His reaction is instant, arcing his tall body around and into me, his lips burning hot against my mountain-cold ones. A gentle insistence of skin, and a sly sweet promise of things to come. When he finally pulls away, each bone in my body is limp, at a tender ease.

“Every time you call me that, I’m going to kiss you,” he says. “Perhaps then you’ll break the habit.”

“Th-That’s, that plan—” I start. “Considering how many of the best polymath tutors you’ve had, that plan’s a scathing disappointment. It won’t even work.”

“I know.” He smiles.

“I’m going to slip up on purpose,” I threaten weakly.

He puts his forehead to mine, his murmur soft. “In all honesty, I’m hoping you will. Many times.”

I’ve felt so many quiets in my life. So many silences that lingered, in different ways. Some crash, some burn. Some fall slowly, like snow, and others pelt heavily, like rain. But this one is strange and new.

This one trembles.

What comes next? I know what comes next. I know, as he leads me back to the inn tower, to the blazing of the hearth melting the snow on our eyelashes, both of us dripping water and laughter up the stairs.

Boots are awfully pointless, aren’t they?

Your cheeks are so red, you look scrubbed raw.

I do not!

If you go any faster I won’t be able to keep up.

Teleport a little, then, Sir Witch.

We barely make it past each torch before I pull him in to me, over and over, searingly desperate to make sure this is real and not some figment of my Heartless brain dying somewhere, on some forgotten plain. Some gift from the gods in my final moments.

Dreams can feel real. Dying dreams most of all.

And then I’m back, standing in the tower room I woke up in halves ago, a hand in mine and a smile mirroring my own. With slow movements, Lucien peels my snow-wet covering off, kissing a deliberate line down my neck. The near-dead embers in the hearth have nothing on the glowing blaze that starts to lick at my insides—

he could command you to do anything, and we would be powerless to resist.

—and then all at once, it vanishes.

“Lucien.” My voice sounds small in the stone room. I try again. “Luc—”

He straightens in a blink, eyes roaming over my face. “You’re pale. What’s wrong?”

“I—” I swallow. “I don’t think I can do this.”

I watch his expression, ready for disappointment. But there’s none, just a wry smile where it should be. He backs up, putting a slice of thoughtful space between us.

“All right.”

“Aren’t you—”

“No,” he cuts me off. “What you want, you shall have. What you don’t want, you won’t have. It’s that simple.”