Suddenly, the skin on my back blazes with pain. Hurt explodes from my shoulders until every nerve ending in my body screams in agony. “Son of a bitch!” I jam the blanket into my mouth and bite down hard. I crouch forward, my head almost touching the stable floor.

“You’re doing great. Just a bit longer.”

The agony blasts through me again, then one by one, my nerve endings return to normal. The pain melts away. I pull the blanket from my mouth and exhale slowly. “Okay, it’s better now.”

Lincoln leans in closer. His warm breath glides down my bare neck. “Good.”

That’s when it hits me.

It’s the middle of the night; I’m half-naked in a deserted stable; the guy I hate most in the universe is massaging my back; and damn, his touch feels crazy-awesome.

I try to stand up. “I’m totally fine now.”

Lincoln’s hands grip the bare skin at my waist, pulling me back to the floor. The touch sends fire through me; I shiver.

“You’re not fine. Stay still.” The Prince’s fingers move in a relentless rhythm, starting at my shoulders. There my muscles flush with heat and loosen. His palms slide down the sides of my torso, then press against the small of my back. I bite into the blanket again, but not with pain. Heat and desire pool into places where I didn’t even know I had nerve endings. My inner Furor demon howls with a new sensation:

Lust.

The situation’s quickly heading into uncharted territory for yours truly. Massage skills aside, this guy’s still a pompous jerk. And since when do I get lusty about anybody? I only inherited the wrath side of the Furor lust-and-wrath combo, didn’t I? With every expert flick of the Prince’s fingers, another image flashes through my mind: Lincoln’s hands cupping on my breasts, gliding across my belly, sliding up my thighs. What the Hell is happening to me? I flat-out panic.

“I think I can–” I try to stand again. Waves of nausea hit me. The world turns fuzzy, then everything blurs into a white haze.

15

For a long time, my mind hovers in an empty space between sleep and dream. The pain in my back is gone. The tournament and stables seem a thousand miles away.

My dreams finally come into focus. I find myself standing on the windy floor of the Gray Sea. Dreamscape. A circle of white flame flickers on the ground by my feet. Within the fire, sand rises into the form of my mother in her senate robes. The ring of flames flares higher, then disappears. Mom’s sand-made body transforms into living reality.