Then I see a glimmer of her shoulder, the angle of her chin. The faint outline of a shirt with a wide, loose collar pulled back so that it exposes the skin of her upper back and lower neck. It is only a glimpse of her, but even this is enough to make me catch my breath, and in my dream, I tense, hating that my mind has conjured her in this imaginary state just to torment me. Everything in me wants to reach out and brush strands of hair from her neck, run my fingers along the line of her arm.

The scene sharpens further. Talin is sitting alone beside a window, weak light from streetlamps outside bathing her in silver, as she arches her neck high and closes her eyes. She is still wearing that loose-collared shirt, which pulls my gaze once more to the bit of exposed back and neck it reveals. My heart aches at the sight of her. Her steel wings are partially open, the bladed feathers draping down toward the floor in a graceful arch, and in the light, she looks like a creature from another world, all lines of beauty and death. Everything around her fades into blackness, so that she and the window and the moonlight seem to float in the middle of a dark world of nothing.

Suddenly, she straightens. Her face turns to one side, and then her voice comes through the link between us, like it used to, the sound echoing in the expanse of my dream.

Red? she says. Are you here?

I freeze. I am dreaming. This is not real. And yet, her voice comes through to me as clearly as beads on glass, as if she can see me too. As if she can communicate with me.

Never have we spoken to each other in our dreams before.

Are you here? she asks again. This time, she turns around, and her eyes lock straight onto mine, as if I am standing in the room with her.

Yes, I answer, as if pushed on by some supernatural force.

I don’t expect her to hear me, much less answer—but the expression on her face is just as shocked as my own.

The tears that well in the corners of her eyes are ones of fear. As we stare at each other, her words come through our link.

Go away.

In an instant, I feel the bond between us shudder, as if she’s pulling herself away, shuttering her windows and walling up her heart. The emotions linking us tremble, and my vision of her blurs.

I lean forward desperately, as if my hand can now brush hers. Even though I can’t truly touch her, I feel a gate break open in her chest as the ghost of my hand sweeps across the ghost of hers, and her face crumples. It is only now that I realize I have never seen Talin cry. She is not weeping just for our connection in this moment—it is the bursting of a dam that she has carefully built over the months of her captivity. She is crying for the loss of her home, another nation gone, the deaths of those she knows, and the new life she has been forced into.