Cold throbbed through Frederick's entire body, followed by hardness. When he attempted to move, pain rippled through every muscle and every joint.

"Oh gods, you're alive."

He managed to push himself but was assailed by a sickening sway. Black. So much black. What was this place? "A-Ara, is that you?"

"I'm here," she said. "I'm right next to you. Come to the bars."

Bars?

Darkness.

Stone beneath his hands.

Dungeons.

"Frederick, please," Arabella said. "Reach for my hand so I know you're all right."

No matter how much he blinked, his eyes wouldn't adjust to it. Existing in the middle of nothing. He didn't see her anywhere. Panic crept all over his skin like a furry spider. He couldn't see. He couldn't-

"Frederick, it's all right." Bront? "Move forward if you can so I can see you."

Frederick strained, really strained to see anything of his surroundings. Watery stripes filled his vision, and he urged all the strength in his body to crawl toward them. Arabella uttered a stream of soft words-someone nearby attempting to reassure her.

It took Frederick everything he had. All his will. All his strength. Every muscle he could feel. The stripes got nearer and nearer-almost within his reach. Soft lights flickered through them. Torches.

"He's moving," Bront said.

"He can't get up?" Arabella asked.

"No, I think-I think his bones are broken in a few places."

She moaned. "Just a little closer. I can get you blood if you just near the bars. Gods, just a little closer."

With great effort, Frederick heaved forward, desperate to reach the source of her voice.

"Is it bad?" Arabella. "Is he ..."

"Perhaps I shouldn't say." Bront. "He's been in plenty of tough scrapes, though. He's strong, our Frederick is."

She called for him again, a note of terror in her voice. He'd never heard her say the words Please so many times over and over. "Come closer. Just a little more."

Frederick made it. He threw a hand past the bars and groaned. Within seconds a smaller, softer palm covered his own. Arabella's nails scraped over his fingers and squeezed. Thank the gods he'd crawled to the right side. He didn't think he'd have the strength to move again. "Ara ..."

"It's going to be all right," she said, a tremor in her voice. Why was she so terrified for him still? "I'm going to reach in as far as I can to give you my blood. We have to be quick about it before the guards patrol down this corridor again."

Frederick loathed letting go of her hand for even a second, but he obeyed and brought his face to the gap between the bars, his cheekbones pressing against the metal. Her finger slipped inside between his lips, the taste of her blood dribbling onto his tongue.

He closed his eyes. It felt right to feel her, taste her. Just to be near her. And though he could detect a frailty in her that wasn't usually there, her power still awakened him. With these small drops, he could heal enough, so he forced himself away after several draws of her precious blood.

"Take more," she urged, reaching for him.

He coughed, his throat hurting as though he'd swallowed broken glass. "No. You need it more."

"Take more, damn you."

"You might still be spared when tomorrow is through. At least that's what I hope." Frederick propped himself against the wall that separated his cell from hers, imagining he could feel her back against his. "I only need enough to last a little while so I can speak with you. At least I get this chance to say goodbye."

Her soft sob traveled through the space, splintering his heart. "Don't speak like that. You aren't going to die. I won't let you."

He closed his eyes, grateful that she couldn't see the tears leaking down his face. "I want you to stop trying to save me, Ara. I need you to stop saving me. Stop submitting yourself to the demands of that monster and start trying to figure out a way to save yourself."

"You heard him." Gheorge. Frederick had forgotten that Gheorge's cell was next to Bront's. "Forget this bastard and do whatever the fuck it takes to get out of this, Ara."

"Shut up," she hissed. "You-you shut up, Gheorge. I won't hear it."

"He's a traitorous, disgusting piece of shit who doesn't deserve to-"

"I said shut up." Her order echoed down the corridor, and Gheorge silenced. "I'll fucking kill you for that, Gheorge. I'll wring your neck for that."

Frederick cleared his throat. "He's right. You need to listen to him."

"Stop it-"

"Listen to him, Ara. You should have listened to Vignolo and Dumitri. Don't make the same mistake with Gheorge. He doesn't deserve it."

"Don't advocate for me, you bastard," Gheorge spat.

"Your queen gave you a direct order to shut the fuck up," Bront shouted.

A pause. "So, the usurped heir to the throne is brave enough to speak with me. Think I won't find a way to kill you, cur?"

"I don't really care if you find a way to kill me. It would be a welcome change of scenery to all of this. So find a way to kill me but do it silently so they can speak, you prick."

Gheorge hissed.

Arabella growled, "Not another word, Gheorge, or what I did to Vignolo and Dumitri is about to look exceedingly civilized in comparison."

Silence thickened in the space once more.

Frederick could feel her blood warming his stomach, his bones making soft pops as they slowly straightened. He winced at the more painful aspects of the healing, but he didn't complain. His mind was sharpening enough to speak with her, his vision not too far behind. "I wish we could speak in private, but we don't have that luxury, so I'll just be as honest with you as I can be before I never get the chance again. Did he hurt you very badly?"

