The bed rocked as Lucien fought to sit upright, rising from the covers beside me.
Everything inside me settled and calmed.
He was here.
He was safe—
Batting Dillon away, I twisted to face him. “Y-You’re alive.” Urgency tingled in my fingertips to touch him. To prove that he wasn’t dead. Memories slapped me, one after the other. Of halting time, twisting fate, and then giving up my body in payment.
I shook my head, struggling to understand.
If he was here—if I’d truly been able to save him—how was I not dead? Wasn’t that the bargain I’d struck? Did something go wrong or somehow...right?
Whisper tiptoed over the blankets and pressed against Lucien.
“Thanks.” Giving Whisper a grateful grimace, Lucien used him to haul himself higher.
I couldn’t look away even as Dillon wrapped an arm around my shoulders to keep me from falling.
My heart refused to calm down, racing manically, ecstatically.
He’s truly alive!
Why wasn’t he acknowledging this miracle? How was he sitting there acting as if he was merely hung over from too much blossom wine, rather than returning to his body after it had dissipated into ash?
My head pounded as I studied his too pale skin, too sharp cheekbones. But it was his eyes that held me hostage—locking onto mine with violent possession, cutting straight through my weakness and haze.
In the depth of his pitch-black pupils, hunger swarmed. Hunger to touch me, talk to me—
He never looked away as he snarled quietly at Dillon, “Let her go.”
Dillon’s fingers flexed around my shoulder.
“You have exactly two seconds to stop touching her.” Lucien never looked away, unblinking and deadly.
“If I let her go, she’ll fall,” Dillon snapped. “You’re both extremely weak. Now that you’re awake, you need—”
“Isaid—” Lucien sucked in a sharp breath, his eyes narrowing with terrifying focus. “Let. Her.Go.”
Muttering under his breath, Dillon obeyed. He gritted his teeth as gravity went to rip me back down, but Lucien lashed his arm around me and yanked me close.
Thesecondhe touched me—the moment our bodies crashed against each other—the world blinked out.
Reality folded, darkness swooped, and that bond between us snapped desperately tight.
I stumbled as light fractured through the sudden dark.
I staggered forward on bare feet, no longer in bed but somehow standing.
A foggy, misty realm manifested around us, hushed and hollow. “What...?” Turning on the spot, the weakness I suffered disappeared. A rush of wintery power shot down my veins, giving me back what I hadn’t even realised I’d lost. “What...what is this place?”
It was as if we’d tripped into a snow globe—recently shaken by some invisible hand, sending the sky thick with flurries.
My heart kicked with questions, but I wasn’t afraid.
It felt almost homely...familiar.
My eyes caught on Lucien as I completed my circle. Fog swirled around his ankles, licking up the black trousers encasing his long legs.
