“What are we doing in the dream?”
The exact same as in yours, because the dreams are fucking real. All this time we’d still been in each other’s arms. If I’d known… If I’d known, would I have done anything differently? I couldn’t tell while in this shaking state. “Similar to yours,” I said. “Different in ways.”
Carmine exhaled. “The mating ritual would not progress further if we shared a bed, enamai. But sharing a bed would help us feel a lot better.”
Understatement.
I blinked, and cold doused my insides as the situation slapped me across the face. I knew where this led. To his bed. Or the floor right here. We would destroy this fortress with our reunion, but if I went there, even once, I would never,neverfind my way back to this version of myself. I couldn’t say how I’d done it before, but twice?
Twice was impossible.
“It wouldn’t help me feel better,” I hissed, looking up at him so he understood my meaning.
“How do you do it?” he asked. The shutters fell away, and I glimpsed his pain beneath. The pain I usually saw in the dreamafter pulling away from him. “I can barely take it, and I spent a century in a dungeon. How can you stand the torture?”
In the middle of the night, flustered as we both were, I answered, “You were forged through pain in the dungeons, and I was forged through love with my family. Love is the stronger force.”
He nodded after a beat. “Love is the stronger force. Love has nearly broken me where hate never did.”
You have broken me.I tore my gaze from his. He’d broken me first.
Carmine continued. “You didn’t possess this inner strength three years ago. Just the potential. Experiencing this unsatiated lust has made you formidable.”
Formidable.I let myself feel flattered by that. Just for a second. “Perhaps.”
And other experiences had pushed me to grow into myself too.
He drew closer. “Perhaps. Maybe. There are no straight answers from you, Syera. That is another chance.”
I’d always been forthright and not always on the nice end of that spectrum. The quality had been in line with my Queen Bee status at human high school. But honesty was a quality for people with nothing to lose. Until sixteen, I hadn’t considered that everything could be taken away. More than I’d ever expected.
I’d learned fear.
And I’d learned that honesty should be saved for a select few. At the end of the day, I didn’t owe anyone shit—not even an answer to their questions.
“Guess not. How does it feel?” I asked. Some of the lust was siphoning away at last, but it was going to take the rest of the night to get my body in check.
“You imply that I never gave you honesty?”
“You can answer that for yourself,” I said.
He frowned. “You underestimate the force ofmyculture in matters, Syera. Was I meant to immediately perceive how you viewed betrayal and truth? These were foreign notions to me. You underestimate my fear when I finally understood how you would view the deaths of your family by my hand. I had never been a coward before, but I had dared to love you, and so suddenly there was everything to lose.”
Heartfelt words, or so I might have thought if not for the ice lurking in his eyes. These were calculated words to get me into his bed and to work into my good graces.
“You knew,” I told him. “You never liked me discussing them, not ever. Carmine, that pit of dread in your stomach whenever you looked at me—the one you carried from the moment you dragged me here—thatwas your knowledge of what you’d done and how I would react.” I shook my head. “Spare me your bullshit.”
I walked out the way I’d come.
Carmine didn’t follow.
This route took longer to reach the training halls, and I didn’t breathe easily until I reached the large chamber. I leaned against the stone wall and dragged a hand over my face. “The same dream.”
A sob left me. I’d been fucking my family’s murderer for three years. Not often, but there had been plenty of kissing and touching even when I didn’t allow the dream to continue to the end. What was more, I’d known the dream was wrong. Not that it wasreal, yet I’d known that I shouldn’t be dreaming about him at all.
The dream was a betrayal of their memories.
Now that I knew the truth, fucking Carmine in my dreams was over for good.
