But want was useless, and exhaustion was relentless. It pulled me under, and the world slipped away.
The sky blazed white above me, too pale to be sun, yet so bright it seared my eyes. The brilliance seeped from the stones beneath my feet, from the very air around me, until it felt as if the earth itself was bleeding radiance. Crimson stretched in every direction. Not dust-red, not earth-red—something darker, richer. Like blood had soaked in. Like the bones of gods had been ground into the soil and still pulsed with memory.
Ahead of me rose a vast throne of black stone veined with gold. The lines glowed, beating in time with my breath. A barefoot woman stood before it. Her garment pooled around her in folds the color of twilight, and a crown of roots and fire curled over her brow. She lifted her head as I drew nearer, and my chest locked.
Her face—gods, her face…it was gone. It wasn’t veiled or hidden from me, it was erased. Light spilled where eyes should have been, her mouth a blur of fog on glass. Yet I felt her watching. Each step I took pulled her gaze down my skin, heavy as chains.
I shivered.
And then I saw him at her side. He was too tall to be human, and too radiant to be mortal. Golden wings stretched wide behind him, vast as the horizon. They caught the light with every shift, feathers flashing like molten metal, scattering dust that shimmered as it fell. Heat rolled from him, rippling the air, though shadow threaded through his body as though he’d been forged from the last dying blaze of a star.
My feet stopped moving, but my eyes didn’t. I couldn’t look away.
Not even when the wind shifted, cold and charged, lifting the edges of my gown and carrying with it the scent of fire and salt. Not even when the throne began to tremble.
I took another step forward, and the crimson ground felt soft beneath my feet, wet somehow, though it left no trace on my skin.
The faceless queen tilted her head, and the golden being turned. And his eyes … they were every color and none, silver and flame, as though the heavens themselves had bled into them.
The moment our gazes locked, the world fractured. I felt it like lightning in my veins. A soundless scream echoing through me and my knees buckled.
The wind howled around us, though nothing about them moved.
He raised a hand, not in greeting, but in command, and my lungs seized. My body moved without my will, drawn forward, pulled by an invisible chain wound deep.
And in that instant, before the dream split apart beneath me … I knew him. Not his name. Not his face. But the feel of him. Bound to me before time had a name. And every trembling piece of me knew he was coming.
For me.
I surfaced from the dream in a lurch, breath catching as if the flames had followed me. The room lay cloaked in shadow, the fire nothing but a scatter of red embers whispering against the grate.
I pushed upright, every motion heavy, my skin damp with sweat. My heart thrashed in my chest, hammering up my throat as though it meant to tear its way free. The sheets tangled at my waist, and I shoved them off with shaking hands and rose, my bare feet sinking into the rug’s worn fibers, though I barely felt the softness.
A dream. That’s all it had been.
But why did that not feel true?
Maybe it was because smoke seemed to be lingering on my tongue, bitter and acrid, clinging to the back of my throat as if I’d swallowed fire. Or maybe it was because the images refused to loosen their hold, wrapped tightly around me like another layer of flesh.
The balcony doors rattled against their hinges when I shoved them open. Cold air knifed through the room, tugging at my nightgown as I stepped out, bare feet slapping against the stone.
I braced my palms on the railing, forehead pressing hard against its chill. Beyond me the sea stretched endless and dark, a sheet of crimson broken only by starlight trembling on its surface.
“Just a dream,” I whispered, but my voice scraped raw, a sound fit for confession.
The cold wasn’t doing anything to chase away the heat that still roared in my chest. My breath came uneven, like I’d left part of myself back in that strange and terrible kingdom.
“Dreams don’t hold power,” I said louder this time, to the waves, to the stars. “They don’t.”
But the words sat sour on my tongue.
I closed my eyes, and still I saw it. The throne. The faceless woman. The golden being whose gaze had split me open.
I slipped back inside, the air thick and unmoving compared to the salt-tinged wind outside. My feet carried me to the basin in the corner, the bronze vessel gleaming darkly in the firelight. I cupped the water in both hands and splashed it over my face.
The shock of cold hit hard. Droplets raced down my cheeks, clung to my lashes, and soaked into the thin fabric of my nightdress. I gripped the rim of the basin and leaned into the chill, letting it steady me and pull me back into myself.
The surface fractured the reflection of my own eyes staring back, wide and haunted.
