fucking
refuse.
I’m able to blink away the panicked haze enough to register the frail female hugged tight against my chest.Not Fallon. Her hair is too white and long, her scent all wrong.
Yet—
I dig my nose into her tangled, blood-crusted locks, scenting rain on hot stones mixed with the sweet spice of blooming vurillo flowers. The sort that’s grown in the large atrium in …somewhere. A place I must’ve been, the scent familiar in a way that makes my chest pang like a plucked string.
The stranger shudders through a rasped breath. Not unlike the sound folk make when they’re tiptoeing toward death.
Heart in my throat, I wriggle away enough so I can tilt her back, pull my arm out from under her head, and rest it on a tuft of dirty straw. I begin brushing the matted hair off her face, then pause, heart pinching at the sight of a delicate silver diadem nestled against her brow— No. Attached to it. Like it’sgrowingfrom her.
Understanding strikes me with such force my mouth drops open.
The Shade’s Princess. Kyzari, I think her name is.
Kaan’s niece.
Right here.
In my fucking cell.
“Creators …”
My gaze drifts to the black stone set within the ornate diadem, right in the center of her bunched brow.
TheAetherStone.
I reach for it, then hesitate as something inside me jolts. Like two worlds just smashed together beneath my ribs. An icy numb seeps through me. The feeling that often comes before my Other rips me back, dumps me into her frigid nest, takes control, and finds some way to fuck with my life.
Except she doesn’t.
Instead, I’m flashed with the vision of someone with long pale hair caught in a swirl of snow, weeping as she tried to pry that very diadem from her brow, tucked in a ball so small I worried she’d disappear—
The memory dissipates, leaving a gasp in my throat and an ache in my chest that feels like an open wound.
Do I … know her?
Is that what my Other’s trying to tell me?
I’m quick to clear more of the hair off Kyzari’s filthy and beaten face, half expecting to see the features of the same unfamiliar fae—
It’s not her. Definitely not.
Instead, I trace the curves of a thin nose, high cheekbones, fine chin. Of pale, shapely brows …
She’s beautiful. The most beautiful fae I’ve ever seen.
Just looking at her hurts. Makes my sternum feel like it’s being crushed beneath the heel of a boot that’s giving more and more of its weight. Something that makes no fucking sense.
I brush my thumb across her long, white lashes, failing to fathom why I ache to see her open her eyes and look at me. To see the shape of her smile. Hear her laugh.
What’s wrong with me?
Frowning, I press my hand against her fevered brow, my next words a grated whisper. “Do I know you?”
Someone gasps, chased by the sound of scurried motions.
