse beating against his fingers, and I wondered if he could feel it too—the rabbit-quick rhythm of a woman standing at the edge of a decision she couldn't unmake.
"One drop," he said again, his voice soft. "That's all I'm asking. Let me taste what you are before we walk into a forest designed to kill anything that doesn't belong."
"Taste." Sera's voice was acidic. "You just want to taste her."
Dorian's lips curved, a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I won't pretend the prospect isn't... intriguing. But that's not why I'm asking." He finally looked at Sera, and something in his gaze made her hand tighten on my shoulder. "If she's Thornheart enough for the wood to recognize, I need to know before we cross the boundary. If she's been watered down by generations of hiding, I need to know that too. The wood doesn't negotiate. It decides."
I swallowed. The night air felt colder now, or maybe that was just the fear settling into my bones. "What happens if it decides I'm prey?"
Dorian's eyes returned to mine. "Then it kills you."
He said it without flinching, without softening the blow. Just the truth, laid out like a blade on a table.
Sera made a sound like a wounded animal. "We're not doing this. Rowan, we can find another way. There are other fae who know the wood. Other—"
"There aren't." Kaelen's voice cut through her protest like a knife. "I've been alive two centuries, Sera. I know every guide within a hundred miles. The ones who've walked the Whispering Wood and survived are either dead or mad. Dorian is the only one I know of who's done it recently and come back sane."
The admission seemed to cost him something. His jaw was tight, his shoulders set like he was bracing for a blow.
"That's a hell of a recommendation," I muttered.
"It's not a recommendation." Kaelen's hazel eyes met mine. "It's a fact. I don't like him any more than Sera does. But he's right about the wood."
I looked down at Dorian's hand on my wrist. His skin was warm, the touch gentle but unyielding, and I could see the faint silver glint of something in his other hand—a needle, small and slender, its tip catching the garage's dim light like a star.
"You carry that with you?" I asked, my voice flat.
"Always." He didn't smile. "Blood is the most honest thing a person can give me. Lies can live in words, in bodies, in the spaces between breaths. But blood?" His thumb stroked my pulse again, slow and deliberate. "Blood never lies."
I thought about my mother's locket, warm against my chest. About the vision of Aeliana in the moonlit garden, her voice like wind through leaves. About the way my magic had surged when I didn't even know what I was doing, healing Sera from death itself.
Blood never lies.
But what if my blood told him something I didn't want him to know?
"If I say no?" I asked.
Dorian's head tilted, a bird assessing a strange object. "Then I walk away, and you find someone else to guide you through the wood. Good luck."
"And if I say yes?"
His eyes flickered, something unreadable passing through them. "Then I learn what you are. And we move forward from there."
The silence stretched. I could feel Sera's hand trembling on my shoulder, Kaelen's heavy presence at the door, the weight of the locket against my sternum. The night air was cool on my skin, but Dorian's hand was warm, and the needle was shining, and the whole world seemed to hold its breath, waiting for my answer.
"One drop," I said.
Sera made a sound of protest, but I held up my free hand.
"One drop," I repeated, looking at Dorian. "And if you try anything—if you taste more than you need, if you use this against me—I'll burn this entire garage down around us and walk into the Whispering Wood alone."
It was a bluff. I had no idea if I could actually burn anything down. But I said it with enough conviction that even Kaelen's brow lifted.
Dorian's smile widened, a flash of genuine amusement cutting through his composure. "I believe you."
He released my wrist, and I felt the absence of his warmth like a small loss, which I immediately hated myself for. His hand moved to the silver needle, holding it up between us. The tip was impossibly fine, designed for exactly this purpose—a clean, precise prick that would barely be felt.
"Your hand," he said. "The pad of your index finger. It'll heal fastest there."
I hesitated. Then I held out my left hand, palm up, fingers slightly spread.
Dorian took it—gently, as if handling something fragile. His fingers were warm against my palm, his grip careful. The needle hovered, a silver point of light, and I felt my heart hammering in my chest, my breath coming short.
"Relax," he murmured, his voice dropping to something almost intimate. "It's just a prick. You've survived worse tonight."
He wasn't wrong. I'd healed a woman from death. I'd called fire and water and earth and air without meaning to. I'd learned I was a princess hunted by assassins who'd been waiting three centuries to kill me.
A needle prick was nothing.
But it felt like everything.
The needle touched my skin—a brief, sharp sting, nothing more—and I watched a bead of blood bloom on my fingertip, dark and red, catching the light like a tiny ruby.
Dorian's eyes fixed on it. His breathing changed, just slightly, a hitch that I wouldn't have noticed if I wasn't watching him so closely. He lifted my hand, bringing the bead of blood closer to his face, and I felt my pulse skip.
"Don't," Sera warned, her voice tight.
Dorian ignored her. His gaze was locked on the blood, his expression unreadable, and for a long, suspended moment, nothing happened.
Then he touched the bead with the tip of his tongue.
The contact was brief—barely a second—but I felt it like a jolt of electricity, a shiver that ran up my arm and down my spine. His eyes closed, and his hand tightened around mine, and for a moment, his entire body went still, as if he was listening to something only he could hear.
The garage was silent. Even the distant traffic seemed to fade, the world narrowing to the touch of his tongue on my skin, the warmth of his hand around mine, the weight of whatever he was tasting.
Then his eyes opened.
They were different. Brighter. The honey-amber seemed to burn from within, and I saw something cross his face—surprise, maybe, or recognition. He released my hand, stepping back, and the loss of contact left me feeling unmoored, adrift.
"Well?" I asked, my voice steadier than I felt.
Dorian looked at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then he smiled—slow, deliberate, and full of something I couldn't name.
"The wood won't kill you," he said. "You're Thornheart enough. But there's something else..." He tilted his head, studying me like a puzzle he hadn't finished solving. "Something old. Something I haven't tasted in centuries."
"What?" The word came out sharp, demanding.
Dorian shook his head, the smile still playing at his lips. "I don't know yet. But I'd very much like to find out."
He tucked the needle back into his coat pocket, the silver glint disappearing into the dark fabric. Then he turned, his boots crunching on the gravel, and gestured toward the night beyond the garage's threshold.
"Shall we?"
I stood there, my finger still stinging, my heart still racing, and felt the weight of his words settling into my bones.
Something old. Something he hadn't tasted in centuries.
What the hell was I?