“You won’t be able to help it,” Raisa said, swiping at her eyes. “And it’s not just a matter of you hurting me. I will hurt you too, even if I don’t mean to. I’m not the girl you think I am. And you will remember this conversation, and wish that you’d listened to me.” She burrowed her hands into his. “How can you want this if you know from the beginning that it will end badly?” Tell him the truth, said a voice in her head. But she just couldn’t. She didn’t dare.

He searched her face with his eyes, as if trying to surface the story behind the words. Then he kissed her eyelids and the tip of her nose, and once again, her lips. With each kiss, her resistance dwindled.

“I live in the present,” Han said, “because the future is always chancy. When it comes to being with you, I’m willing to take the risk. Are you?”

“Now I’ll feel like a coward if I don’t.” Raisa leaned back against him. Looked up at his face and traced the scar above his eye with her forefinger. “How did you get this?” she asked.

“Took a risk,” he said, his blue eyes fixed on her face.

“Was it worth it?”

He thought about it. “Yes.”

“All right,” Raisa said, giving in. “Let’s take a risk. But we’ll go slow.”

His arms tightened around her again. She felt the thud of his heart against her back. “I don’t want to go slow,” he whispered in her ear. “Like I said, I live for the present. Every time I try to set something aside for the future, it gets taken away.”

“I know,” Raisa said. “But we will take it slow, just the same.”

C H A P T E R  T W E N T Y - S E V E N

WHEN DREAMS
TURN TO
NIGHTMARES

Han opened his eyes and found himself staring at the ceiling in his library hideout room.

He was on the hardwood floor, and knew immediately from the stiffness in his joints that he’d been lying there for hours. He rubbed his hand over his face. It was stubbly. How long had he been there? As usual, it seemed there were great chunks of time he couldn’t account for.

Massaging his temples, he tried to remember what had happened in his session with Crow. Crow had shown him how to bring other wizards with him to Aediion. He’d demonstrated the technique and made him memorize the charm.

Han sat up, waited for his head to stop spinning, then levered himself to his feet. Something crinkled under his coat. Sliding his hand inside, he found several pages folded together. Carefully, he unfolded them. Yellowed and fragile, they looked like pages torn from one of the ancient books on the floors above.