She laughed quietly as if my question dredged up the past. “It means Little Furnace. In English, Luxin translates to Furnace Heart.”
My knees almost gave out.
Luxin.
Furnace Heart.
Something yankedhardon my soul.
A sudden vicious tug as if my heart had been wrenched clean out of my chest.
Fire.
Everywhere.
Burning.
Burning.
My vision shot white, ripping me from the pavilion and dumping me somewhereelse.
Fire licked at stone, curling around a rounded ceiling, melting rock until it rivered to the ground. Fire roared, turning pebbles into liquid. Flames howled, heating glacial water into boiling steam.
Lucien sat cross-legged in the middle of a pool, the epicentre of the rampage. His hands clawed at his knees, his chin ground against his chest, his entire skin blistered with fire—
I staggered as the vision cut short, dumping me back into his room.
Everything seemed perfectly normal but...Ifelthim.
Felt his heart thundering its last beats, his lungs failing, his body screaming on the edge of collapse.
Dying.
He’s dying.
And here I wastalking.
My gaze landed on blackened handprints on the floor, triggering what I’d forgotten.
Lucien hunting me across the floor.
Begging me to help keep him alive—
“Lucien!” Clutching my chest as if I could physically hold my breaking heart together, I lurched past Auntie Mei and ran for the open doors.
“Miss Rook?” She spun after me. “Where are you going?”
Whisper abandoned his dinner and flew with me.
I didn’t stop to apologise.
I just ran in the direction my heart was yanking me—the invisible thread that’d bound us together pulling, pulling,pulling.
But it was fading, fraying, threatening to snap—
Hurry.
Hurry.
