A new fate.

Slowly, she followed after the woman. The numbness hadn’t retreated. If anything, it had intensified. The world had taken on a blurry sheen. Her pulse was thready, sluggish.

“In here, signora,” said the woman warmly. “Merely ask for what you wish, and see what fortune provides.”

With that, the woman drew the curtains shut. Laila stood still, the world swaying around her. Before her, the silken fall looked like the veil to a different world. Laila stuck her hand through the fabric. She didn’t feel the weight or scratchiness of the raw silk on her wrist. That blankness engulfed her. Laila felt unmoored from the world, no more than a flimsy wisp of consciousness on the verge of being folded back into that darkness.

Laila cleared her throat, whispering, “I wish for life.”

She waited a few moments. She was on the verge of withdrawing her hand when she felt the slightest touch on her wrist. She froze.

On the other side, someone lifted her hand. Dimly, she felt the scratchy weight of the curtain, caught the ghost of cigar smoke clinging to the drapes. The stranger brought their lips to her wrist, and Laila felt the heat of their kiss like an unfurling bloom. The colors of the room sharpened. The background noise she had taken for granted earlier rushed in to shatter the silence. If her soul had felt flimsy before, now it seemed to tether itself back to her bones.

Around her, the world spoke its eloquence in perfumes and chandelier light, the velveteen nap of parting curtains, the gnarled nubs of wood poking through her slippers. Laila felt intoxicated by it all. And yet, there had only ever been one person who made her feel the vividness of the world like this, and, as if summoned by the thought, the room yanked the stranger inside—

For a moment, Laila lost track of where she was. The small, silk-lined room full of Forged candles melted away when she saw him. She’d always considered Séverin a warning … the wolf in bed. The apple in a witch’s palm.

But he was so much more dangerous than something from the pages of a fairy tale.

He was someone who believed them.

Someone who thought magic and wonder had made an exception for him.

Séverin glanced at her wrist, then her face, and then … he smiled. It was a glib grin of delight, as if he knew that he was the one who had made her feel alive again … as if it meant he had a right to her.

She hated him for it. In that second, her hand moved of its own accord.

Séverin winced at the slap, his hand moving to the reddening mark on his cheekbone.

“Undoubtedly, I deserved that,” he said, looking up at her.

For the first time in what felt like years, Laila studied him. The past few days had changed him. There was a new sharpness to his features. He seemed like a well-constructed sword, the line between danger and beauty too blurred to distinguish. There was something feverish to his handsome features that seemed to singe the very air around them. His black hair—now a touch too long—fell across his brow, drawing attention to those strange eyes that were the precise color of sleep.