"I'm fine," she said, but she didn't sound fine. He could only imagine the hurt twisting on her beautiful face right now. The beautiful face that was probably covered in blood and bruises. Anger burned his body to think of it.

Bront was in the cell directly opposed to his. He lay with his back to him, as if doing his damnedest to give them privacy. "And you, Bront? Are you hurt."

"They leave me alone here, Freddie. I think they've forgotten about me, and for that I can't complain."

Frederick licked his lips, the taste of Arabella faintly spotting his tongue. "This might be the last night I have, so I just want to apologize to all of you. Including you, Gheorge. I'm sorry for betraying you. Even if you don't want to hear it, it doesn't make me any less sorry."

Bront loosed a long sigh. "It's all right, Freddie. I understand why you did it. I pray to the gods you make it out of this alive but if this is the last time I see you, just know I love you, broth-" He squirmed, his voice hoarse when he spoke again. "I hate what you've done but I forgive you anyway. Now, forget we exist and spend the night with her."

Tears stung Frederick's eyes, and he could do nothing but cry in silence. He'd failed these people. He'd failed them all. The lot of them stuck in this nightmare because of him. Arabella's hand was still within his reach, but shame scalded him from taking it, and he clenched and released his fists over and over.

"Was it you?" she breathed. "Did you really help the princess escape."

Pain tingled in his knee, signifying that whatever damage had been done was stitching itself together. "Yes."

"Gods, why. Why did you do it, Frederick, you complete fool. She was a good match. Smart. A beauty. Nearly a queen. What more could you have asked for?"

"You," Frederick said honestly.

Gheorge's curse was followed by a swift bark from Bront for silence.

"I wish you hadn't done this," Arabella said. "You were so close to being free."

He shrugged though she couldn't see it. "It is done, and I'm glad for it. She shouldn't have been forced to marry me. I hope she gets far, far away from this place. Far away from him."

"I want to ask you how you did it, but I can't."

"You already know. I didn't lie. I really did figure out how to reach Yessara." Silence. But Frederick already knew what was speeding through her head. Kill Tessande. Kill. Kill. It almost made him want to laugh. And wanting to laugh made him feel mad.

"You continue to surprise me."

"As do you. Was it true what you said-about the Chalice?"

A beat of silence. "Yes, it's true. I've had it all along. I've possessed it for more than half my life."

A sharp intake of breath sounded from one of the surrounding cells. Frederick thought it might have been Bront, but surely Gheorge heard her, too.

"If it were up to me, then the Chalice would never touch another's lips," she continued. "The thing is so foul and evil. I've tried to destroy it, but I can't. The only thing that appeases it is mischief, so I've allowed the rulers to continue their use of it."

A glow so bright nearly blinded Frederick, as if the moon had appeared in the cell next to him. With it came an unusual sound-almost a hum. Eerie and unnatural. Not of this world.

Bront looked over his shoulder, his eyes wide. "Shit. She really does have it."

The glow vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

"You've had it all along?" Gheorge rasped. "You never told me."

"I never told anyone," Arabella said. "Honestly, I am probably the being who knows the most about the blasted thing, and yet there's so much about it I don't know."

"Why do you have it? How do you have it."

"It's the real reason I was trapped within the borders of Carnelia. I took the Chalice when I realized it was the source of all evil and fled, and the rulers of the Star locked me within Carnelia until I agreed to give it back. Only I never gave it back. They died but still, their descendants pursued me. It was relentless. So, I made a myth up. I planted it in the head of one ruler who informed another. I made them believe that only the joint powers of the rulers could summon the Chalice in one place, so they did it, and I allowed the Chalice to appear for them. And over time, my involvement with the Chalice-my theft-became forgotten. And a ritual for crowning new rulers was borne."

"And you let them use it," Gheorge said. "Something so horrible but you let the mortals use it."

"I never found a way to destroy it, so it became a little test, I suppose," Arabella said. "Only those with the best intentions ever seemed to do right by their people and these powers."

"But then there were rulers like my father," Bront muttered.

"There were always going to be rulers like your father."

"And I'm not blaming you for it. Truly, I'm not."

"I'm afraid others will. Gheorge sounds taken aback by this."

"I ... I don't know what to think," he admitted. "Such pain and suffering ..."

"Without pain and suffering, the blasted Chalice isn't satisfied. There are consequences for not feeding it. So with each new ruler initiated, the Chalice imparts on them an ability to keep it fed. But some rulers don't use their powers as much as others, so one ruler in particular had to work harder to keep it sated."

A long, weighted pause, and Gheorge cursed. "You're talking about you."

"I drank from the Chalice long ago, becoming the sixth ruler that no one speaks about," Arabella confirmed. "And though I was already ageless-thanks to Saebane-I was not a vampyre. The Chalice gave me the ability to harness the strength of others through their blood. It turned me mad with bloodlust. For centuries I could think of nothing else but blood and more blood for every second of the day."

