Seraphina Nightshade had not spoken to a living soul in eleven years. She preferred it that way. In her stone manor above the village, she wore silk and coldness like armor. She told herself she wanted nothing. But every night she left bread on the sill for the fox that crept from the woods, and she waited for it the way others waited for a lover. Two thousand years had taught her one lesson: warmth invited grief. So she hid hers deep, where no mortal could ever find it. Tonight the fox did not come. A groan came instead. Seraphina found the man collapsed against her garden wall. He wore battered armor and a torn red surcoat marked with a faded cross. Blood soaked the cloth wound around his hand. A knight, far from any road that led here. His eyes opened, dark and steady, and fixed on her pale hair and amber eyes without flinching. "You'll want to run," she said. "Most do." "Can't," he said. "Leg's ruined. I'm Aldric Thornfield. And you're not what frightens me tonight." He nodded at the tree line. "They will be here by dawn." She should have left him. A wounded stranger meant questions, attachment, the slow ache of caring. She looked at the woods, then at his gray face. Her hands moved before her mind agreed. She carried him inside. He weighed nothing to her, though she pretended to strain, so he would not fear what she was. In her kitchen she cut the ruined bandage away. The wound was deep and hot with infection. "You keep a plant for this," he said, nodding at the aloe on her windowsill. "For burns," she admitted. "I did not think anyone would see it." She broke a thick leaf and pressed the cool gel to his hand. He watched her work, not the fangs she kept hidden, not the pallor of her skin. He watched her fingers, which were careful and gentle and betrayed her. "You're kind," Aldric said. "I am not." She wrapped the wound tight. "I am bored." He smiled through the pain. "Liar." The word struck harder than any blade. No one had called her that in a thousand years, because no one had looked close enough to catch her in it. She set down the cloth. Her hands were shaking. By dawn his fever broke. He slept in her guest bed, breathing slow and safe, the first mortal to sleep beneath her roof since she bought the manor. Seraphina sat by the window and did not sleep at all. She had let someone in. Now she could not unlet him. Outside, the fox returned to the empty sill and found no bread. She had forgotten it, for the first time in eleven years, because she had been busy keeping a man alive who had already seen straight through her.