I wrapped my arms around my middle, chilled by his words.

“You’ve had time to reconsider my suit,” he went on, the softness in his voice gone, replaced by frigid irony that bordered on sarcasm. “And you’ve sought me out to offer your acceptance. What say you, then? Will you wear my ring?”

Ice water replaced my blood.

I’d been so close. Close enough that I couldn’t say if I’d said one word too many . . . or one too few.

“If you’re trying to scare me,” I said, “it won’t work.”

It was working. But he couldn’t sense that . . . could he?

“Well,” he said through a clipped laugh. “At least I’ve graduated to trying.”

“I came to talk to you,” I said. “Before, in the dreams, you would always talk to me.”

“I am no dream.”

“If you would just—”

“You tire of your companions,” he remarked, addressing the violin. He had one hand on the lid of the case—like it was a coffin he was reluctant to shut. “I wager nothing less could have driven you to seek me out.”

With these words, something inside of me snapped.

“Don’t do that!” I shouted at him, and before I even knew what I was doing, I found myself stalking toward him, hands curling into fists at my sides. “Stop assuming you know everything about me. I’m not one of your masks.”

His shoulders went rigid, the reaction letting me know I’d struck a chord.

“You’re saying they are not the reason you’re here?”

“No,” I snapped. “They’re actually not.”

The truth was, I had come to negotiate.

“I’m here to offer a trade,” I began, fear creeping over me again, because I needed this to work. “A promise for a promise.”

“I have already stated my terms.”

I’d prepared myself for those words. Still, they came like a knife to the stomach. Because even though I kept sifting through the darkness that had consumed him, desperate to find a glimmer of the light I’d glimpsed in him before, I never found more than a trace of it. Forging on, I pushed the pain aside.

“So long as you’re like this,” I said, “I know better than to ask you to let me go.”

Again, he glanced at me with something that might have been surprise, and for a moment, I felt an internal check of victory at having stolen his certainty.

“You wish for something more than I would freely give you?”

“Yes,” I said. “And . . . if you give it to me, I promise to stay here. Meaning . . . I won’t try to leave again. And if someone comes to my rescue, I won’t go with them, either.”

He tilted his head at me, letting me know I’d taken him off guard. “I have stolen your freedom,” he said. “And so I am curious. What could you hold as more precious than that?”

The way he’d said “freedom.” It seemed to suggest he assumed I didn’t realize the worth of what I’d placed on the table.