"So the entire vampyre race ..." Gheorge said. "You are the first vampyre?"

"Indeed. And I accidentally created a race that acts as agents for the Chalice itself because of my bloodlust. Through vampyres partaking in blood, they directly feed into the Chalice."

Gheorge groaned. "Gods."

Frederick shivered with shock. Arabella was the first vampyre?

"The vampyres have been essential to the balance of the give and take of the Chalice," she continued. "Without them, the rulers would have been given horrific power like the one it gave me. With the vampyres, the rulers get a small dose of what the Chalice can really give, but nothing that cannot be overcome by the other rulers if they overstepped." She paused. "Unfortunately the other rulers failed you, Frederick. You were always right about Rycard, but they did you a disservice."

"The prison," Frederick said suddenly. "The Spiderweb. That feeds it, too, doesn't it. That's where you've kept it all this time."

"Yes," she said quietly. "It feeds off the misery in the prison, and that's where I've chosen to hide it. Not that he'll find it there if he goes."

"I don't understand," Frederick said into the dark. "The Chalice created you, and you created the vampyre race? There's more to how its power works and how it grants powers onto others."

Another significant pause, signaling that there was more. "The Chalice doesn't grant power-it grants wishes. Wants. Hopes."

"What does that mean?" Bront asked.

"The Chalice takes so much because it grants you the one thing you want, and it gives you the means to do it. That was its original purpose. It used to rest in a temple dedicated to a god, and the priests would select humans to have their wishes granted. The current rulers of the Star don't know that, but the Chalice takes your deepest, darkest wishes and makes them come true, but with it always comes a terrible price."

Frederick's mind flipped over and over, grasping for something beyond his reach.

"And what was your wish?" Bront bravely asked. "What did you secretly desire that the Chalice created an entire blood-sucking race for it."

Not even Frederick had dared to ask. Gheorge had gone oddly quiet.

"My wish was selfish," Arabella said. "And I didn't get it granted for a long, long while because I tried to keep the Chalice hidden away from the world. So it punished me, withholding my wish, making me do terrible things to get closer and closer to it. Millenniums passed before it would ever come true, but my sole desire was passed onto every other vampyre that has ever been made."

And suddenly Frederick didn't have to ask. He already knew. It was the reason why vampyres had mates at all. Her wish must have been borne from some deep-rooted desire for companionship and understanding. To never be alone.

Love.

True love.

And the Chalice had tortured her for it.

It had dangled the fulfillment of her wish for years and years, decades and decades, centuries and centuries while it made her do its bidding. It kept her isolated. Completely alone. Miserable. And she'd had the burden of having to appease it all this time.

And then it gave her him. And he fucked her over worse than anything else in her life ever had.

"I am a monster," Frederick said, straightening when he realized he'd said it aloud.

"I'll fucking kill you," Gheorge roared, the bars rattling with his rage.

"I don't understand," Bront said. "What is the brute shouting about now?"

Arabella said nothing.

Frederick said nothing either.

And for a long while it was only Gheorge and the sounds of despair he made. Only when his cries stopped and gave way to the sound of his furious pacing did Arabella speak again. "You would deprive me of my only wish, Gheorge? After I fought so hard to keep it."

His snarl slithered through the darkness.

But Frederick had to know. He'd been asking himself this over and over. "You drank from my flesh. You saw all my thoughts. If you already knew all my plans, then why did you let me do it?"

"Because I wanted to know what it would be like with you, and a big, stupid part of me is glad that I found out."

"How disappointing I turned out to be."

"Let's not speak in such a way now, just ..." Her hand balled into a fist. "Frederick, I want to touch you. Take my hand. Please."

Tears poured down his face, and he swallowed as he reached through the bars and took her hand. "I'm here." They stayed that way for minutes-maybe hours-his knuckles resting against the floor so that her hand wouldn't touch it. "The memories, Arabella. Can you pick which ones to see?"

"It took centuries of training to learn how to select the memories," she said. "I had to drink from every prisoner that entered the Spiderweb to ensure that they deserved it, and if I allowed all their memories to overwhelm me, I might have turned insane. So I learned how to select what I needed to know, but sometimes I don't always have control over what comes to me in the blood. Why?"

"I want you to see the memories I gave you yesterday. You no longer have to be scared of how I see you. They've changed. I promise you that they've changed."

"I don't think I can bring myself to sleep. It was hard enough to sleep before but now this?"

"Try," Frederick said in what he hoped was a reassuring tone. "Do try. I'm not going anywhere, and neither are you. So close your eyes and see the things I need to show you."

Her hand relaxed in his, still firm enough to declare her intention of not letting go, and when the silence stayed true, he hoped that she did indeed close her eyes.

There was still so much to say, and only one way to show it. "Sleep, my love," he murmured into the dark. Because tomorrow would bring with it a final fight he wasn't certain he could win, and he reached into the collar of his tunic and gave Staff a final, desperate squeeze.