“Do you think it so easy to untangle the two, Alina?” he murmurs into her neck, the words sliding along her skin like ghosts. “That the lines between us are so sharp?”

She thinks of his shadows surrounding her, swallowing her, devouring her; thinks of how they linger in her light like smoke, lessened but unafraid, always there, always lurking within the very essence of her creation, and knows the answer she refuses to speak.