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A boy’s voice fluttered through my head.Sing with me, Little Rose. You have the words.
Words from visions of the dream walk of my Golden King. No. This was wrong, dangerous. I conjured the Wraith from Ari’s dreams as a figment, a phantom guide on behalf of myself since I could not be there with him. He wasn’t real. Those memories were mine alone. I sang the songs as the child of Riot Ode, there hadn’t . . . there hadn’t been a boy.
I looked to the masked stranger again. Beneath the dark shade in his eyes was a look of the lost, the forgotten, the tormented. There was a plea buried beneath the shadows. As though silently begging for me to take hold, to not turn away again.
My fingers trembled as I reached for his hand on my face. The moment my palm touched the smooth leather of his gloves, memories seemed to burst like a new bloom in my mind.
Running through blood rose shrubs, giggling. Hiding beneath covered tables in Daj’s study. Feeding goats in the stables. Falling asleep on the warm grass on the back lawns to the soft hum of a voice. A boy’s voice. Days, memories, moments, whatever the hells they were, bloomed through my mind, bright and clear.
“Silas.” His name was not a question, but a statement of familiarity. I knew him.
The dark mask on my phantom’s face shifted when his mouth curled into a sneer. He yanked me against his chest. He dipped his face close. “Never forget again.”
I couldn’t draw in a deep enough breath when his arm encircled my waist. How could something feel so safe and so dangerous in the same moment? “Don’t forget what?”
“That you belong to me.”
Chapter10
The Phantom
Without another word,I slipped my fingers through hers in an unforgiving grip, and pulled us up the stairs toward the palace. Untouched for countless turns, to feel the weight of another in my palm was foreign and unsettling.
Here. She was finallyhere. A thousand untamed thoughts tumbled in a maelstrom through my mind, but all led back to that single truth—my voice, my rose, was alive and breathing.
Every few paces up the steps, I’d turn over my shoulder, all to ensure I hadn’t conjured her through dreary illusions and cruel dreams again.
“I . . . there are people I care for out there. They’ll be safe?”
“You gave the words,” I said, curious if she’d recall how our voices once entwined. “I sealed the fate song.Be still. A swift thought. Though, I do not know how long we will have before it fades.”
“That was your voice.” She didn’t ask it as a question. It was more a realization.
Calista’s face contorted into a painful wince. She slowed her steps, resisting slightly, as though seeking an opportunity to flee. It wasn’t a secret to me that she feared losing her own autonomy to choose her fate.
In truth, the sense of destiny was heady. But she still had the power. She could run. She could deny me. It could all be over. The thought of it made me taste bile in my throat. For lifetimes I’d imagined her smile, her touch. I’d imagined the way she’d draw close, as lost in me as I’d become in her.
It seemed reality was not like lonely dreams.
Calista’s arm was stretched fully. True, her hand was clasped in mine, but she made certain to keep as great a distance between us as possible. Her breaths were sharp. The kind of breaths she made when she was afraid and didn’t want it to show.
I’d heard those breaths. Memorized them. Ached to ease them. Now, they came at the sight of me.
Darkness gripped me somewhere deep inside, a tangle of anger and despair. This wasn’t how it was meant to be. To her, I was not supposed to be the monster in the dark.
Could she not sense the lengths I would go for her? The lengths I had gone?
At the top of the staircase, her gaze met mine, fierce like a thrashing sea. She tugged back on my hand. I spun around, prepared to toss her over my damn shoulder if it meant she stayed close a little longer, but met the touch of her ink-stained fingers instead. Dainty fingers. Slender, callused. I wanted to touch them, wanted to study each divot, every spiral of the skin on the tips.
My blood went cold when she gently traced the ridge of the black satin mask. On instinct, I drew back.
Forget what you see on the surface. See me.
“It’s really you,” she whispered. “What did he do to you? Was it true what happened in my Golden King’s dream?”
Gods-awful pity burned in her eyes. She saw the poison of this mask, this unfeeling memory of all that was lost to me that night. It was all she saw.
“Will you let me see?” Her thumb tucked under the lip of the mask,
