I bolt awake, covered in cold sweat and rapidly trembling against someone’s chest. That smell of honey that’s now imprinted permanently on my brain. Lucien.

His dark eyes look down at me in his arms. “Are you all right?”

The dream-haze still lingers, and the black of his irises, the shape of his eyes, the thick lashes—the same as Varia. Varia.

I scrabble backward, panting hard. “You—”

His expression goes from soft to brittle in a second, but he keeps it from crumbling as he sits up, making his voice gentler.

“Zera, it’s me.”

I look him over—black hair, short. Proud nose. Broader shoulders than her. It’s him. It’s him, not her. The sharp fear scraping my throat recedes, and Lucien’s frown is slight.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I shake my head, sweat flying. “N-Not right now.”

“Can I do anything for you?” he asks. “Right now?”

what can you do that I can’t, little prince?

The instinct to deal with myself on my own rears up.

we know ourselves better than you.

I want him to do something. I don’t know what, or for how long, but it hangs there on the tip of my tongue.

we do better alone.

I don’t even have time to shake off the hunger before Lucien moves in a blur of sleeves and then I’m pressed against him, wrapped in his arms, his mouth near my ear.

“It’s going to be all right.”

The hardness in my body unwinds, in increments instead of abruptly, days instead of years. Feeling the heat of him against me, real and alive and human, pulls me back from the brink. He’s just here.

He’s just here, and that’s all I need.

I don’t know how much time passes. The sky is still dark outside the sanctuary of Lucien’s arms. At some point, Malachite crunches over and makes some joke at me to switch shifts, but I hear Lucien’s voice rumble in his chest—asking Mal to extend his watch a little longer. The beneather agrees, and I hear him shuffle off.

I can’t cry.

I wish I could. This feeling is like the emotional equivalent of nausea—if I could just cry, just throw up, it would go away. I’d feel so much better. But nothing comes. No relief, just the endless purgatory of my own thoughts, my own feelings. I want to stop it, but I can’t. It just keeps stretching on and on. I should be stronger than this. I used to be stronger, didn’t I? But now I’m here, leaning on someone else. On Lucien. On the one person I don’t want to see me weak.

I straighten, too embarrassed to look at him. “I’m sorry. For this.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.” The prince smiles down at me.