You need him, a sharp voice insisted inside her mind.

“I’m fine,” she whispered. Constance relaxed into his arms, and he started to kiss her again, slower, deeper. Ever so gently, she lifted his hands away from the fastenings of her dress. Instead, she started to undo his buttons, and his belt, and to lift her skirts, and—at last—to pull him to her bed.

When Constance awoke, daylight had faded and the room was half lit by the burning embers of the fire and the lightning flickering outside. Constance was curled among the tangled bedclothes and cushions, Xander cupped around her body, still fast asleep. She was half-undressed, her clothes loosened and disheveled, but she had kept her secret. The long glove remained tightly fastened over her left arm.

The place where metal met flesh was almost painfully itchy. She felt a flush of shame. She would have hated for him to see her that way. To see the truth of who she had become.

She turned slowly over to face him, touched his lips with her bare right hand. He was especially handsome when he was asleep, his skin honey-dark against her fingertips, his long hair loosed from its bindings. Constance felt a tug in her heart—an old feeling, never entirely buried. She shook her head at her own foolishness.

What would it take for someone to love me truly, the way I am now? Is it possible?

He loves the old Constance, said the hard voice in her mind. If you want to keep his loyalty, he can never know the truth.

ELEVEN

Training

Lena felt hands on her shoulders, and she floated upward. The gray forest brightened into a jewellike green—she flinched from the light, comfortable in her small, dim, forgetful world. But the hands shifted to her armpits and jerked her violently, forcing her into brightness.

As air hit her face, she realized she was wet, terribly cold, and choking. Suddenly she was lying flat on the ledge beside the fountain, Emris’s face hovering above hers, alive with panic.

“Lena, are you all right?”

He was sopping wet, his dark, tightly curled hair dripping. He looked incredibly young, like a frightened little boy.

She tried to breathe, felt burbling in her lungs, and retched onto the pristine stone floor, coughing up buckets of slimy water. People gathered around to watch, the low murmur of voices filling her ears. Ancestors, her hands ached…

She held them before her face. Two faint red marks scored the middle of her palms, a relic of a dream already slipping from her mind. “I’m all right,” she managed quietly, between wheezes. Am I?

“She’s fine,” Emris announced. “Please go back to your worship. Go.” He repeated himself, his voice firmer, and one by one the curious onlookers shrank reluctantly back to the main temple floor, murmuring among themselves.