My eyes fly open.
Golden light flickers across my field of view, gently swirling in the air.
My heart’s strong pounding tells me I’ve regained my strength, but now I have a new problem.
Thyra leans over me, wide awake, her head tilted, her freezing-cold fingers edging toward my lips while her other hand, also bare, presses to my chest.
She isn’t herself.
Flawless are her eyes, her irises pearly gray like sacred stones, her hair pristine white, every strand like spun moonbeams coiled down her chest, and her skin as iridescent as snowflakes.
This is her blade face.
The mask she wore when the thread first connected us at the village, and it’s the face she wore when I saw her on the rooftop.
An icy countenance. As hard and impenetrable as a frozen lake.
She told me she has no control over or awareness of her actions during a blade vision. What’s more, the False Queen’s curse could be flowing malevolently through her body, dictating her actions. Endangering her.
Forcing myself to move slowly, I attempt to lift myself away from her lap, but her hand presses harder to my chest, her strength far greater than normal. Enough to push me back down.
“Thyra,” I say, keeping my voice low, avoiding my Lethian power in case it triggers a response from the magic that holds her in its thrall. “Will you let me up?”
“Hush,” she says, leaning over me. “This is where you should be.” She lowers her lips toward mine even as I attempt to angle away from her—difficult in the position I’m lying and the way she’s curled her right arm around my head.
I can’t see much of that arm, but I catch a glimpse of her bare skin from the corner of my eye, the shape of the Dragonstone Blade’s image is clearly visible.
At some point, she must have pushed her sleeve up all the way to her biceps. Residual light glimmers off her arm, another flare of golden energy glimmering softly before it fades.
When I was pulled into her blade vision before, it began with the flash of golden energy. If the energy is only fading now, then it means she hasn’t been consumed by the blade vision for long.
She remains close to me as she whispers, “Can’t you see that I’m perfect for you?”
No. This version of her isn’t.
I’ve interacted with Thyra for only a short time, and I already know that she’s like heated stones, radiating messy warmth. Heavy sometimes. Lightsometimes.
Thyra is notthis.
Testing my strength, I prepare to slide away from her, but she increases the pressure she’s exerting on my chest.
To extricate myself from her hold, I will need to wrench away from her, and I’m not prepared to do that yet.
Again, I can’t risk what the curse might do to her.
“You have trouble asking for help,” she says, easing the pressure on my chest, her fingertips dancing across my skin through the rips in my shirt. “You have trouble asking for what you want.”
My breath catches as her lips brush my jaw, intoxicatingly close to my mouth, the scent of her hair like icy roses, and the whispered air between her lips and mine becoming powerful in my senses.
She utters a question that carries the near-force of my ancestors’ voices. “Why don’t you simply take what you want? Why are you fighting it?”
With that, she presses closer to me, hooking her upper leg over my hips.
“You can do anything you want to me right now. I won’t stop you.”
Her voice is fucking intoxicating.
But my logic remains clear: this isn’t her.
