And suddenly, we weren’t in the Wistful Waters at all.

Lavender brushed my fingertips. Its scent perfumed the summer air, sweet and sharp and heady, and overhead, a single fat cloud drifted past. I glanced around warily. I knew this place. I knew the mountains all around us, the creek trickling at the edge of the field. As a child, I’d played here often, but it hadn’t been filled with lavender then, only grass and the gnarled stumps of pear trees. Manon said a grove had once grown in this valley, but Morgane had torched it in an inexplicable fit of rage before we were born. Had the lavender preceded the trees? Or had it come after?

Something shifted beside me, and I tensed instinctively, whipping around to face it.

My heart leapt to my throat.

“You’re . . . you,” I said in disbelief.

Nicholina stared back at me, her silver eyes wider than I’d ever seen them. Her skin paler. The scars on her chest shone stark and gruesome in the bright sunlight, and her black dress—tattered and dirty—seemed incongruous with this happy place. Glancing down at my own body, I lifted my hands experimentally, and they responded without hesitation. I flexed my fingers. At the sight of them straightening, curling back into my palms, a bubble of laughter rose in my throat—my throat. Not ours.

Unable to help myself, I lifted my face to the sun, savoring its warmth. Just for a moment. I didn’t know where we were, I didn’t know how we were, and I didn’t care. Instead, I felt . . . whole. Curious sensation flowed through my limbs, as if the waters had not only restored me but strengthened me too. Empowered me. Or perhaps I’d finally died and entered the Summerland. Or was this Heaven? Neither would explain Nicholina’s presence, yet what else could it be?

Panic sliced through my reverie, sharp and unexpected, and my smile vanished as quickly as it’d come. Because it hadn’t been my panic. No, the emotion had come from someone else. I groaned loudly in realization: Nicholina recognized this place too. Though her thoughts came too quickly to untangle, a sense of longing permeated them. A sense of despair.

Fuck.

I shook my head.

Though our bodies had separated, it seemed our consciousness had not, and no god would ever be cruel enough to saddle me with Nicholina for eternity, which meant—which meant this wasn’t Heaven at all. I glared up at the crystal-blue skies. The single cloud there seemed to mock me, and I couldn’t stop a harsh chuckle. It took the shape of a burning cross.