Serena woke up in a cell.
Or at least she thought she did.
The walls were damp stone, slick with moisture and sothing darker. The air was thick with the sll of iron and rot. A single torch flickered on the far wall, casting shadows that danced.
Fin Shadowclaw hung from the ceiling by his wrists, iron chains biting deep enough to show raw flesh beneath. His head lolled forward, dark hair matted with blood. His shirt had been torn away, and his torso was a map of wounds, old and new, so still weeping.
But the worst was the stab wound in his side, still seeping crimson.
"Fin!" Serena ran to him. "Fin, can you hear ?"
He didn’t respond. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was shallow and labored.
She reached for him, but her hands passed through his body like smoke.
Horror clawed up her throat.
She turned, searching the cell for sothing, anything, and that’s when she saw him.
Hyran hung from chains on the opposite wall.
His face was barely recognizable beneath the swelling and the blood. His robes were shredded, and dark bruises ringed his throat like a collar. He was unconscious, his body limp, his breathing so faint she could barely see his chest rise.
"No." The word ca out broken. "No, no, no."
Serena looked down at her hands. They were solid. Real.
She fabricated a dagger and dragged it across her palm. Blood welled up imdiately, bright and gold.
The odds of this actually working were low, considering she couldn’t touch him. But she was going to try.
She squeezed blood from her hand onto him. To her relief, it didn’t fall through him like air. Instead, her blood landed like gold paint on his wound.
For a mont, nothing happened, and her stomach dropped, because if this place had different rules, if her blood didn’t work here, she had nothing else.
Then she saw her blood sink into his flesh like water into parched earth.
She let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding, and watched his wounds close.
The worst stab wound took the longest. After a minute, finally, its edges knitted together.
Fin’s eyes flew open.
He looked down at his side, at the wound that was healing itself, and his brow furrowed in confusion.
His gaze snapped across the cell, sharp even through the pain, scanning every corner.
Then he went still and his nostrils flared.
His head turned slowly, like a predator locking onto sothing it couldn’t see. He inhaled again, deeper, and his expression shifted from confusion to recognition.
"Serena?" His voice broke on her na, rough and desperate, and the sound of it split her open.
She was right in front of him. Close enough to count his lashes. And he was staring through her.
"What the..." His voice was hoarse and cracked from disuse or screaming or both. He pulled against the chains, turning his head, still tracking her scent. "I can sll you. Where are you?"
She tried to touch his face. Her fingers passed through him like air, and the absence of him tore a sound from her chest she didn’t recognize.
"I’m here," she whispered, eyes reddening. "But you can’t hear ."
She took a steadying breath and crossed to Hyran, who was in worse shape. She squeezed her bloody palm, gold dripping on the worst of his wounds. A gash across his ribs that had gone deep enough to show bone.
Her blood sank into him the sa way it had with Fin. But it was slower. His body resisted it longer, the damage deeper, and she watched the bone disappear beneath new muscle before the skin finally knit shut over it. .
Hyran stirred, color returning to his ashen face. His eyes opened slowly, unfocused and glazed with pain.
He saw Fin watching him from across the cell.
"Shadowclaw?" Hyran’s voice was a rasp. "What..."
"Tell she’s not here," Fin rasped.
"She’s not here. You are imagining her again," Hyran said. But there was a note in his voice that didn’t quite commit to the lie.
Fin opened his mouth to object, but at that mont, their cell door groaned open.
Serena bolted upright in bed, gasping for air.
Her heart was slamming against her ribs, and sweat soaked through her silk chemise. The sheets were tangled around her legs, and her hands were shaking.
A dream. It had been a dream.
Her palm still throbbed. She looked down and saw a cut.
The why of it escaped her. Her mind was fog, thick and impenetrable, but sothing ugly sat in her gut. A dread she couldn’t na.
Voices drifted in from the sitting room.
"The nightmares are getting worse. She talks in her sleep and I can feel her emotions through the matebond," Dex said, voice cracking. "Every night, Alaric."
"Breaking a matebond as deep as yours and hers was damaging." Alaric’s voice was clinical and detached. "She should consider herself fortunate."
"Yeah, she looks really fortunate. Thriving. Top of her ga." Dex’s voice was raw beneath the sarcasm. "My gut says there’s sothing else to it. Sothing beyond the matebond break. It’s been getting worse, not better."
His voice was pained and Serena could feel his exhaustion and worry through their matebond. And underneath it, guilt. Like he was the reason this was happening.
"So what do I do?" Dex asked, quieter now. "Because watching her go through this every night and not being able to fix it is killing ."
"Calming tonics at night might ease the symptoms. I can prepare a course of them. The dreams will fade as she heals."
"And if they don’t?"
"Then we explore other options. But for now, rest and ti are the best dicine."
"I don’t need options. I need a fix. Yesterday."
Serena let herself fall back against the pillows. Her eyes fluttered closed, and exhaustion pulled at her like a tide.
She didn’t hear the rest of the conversation.
✦✦✦
The second ti she woke wasn’t from a dream. It was the sensation of wrongness. The air was unnaturally cold.
Her eyes snapped open, chest heaving. She suppressed the instinct to jerk into a sitting position, lying paralyzed to avoid waking the man behind her.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled.
She scanned the dimness of the room, her heart stopping as a silhouette at the foot of the bed sharpened into focus.
The High Emperor of Orosia looked exactly like he had no business being in her bedroom at this hour, which, based on the faint amusent on his face, was precisely the point.
He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, examining her the way soone might examine a particularly interesting specin pinned under glass.
"Boo," he said.
It would have been scary, but Serena was expecting him to do sothing like that. So, she ignored him, closing her eyes, trying to go back to sleep.
He’s not real. Just my imagination or sothing fucked.
She reminded herself.
"Riveting performance," the High Emperor said, circling the bed with the casual authority of soone who owned every room he entered. "Truly. The way you’re lying there, pretending the most powerful being in all continents isn’t three feet from your face. Remarkable commitnt."
Serena lay there for another minute, ignoring the comnts. She was not about to have a conversation with a hallucination while lying next to her mate in a silk chemise.
"You know, most people scream. I appreciate the variety," he said, sitting on the bed now. Making himself right at ho.
He continued talking. Sothing about the futility of mortal denial and the inevitability of his will. Or possibly he was critiquing the décor. Serena wasn’t paying close enough attention to tell the difference.
She rolled her eyes.
Fine. If she was losing her mind, then so be it. But she wasn’t going to lie in the dark and wait for answers to co to her.
She gently slid out of Dex’s arms, careful to not wake him. She pulled on boots and her cloak and left the room, headed for the library.
The High Emperor kept pace beside her, his footsteps making no sound on the stone.
"The library," he said, and sothing in his voice sharpened. "Interesting choice. Tell , little queen. What exactly do you think you’ll find there?"
She didn’t answer him.
His smile widened.
"I’m already in your head. There’s no hiding from ."
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