“Are you sure you’re okay? Dorian . . .” She didn’t want to stop, though. She wanted to feel her song moving inside him, her voice like a flock of birds that soared endlessly even while they were fast asleep, like biting stars, like a strangely brilliant world where no one had ever walked before.

“Please, Luce!” He opened his eyes just a slit, so that their dark gold showed between the soft brown fringe of his lashes.

She still felt worried, but the desire to sing, and to sing into him, to caress his living thoughts with music, got the better of her. The song came back, and the cold wind spiraled strands of Dorian’s long bronze hair just as the notes spiraled in his dreams. Luce watched his closed eyes, heard the quick pulsations of his breathing. He reached to pull her tight against his chest.

The song smoothed across thoughts like a rippling landscape—then abruptly Luce hit a jagged place, an area of fissures and misalignments. Even in his arms she experienced a sensation of stumbling, falling. He was damaged, and this was part of the problem . . .

She had to concentrate. She had to sing very precisely, very delicately, to set the broken planes back in order, smooth the cracks. Dorian’s breath was quick and raw, and he was trembling. Luce wrapped one splintered thought in a note like binding silk, then when she was sure she’d sensed everything correctly she gave a quick push, swishing up the scale, and felt something snap back into place. He moaned and kissed her randomly, his mouth landing just below her ear. Luce found another trouble spot, something like a field of rubble, and she gently rolled the fragments over and over, looking for the matching edges . . . This broken area wasn’t her fault, Luce realized. This was the result of all those sleepless nights when Dorian had waited in icy dread for the noise of his mother’s footsteps.

Ten minutes later Dorian’s face was streaked with silent tears. He still hadn’t opened his eyes, and Luce was suddenly afraid that she’d pushed him too far. This time, though, she was careful to lower her voice very slowly, to hold him in the last wisps of music for a softly sustained moment, so that he wouldn’t be too shocked when it stopped.

“Dorian? Are you okay?”

He looked at her through lashes diamond-flecked with teardrops, his eyes like molten gold. But there was something crazy in his look, an inhuman glow, a wavering exaltation. Did he even know where he was?

“Dorian?”