“Your control,” he said calmly, bluntly. “That will determine if you live or die.”

Oh. I even understood the reasoning. The Monère. We were a people that lived in secret among the humans. Anything that threatened that hidden coexistence, say a wild Mixed Blood boy raiding and killing a human farmer’s domestic livestock…he would be eliminated in a blink. Anything that stood out, that called attention to us like that would not be tolerated or allowed to live. The equivalent of that, in the demon dead’s case, would be my fangs. That would draw a lot of attention. Because, quite simply, the Monère did not have fangs in our human form. Only the demon dead did. Which boded ill for me because I still had them. Fangs. As in long, sharp, pointy canine teeth protruding from my mouth. They would cause quite a stir among the Monère if they were seen. It would make them wonder how I’d acquired that demon trait…and whether I had other traits of theirs, like their greater strength, which I did. Both explanations—Mortal Draining (me—my fault) and drinking a demon’s blood (Mona Louisa’s fault)—would get me killed. The first one by the Monère Queens, because if they knew what I could do, I’d be too dangerous for them to tolerate…or risk having my ability spread to others. The second would get me just as dead by the demons, who had already wiped out an entire Queen’s force to keep their secret quiet.

The problem was, now that my fangs were out I didn’t know how to make them go away. And Dontaine—Christ! — he’d already seen them, striking a bolt of fear through me like lightning. Don’t think of him. Don’t think of him. Because if I could sense Halcyon’s emotions, he could probably sense mine. I hoped and prayed that he couldn’t read my thoughts, though. That he did not know that Dontaine had already seen my fangs. Shit! I had thought of it again.