He stops right before the danger. Right at the border of my space and his. He knows. He can sense it, just like I can—the two white-hot rings that radiate out from us, pressing, waiting, watching each other’s every move.

“Are you feeling all right?” he asks. “You were out for so long—”

“Fine.” I smile, tense. “Perfectly fine, Your Highness.”

“You—” Lucien’s eyes flicker. “That’s—you don’t have to call me that anymore.”

“You insisted.”

“And now I insist on taking it back.”

There’s a buzz that starts in my veins, and I can’t tell if it’s the smell of his skin I know so well by now or his magic that keeps me alive.

the only thing that keeps us alive. he’s our one tether to life; he holds our life in the palm of his—

A bag. It’s shoved at me so quickly, I don’t understand what it is until I see the stitching. Haphazard, poor needlework in fine gold thread that reads: Heart.

It’s so close and tantalizing, it almost distracts me from my first thought: a bit unoriginal, isn’t he? Varia, at least, wrote Traitor on mine. But his is just a label for what’s inside. Plain. Simple. Maybe that suits him. Maybe he’s the sort of witch who values simplicity.

“Here.” Lucien holds my heart out to me, the bag faintly beating, faintly lumpy.

My brain throbs. Echoes no one else can hear emanate from the heart bag—echoes of memory, like imprints of a body in the snow I can’t remember the face of. Who was here? Someone. My parents, maybe. My past, certainly. I can almost hear words, laughter, the smell of cinnamon.

I don’t dare to dream. To believe. I want to—I want more than anything to believe he’s the sort of person, the sort of witch, to give me my heart back instantly. But I’ve met too many witches to fall for it again.

“You’re letting me hold it?” I tease. “Awfully nice of you.”

“It’s yours,” the prince insists. Iron shavings eke their way into his ink eyes, hard and sleek. “If you want it.”

It’s too good to be true. He’s too good to be true. Nobody moves in the room—not the old sage man, not Malachite, not Lucien, not the thousand-year-old stones of the walls. So I decide to, walking a slow perimeter of the round table and running my fingers along its surface.

“Hmm.” I hum idly. “Are you sure? I’m very useful, you know. Immortal at all times, unaging at all times. I can’t promise I’ll be quiet or polite at all times, but I can give it a good try.”

I near the old sage man, all his creases and crinkles watching me.

“Heartless?” he asks, his voice low and croaky with pipe smoke.