“I’m sorry,” I whispered, kissing her cheek gently before sitting back on my heels.

I was free.

Through magic and sheer force of will, Cécile had broken Anushka’s hold on me. And having been wholly unprepared for the moment, I was still coming to terms with that freedom. It was more overwhelming than I ever could have anticipated.

Closing my eyes, I remembered running down the River Road, faster than the water surging next to me. As fast as I had ever run, as though speed might somehow tear me through the barrier that had bound my people for so long. Terror had lurked deep in my chest as I approached the invisible divide between our world and the outside, knowing it would hurt when I hit it, and knowing that I would do it again and again, with magic and fists until my heart stopped. In that moment, I’d never loved or hated Cécile more, because in one simple command, she’d found a way to end us.

But the curse hadn’t stopped me.

I’d felt it snatching and grabbing at me, trying to hold me back. But something stronger pulled me through, and then I was stumbling, falling onto the sand of the beach. Rolling onto my back, I’d looked up at the night sky, more vast, open, and unending than anything I could ever have imagined. I’d been rendered immobile as I stared up at the tiny pinpricks of light scattered across the sky, their number and brilliance growing as I watched.

It was my father’s voice that had pulled me back to reality, the edge of panic in it. “Tristan?”

I’d sat up, watching as an expression I’d never seen swept across his face. “Find her,” he shouted, and suddenly I was running.

He meant Anushka, I knew, but even if Cécile hadn’t called my name, it would have been her I’d gone to first. Like we were attached by a silken string, I was drawn in her direction, my passage down the dark road and into the city a blur I barely remembered. Even before I was close enough, I swore I could hear her singing, the crystal sound of her voice in my ears as I’d walked through the theatre and found her sitting on the stage, surrounded by flowers. There were moments in life that burned themselves into memory, forever vivid in the mind’s eye. For me, seeing her again on that stage was one of them.

But it was not an untarnished moment.

I did not doubt that she was telling the truth about how she’d come to have my name. I’d heard tell of those who’d dreamed themselves into Arcadia, and it was popular opinion that those who went to sleep and never woke were those whose minds drifted and were caught by winter fey.

But never had I heard of it happening to a human. It made me believe that my uncle was meddling, which was troubling. I was in the debt of the Winter Queen, and knowing that Cécile had incurred a debt to the Summer King made me wonder if this was some game in the endless war between the two kingdoms. What mischief they might bring to this world if they were free to walk here once more. There were fell and dangerous creatures lurking in the shadows of my ancestors’ homeland, and I wasn’t sure we’d be able to control them as we once had. We were not as strong as we once were.