“Not like them,” she said, and there was an edge to her voice, as if she were insulted I had compared the two. “I know you sometimes mourn for the life you didn’t live, but it was not just your life that was taken the night you burned.”

My stomach roiled and I hit the floor, vomiting into a chamber pot. My face was hot and my heart was racing in my chest. The feeling had come on so suddenly, I could barely stop my head from spinning.

The door opened and I looked up, realizing I was in my bedchamber at the Red Palace.

“Yesenia, are you okay?” Ana asked. She came to kneel before me, her golden hair spilling over her shoulders.

“I am okay,” I said. I spent a few moments breathing through my mouth until the nausea passed.

“Let me help you,” she said and took my hand. I got to my feet and then sat on the bed. Ana crossed to my nightstand, pouring me a cup of water. A sour taste still lingered in the back of my throat and on my tongue.

“What happened?” she asked as she handed me the cup.

It was cool to the touch, and instead of drinking it, I placed it to my head.

“I don’t know. All of a sudden, I do not feel well.”

“Are you with child?”

Ana’s question shocked me, and I looked up to meet her gaze, which was soft and gentle.

“No,” I said quickly and paused, going cold. “I can’t be. I…”

I am going to die, I thought, though I knew there was a very real chance that I actually was pregnant, and if that was the truth, then I had just signed a death warrant for my child.

I stood, shaking.

“Ana, I can’t be pregnant.”

“You very well can be, Yesenia.”

“You do not understand—”

“I know you’ve said it before, that you are going to die—”

“I am. Dragos asked if he would conquer the world, and I foretold that his attempt would end in his demise,” I said. “He will murder me, Ana.”

Her lips slammed together and her jaw tightened.

“Then you must flee,” she said, as if it were that simple.

I shook my head. I had seen the future, seen my death at the stake, but why had I not seen life? My chest felt as though it were being ripped to shreds. I pressed my hands to my stomach and then hugged myself, tears streaming down my face.

“How did I not see this life?” I asked, my voice broken.

Ana rose and placed her hands on my shoulders. “You can change the course of the future, Yesenia. Perhaps you did so here.”

I wanted to believe her, and perhaps stupidly, her words gave me hope.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said.