Well, at least the dress was already ruined, I thought, as she was redirected back out again.

And then someone grabbed me.

It freaked me out because it felt like a real hand, but it wasn’t made out of flesh. I jerked around, wondering what this new hell was, and then froze because I didn’t know. It didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen, and I’d seen a lot.

But then, it wasn’t finished yet.

The bed sheets had started rising up and pulling away from the mattress. But instead of blood stained and mud smeared, as they’d been a second ago, they were almost blindingly white. They were also forming themselves into a familiar shape.

A well-muscled arm emerged from the billowing mass, pale but fully formed. Then a naked torso, lithe and long, like a swimmer’s body, but heavier across the shoulders. And, finally, a head, one with high cheekbones, proud arched eyebrows, and a fierce, aquiline nose, the whole adding up to a hawk-like profile that a Roman senator might have envied.

I didn’t understand how, but it was unmistakably Mircea. Looking like he’d been caught in someone’s laundry, with his body outlined against the billowing sheets, but him nonetheless. And it didn’t take long for the fabric to tighten up, to mold itself to the strong contours of his chest, the sweeping ladder of his ribs, the soft indentation of his navel, and the heavy weight of his sex.

It was a perfect recreation, to the point that I could see the outlines of his nipples, furled against the cold; could make out the pale slash of a knife scar on his hipbone, a rare reminder of the violent days of his youth; could trace the prominent veins in his forearms. Even the muscles working in his thighs were visible, as he fought to free himself from the remains of his fabric prison. He finally succeeded, with his feet coming into view and indenting the mattress.

They were as pale as marble, like the rest of him, because the sheets had disappeared all right, but they hadn’t vanished. They’d been transformed, although into what I wasn’t sure. He looked like an anatomically correct statue, like a better endowed David stepping off a plinth. Even the hair was right, with that well-kept mane flowing like sculpted stone. But it didn’t feel like stone when he knelt down and a strand of it brushed against my cheek.

It felt like him.

I knew I should run, knew that this was just another trick by Zeus, like that farce in the courtyard. But if it was a trick, it was a damned good one. And where was I supposed to go?

The poison was in my blood.