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“Brinna?” he yelled.
“Lucian!” she cried, hitting the wall, now trapped on the other side of their shared dream, just as she’d been separated from her family’s. She pressed her forehead against the wall as tears filled her eyes, then fell, flowing down her cheeks. “I know. I know,” she told him, each word punctuated with a sob. “We’re yoked. I know. I lost my ribbon. I love you.”
“Brinna!” His hands curled around his mouth as he yelled for her. He turned in place, as if afraid to move from where he was, as if afraid if he did, she might not find him.
“I’m here!” she cried, hitting the wall again.
He scraped at the pebbles with his feet, waiting. “I had to make a choice. An awful one.” He looked up. “Brinna? Are you there?”
“Tell me!” she shouted, smacking her palms against the wall. The gray tugged on her, Lucian and the comforting warmth of his dream flickering. “No. No,” she cried. “I’m here.”
“I had to hide his memories.”
The gray grabbed hold of her and yanked. Brinna slid away from Lucian’s dream and dropped into a chasm filled with nothing. She fought.
“Brinna!” Lucian shouted, his voice pulling her mind back, but she couldn’t see him any longer—only hear his call from so far away.
A heated, golden thread extended outward from her body. She grabbed hold and followed, gasping when she found herself pressed against Lucian’s chest. His hands framed her face. “Mi alora? Where have you been?”
“It’s coming,” she said.
Then he was gone once more, and she was surrounded by the gray deep.
“Brinna! If you can hear me, we’re coming,” Lucian yelled from somewhere else, somewhere far away where she couldn’t stay.
The gray yanked with a death grip, pulling her down deeper. As it swallowed her, her mind drifted into a dream where she was standing in a room, fluttering with gauzy curtains as the sun set. Alone.
“Lucian?” she called.
Only silence answered her back.
33
“What have you discovered?” Luc asked as he walked into Lachlan’s tent.
The prince was hunched over a table in his tent with his three henchmen and looked up when he entered. “Where were my guards?”
“I blinded them,” Luc said. “They didn’t see us.”
Lachlan straightened and sighed, clearly frustrated. “Magic.” He said it like a curse.
“What the fuck is this?” Nix asked. He scoffed. “What a dump.” He looked at Lachlan. “Oh sorry. Didn’t mean to offend if this is”–he cleared his throat–“yours.” Luc watched his brother’s dark gaze bounce between them. “You must be Luc’s latest lover. You seem his type.”
“Nixus,” Luc said, already over his brother’s barbs, which had started the moment Luc had woken from his nightmare of losing Brinna to the spell. Who would have known how much better Auri had made him? Fuck.
“Well, he looks better, but what the fuck did you do to him?” Lachlan asked.
“I had to hide his memories.”
“Hide?” Lachlan’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Of Auri.”
“Shit,” Lachlan breathed.
“Why do you keep blathering on about that?” Nix said. “It’s getting annoying, Luc.”
Nix was right. Luc had made mention of the spell, of Auri, of the memories they’d hidden as often as it made sense to do so. “I promised I would try and help you remember, Nix. And you’ll want to.”
