Beyond my frozen body lay a hollow cavern that bloomed with the harsh glamour of cold fire. In that lofty cave, the melted form that had first appeared to me as Prince Caonabo glittered as it changed. Frost and crystals shaped themselves into the figure and face of a man I recognized: the Master of the Wild Hunt.

My sire.

His expression was as cold and empty as his heart. “So are you trapped, little cat. You will never be free.”

“I will be free! All of us will be free!” I tugged at the sword with all the heart and might I had in me.

Instead, the sword yanked me back the other way so hard that it hauled me right off my feet.

“Cat! Fiery Shemesh! You are talking nonsense in your sleep and besides that trying to drag me off the bed.”

My cousin Beatrice loomed over me, her thick black curls framing her familiar and beloved face. Her fingers clutched mine, and I realized I had been holding her hand for quite some time. For fifteen years, since I was orphaned at the age of six, Bee had been my best friend, as close as a loving sister. Just to see her helped me relax enough that I could take stock of where I was and what I was doing.

We had fallen asleep together in the drowsy afternoon heat in an upstairs room of Aunty Djeneba’s boardinghouse.

After washing up on the jetty of the city of Expedition, on the island of Kiskeya in the Antilles, I had come to live at the boardinghouse. Here Andevai Diarisso Haranwy, the cold mage I had been forced to marry back in Europa, had courted me and won my heart. Bee and I were napping on the bed Andevai had built for his and my wedding night. I shut my eyes, remembering his kisses. For a few breaths I pretended I could hear his voice downstairs in the courtyard, as if he had just come home from the carpentry yard where he worked. But he was gone.

You will never be free.

I sat up, trying to shake off the memory. “What a frightful nightmare I just had. Pinch me, Bee.”

She pinched my arm with the force of iron tongs wielded by a brawny blacksmith.

“Ah! You monster!” I cried.

“You said to do it!”

I shook my arm until the pain subsided, while she laughed. “No, it’s all right. I just wanted to make sure I’m finally awake.”

Bee tapped my cheek affectionately. “You were talking in your sleep. You’ve become quite the revolutionary, Cat. You kept mumbling, ‘All of us will be free.’ ”