The bed is warmer tonight. Warmer than it’s ever been and stranger. But easier, too. Lucien catches me looking at him on the pillows, and he smirks.

“You have my permission to stare at me all night.”

“And why would I do that?” I fire off a half-downy mumble. “I’ve already memorized everything on you.”

“Well.” His smirk grows unmanageable. “Not everything.”

Since when is he the one who seduces, instead of me? My face fills red.

“Princes aren’t supposed to have roguish manners.”

“And ladies aren’t supposed to sleep in beds with unmarried men.”

“Only married men, then.”

He hefts up on one elbow, tracing my hand under the covers. “What are you implying, Lady Zera?”

“Go. To. Sleep.” I pause. “Your Highness.”

The kiss comes, as I knew it would, breathless and enmeshed in each other, and I’m the first one to pull away and the only one to roll over in faux grumpiness, Lucien’s laugh rumbling the mattress.

I try to sleep—try so hard to play at being as human as he is—but I fade in and out, waking up in the odd hours to reach over and feel that he’s still there. Still real.

Still with me, despite everything.

Despite how many mistakes I’ve made.

4

4

THE FIRST
DREAM

The dream. Again. The one where I have a heavy, heart-beating chest.

The dream where I’m not myself but Varia. I see through her eyes, her dark bangs on the edges of my—our—vision.

But where my head is full of the hunger, full of the yawning void of hunger, hers is screaming. Again. Always.

DESTROY.

It burns against my mind, like sticking my hand into a pile of embers. Like the witchfire that killed me in Vetris—Lucien’s. It sears, it melts, it obliterates. I can just barely hold on to my thoughts, and it’s not even my body. I’m just a visitor.

How am I visiting? How am I having this dream again, seeing through her again?

I try not to think about that as Varia turns her head, unbelievably overcoming the mind-bending screaming with sheer willpower. Enough to blink, enough to move.

We’re standing in grass, the flowing grasslands of central Cavanos. The night wind ripples through it, caressing it peacefully. The only peace we can see, can sense. Everything above the grass is fire—all we can see is fire. This place has been on fire before, many times. Innumerable people have died here. Will die here.

DESTROY IT ALL.