“Why white,” I ask finally, my voice sounding strange in the vast room, “if everything here is so dark?”
Masha doesn’t look up from adjusting the fall of the fabric at my shoulder.
“White is a symbol of fortune and luck,” she says. “And the master will need both to pull this off, I would wager.”
My stomach tightens. “Pull this off?”
She stills.
“It is not my place?—”
“Well,” I say, meeting her eyes in the mirror, nerves buzzing, “that doesn’t seem to be stopping you. So why not just go for broke?”
She studies me for a long moment.
Then she nods.
“If you insist, milady.”
There it is.
A flicker of something in her gaze—approval, maybe. Respect.
Pride fills me.
And in about a minute I know I should have held onto that feeling.
Because once she starts talking, once I really understand, everything shifts.
Thorne didn’t take me to ravage me like some fae prince out of those wildly popular romantasy books I keep seeing on social media and never have time to read.
There is no decadent cruelty in this.
No idle hunger.
He took me because he is desperate.
Because his people are hurting, being forced into war and ruin.
Because The Ember Vein—the source of something so fundamental it makes my head spin to think about—is under threat.
Because without it—without Nightfall—worlds unravel.
Dreams fail. Hope thins.
Entire universes go quiet.
To save it? Thorne needs a matebond.
A zareth.
A viyella.
Me.
He needs me.
He didn’t choose me because I’m pretty. Or interesting. Or because I kissed him back.
