THAT NIGHT, THE DREAMwas different.
She was in the corridor again, the familiar dark passage with the warped door at the end and the golden light pulsing beneathit. The dead brides whispered as they always did, their voices layered, overlapping, pulling her forward step by step.
But tonight, as she walked, something new happened.
She looked down at her hand and saw the shape of a key imprinted in her palm. Not a real key. A phantom, an impression, as if she'd been holding one so long and so tightly that it had branded itself into her skin. The lines were clear enough to trace: a long shaft, ornate teeth, a bow shaped like a wolf's head. She'd never seen it before.
You're getting closer,Marguerite's voice said, and it sounded almost kind. Almost sad.Every night, a little closer. You'll come to us soon, Jeanne. All the brides do.
I'm not like the other brides,Jeanne tried to say. But her feet kept moving, carrying her toward the door, and the golden light grew brighter, and the key-shape in her palm began to burn.
She woke with a gasp, her right hand clenched so tightly her nails had drawn blood from her palm. Four crescent-shaped cuts, dark with it, throbbing.
Beside her, Anatole slept. He'd started staying in the cabin after the encounter with the other pirate ships, sleeping in the bed beside her instead of on deck. Not touching. A careful six inches of space between his body and hers, maintained even in sleep, as if his subconscious understood the importance of letting her choose the distance.
She watched him in the thin moonlight that came through the port holes. His face in sleep was stripped of the control he wore during waking hours. Without the cold mask, without the captain's authority, he looked younger. The lines around his eyes smoothed. The tension in his brow released. The silver-blue streak in his beard was just color, just hair, not the brand of a curse.
Her chest ached. Not the pull of the door. A different ache, one that lived in the space between her ribs and had nothingto do with magic. She reached across the six inches of space and touched his hair. Lightly. A strand of black silk between her fingers.
His eyes opened. Blue, alert, instantly present in a way that spoke to years of sleeping on a ship surrounded by threats. But when he saw it was her, the alertness softened into something else.
"Nightmare?" he asked.
She showed him her palm. The crescent cuts, the blood.
He took her hand without a word. Drew it to his mouth and pressed his lips to the wounds, gentle, his breath warm against her skin. It was such a tender gesture, so at odds with the wolf who'd stood on the foredeck that morning radiating violence, that she had to close her eyes against the sting behind them.
"I dreamed I was holding a key."
His mouth stilled against her palm. She heard the way his breath changed, the slight hitch that meant his wolf was reacting to what she'd said.
"The curse is tempting you," he said against her skin. "That's how it works. It studies the omega, finds what she wants most, and uses it to pull her closer to the room."
"What did it use on the others?"
"Curiosity, for most of them. The need to understand what he was hiding. The room promised answers, and they couldn't resist knowing." He lowered her hand but didn't release it. "What is it using on you?"
She thought about it. The dreams, the whispers, the golden light. What the dead brides said to her in the dark.Come see what love looks like when it dies. Come see what he did to us.
"The same," she said. "The door promises that if I see what's inside, I'll understand the curse well enough to break it. That the answer is in there, and all I have to do is look."
"The answer isn't in there. What's in there is death."
"I know. I know that in my waking mind. But in the dreams, it sounds so reasonable. So simple. Just open the door and see." Her voice cracked on the last word.
"The breath count," he said. "How many tonight?"
She didn't want to tell him. The number was a measure of how fast the ground was eroding beneath her, and giving it to him meant watching him calculate how much time they had left.
"Forty," she said. "Before I woke up. It would have been more if the pain in my hand hadn't pulled me out."
He was quiet for a long time. She could see him doing exactly what she'd feared: running the numbers, comparing them to what he'd seen with the other brides, plotting the trajectory of her decline toward a door she might not be able to resist.
"We need to talk about what happens if I can't fight it," she said. "If the pull gets too strong and I start walking without choosing to, the way Celeste did."
"I'll stop you."
"How? Chain me like you chain yourself during rut?"
