I drew up my knees and rested my head on them, trying to regain my equilibrium.

I didn’t dream of Cordus every night, but it happened often enough. At first, I’d been convinced he was invading my thoughts as I slept. He could probably do that sort of thing if he wanted to — he had a gift for manipulating the minds of others.

The exact nature of the dreams eventually changed my mind. I never touched him. We never actually had sex. Things never progressed beyond some moment of possibility without certainty.

Like in this one, where he hadn’t actually touched …

I stopped that thought.

And there was always dread, always the sense that I was doing something horrible and was going to be caught.

Eventually I had to admit it all added up to my own psychodrama — my mind working over my own desire and the feelings of shame that came with it. The man wasn’t manipulating my mind from afar. They were just dreams, plain and simple. Dreams about the taboo, about wanting something I absolutely should not want.

Not dreams, I told myself. Nightmares.

I couldn’t be attracted to Cordus. He was beautiful, but he was a monster.

But I was. There was no way around the fact. When he got back from wherever he was, I was going to have a hell of a time saying “no.”

When he got back …

No one knew where he was — no one who was talking, anyway. At first, we assumed he’d gone into the Octoworld isolate to hunt down Graham. But as weeks went by, that explanation seemed less and less plausible.

I’d decided he must be investigating the matter of Limu and Eye of the Heavens. I’d felt a lot less worried after that. But I was the only one Cordus had confided in about that whole thing, so I couldn’t share my theory with anyone else.

Now four months had passed with no word of him. That’s why Andy and Theo were worried. Cordus might be a monster, but at least he was a known quantity. If he didn’t come back, some other Second Emanation power would seize this territory and snap us all up as servants. I’d seen some of the others and wanted nothing to do with them.

Especially Limu.

My throat tightened. I hadn’t had a panic attack in months, but the thought of falling into Limu’s hands was almost enough to do it. In truth, I’d probably shoot myself if I thought that was about to happen. Better to eat a bullet than be burned alive.

I shook my head.

Cordus would come back soon. He had to.

At the thought of him, an image from my dream swamped me, rich in sensory detail.