Over her shoulder I see Lucien, clutching his sword’s handle with white knuckles, his glazed eyes now wide and frozen. Fear frostbites his very lips as he stares at Gavik’s monstrous frozen spine. Varia just commanded Gavik the way Nightsinger refused to with me. She has total control over him. I swallow and rise to my trembling feet as the princess looks me up and down.

“It’s settled, then. We’re keeping you. Father won’t be happy about it, but I’m sure I can—”

“Zera!” A voice suddenly cuts between us—Malachite. I turn to see his paper-skinned, lanky figure standing on the edge of the clearing, a curly-haired girl with a cane at his side. Fione?

“Lady Zera!” Fione calls, both of them running toward us. Fione’s expression is fuzzy in my exhausted vision, but I clearly hear her choke on her next word. “V-Varia?”

At my side, Varia’s smile grows like the sun rising over a hill.

Exhaustion grips me—iron shackles clamping my lungs. The world becomes a blur of green grass and Malachite’s snow skin and Lucien’s and Varia’s identical midnight heads of hair and Fione’s fractured words like a stream—“A spell, a trick, no, it can’t be!”—and then the sensation of someone catching me before finally, mercifully, darkness.

2

2

Unborn Again

You would think I’d be used to waking up in strange places by now.

But the truth of the matter is that no one really gets used to waking up alone. There is bleary panic and utter confusion, until all the brain parts in my skull settle into place and remember for me:

I am Zera Y’shennria, and I have betrayed the Crown Prince of Cavanos.

A prince whose sister is still alive.

A prince who knows I’m a monster.

we are going to be punished. The hunger laughs, somehow quieter and more even than ever, not a trace of the instability I had after I got cut with Lucien’s blade anywhere to be heard. at last.

Lucien’s cold gaze haunts the backs of my eyelids, the void of my unheart threatening to expand and swallow me whole.

No.

I am Zera Y’shennria, niece of Quinn Y’shennria. I have many weaknesses—a well-made silk dress with just the right number of ruffles, the idea of family, the idea of my heart, a warm cup of chocolate drink and a slice of cake. But I won’t allow myself to be weakened by despair.