Graves was choking her.
He wanted to kill her in her dreams.
She wanted to let him.
Her hands went slack where she gripped his cold shirt.
Footsteps pierced the air, jolting her back into awareness.
"I must say, you’ve disproven my original assumptions of you," said Caliban.
She didn’t want him in her dreams.
"Open your eyes," Graves said against her mouth.
Luella opened her eyes, then turned her head to find Caliban gripping the bars, watching Graves force her into the ground, his hand still beneath her shift, the other cupping her throat.
"You’ve been stronger than I thought, even weak from sickness. I never planned on you growing sick, but it makesperfect sense, doesn’t it? You’ve not performed the Rite of Vincire yet. Your body is fighting the distance between you and your Vincire. So long as you don’t die, I have no problem with this—I couldn’t have planned it better myself. Weak and ripe with fever, desperate for touch."
Shadows curled around the bars and swooped to the floor. Luella tried to shift away, but Graves didn’t let her.
It all felt too real.
"What are you talking about?" Even the coughing fit that broke up her words felt real.
"You mean to tell me you still have not figured it out?" Caliban laughed lowly. "This will be so enjoyable."
Something cold fell on her cheek.
She turned her head back to Graves and gave a choked scream when she saw his face. It wasmeltingoff.
Graves’s flesh oozed, black tendrils dripping onto her skin where she was trapped beneath him.
His hair fizzled away, flesh melting, falling onto her in thick puddles. It was so cold. Beneath his flesh, he had no bones, no blood. He was made entirely of—shadows.
She sobbed and sobbed. "Graves, no, no. Don’t?—"
When he was gone and the frigid mass that once held his shape coated her shaking body, it twined together, drifting over her like a serpent as it slithered to the awaiting shadows on the ground.
They merged.
And Caliban’s dark sounds of amusement grew louder.
"My shadows can open doorways to other places, act as spy, kill"—his smile grew—"offer pleasure. And they can even take another’s form."
Luella covered her face with her hands and cried. "It’s just a d-dream. I’ll wake up. This isn’t real."
But it felt so real.
"You thought this was a dream? Foolish heirus." Caliban’s voice grew hard, deadly quiet. "I kept waiting for you to break, but you held on. Even thinking it was a dream, your resolve was so great. If being begged by your lovers doesn’t break you, then what will? Because I will find it eventually."
Horror was overcoming her sickness. Her sobs were so violent, she gagged. It was real—this was real. She was slowly understanding. None of it had been a dream or hallucination wrought from fever. It had been real. A trick.
She uncovered her face, fingers of her ruined hand curled toward her palm. "Why?" she asked Caliban. "Why trick me?"
Was he even real? Or was this a trick, too? What if everything had been fake?
Vale, Graves, Tharen, Az, Bastian—what if they all were shadows?
