That left Erik and me alone.

“Do you believe him?” he asked me, his voice no longer Wrath’s but his own.

Obviously, he was asking about something Lucas had said. Maybe all of it.

Slowly, with two staggering steps, Erik turned to face me. Blood poured from his chest, streaking a form no longer clad in his crimson officer’s uniform but rather in a silver brocaded waistcoat, one lined with buttons. An indication he had changed masks?

He wavered on his feet, about to go down.

“He’s right,” said Erik. “Of course he’s right. But . . . it wouldn’t matter . . . not if you didn’t believe him.”

I bolted to him, catching him by the arms before he could fall. Unable to keep him upright, though, I went down with him until both of us were kneeling in the snow and the blood.

There, Erik gripped his chest, pain seizing him.

Though I took hold of his wrist, attempting to pull his hand from the wound, he flung me off, the motion causing the world to invert and the dream to end.

SIXTY-FOUR

Lucas

I drew a ragged breath, and my lungs flooded with air—almost too much.

Someone, a girl, screamed my name. Her voice drew me backward through the darkness. And then other voices joined hers. Including one that I recognized as my own.

“Stephanie!” I shouted into the light that burst into being above me, revealing shadowy, amorphous shapes that, in the next instant, became familiar heads and faces.

“Lucas, oh my God,” gasped a teary Charlotte before she launched herself at me.

“Sheez,” said Patrick. “Eff that. We’re never doing that again.”

“Give him space,” commanded another voice, this one coming from my left. Rastin’s.

Someone peeled Charlotte off of me, and still gasping for breath, I pressed my hands into the carpet and struggled to sit up, drunk with confusion and disequilibrium. I clasped my throat, the skin of which still held the memory of being squeezed almost to the point of collapse. Then a warm, wet sensation on my bicep drew my attention to my white sleeve, now stained crimson with blood. Only when I saw the wound—the slash I’d been dealt in the dream—did the pain rip its way through my arm.

“Stay back,” commanded Rastin, his face appearing to hover over mine, contorted with worry—and anger. “What happened?”

“I didn’t get to tell her,” I said. “I didn’t get—you have to send me back.”

“No!” wailed Charlotte.

“He found you,” said Rastin, releasing a breath. “Tell me you didn’t try to fight him.”

“Send me back now,” I hissed to Rastin, locking eyes with him, my anger at last trumping my fear.

“You are not going back there,” Rastin said.

“I’ll kill him.” I pushed against the medium, trying to stand.

“Don’t be stupid,” snapped Rastin, shoving me down again.

“Get away from him!” Charlotte screeched.

“Charlotte, I will not harm him.”