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Nox swiped the pastry and launched himself off my shoulder, shifting from cat to tiny dragon in the span of a blink. He vanished through the closed door like he was no more than a ghost.

Maybe I needed to take lessons from the dragon too.

“Show off,” I grumbled.

Kevin chittered his agreement, and I threw a raised brow in his direction. He put down the extra pastry he’d swiped.

The little mote drifted to my fingers, not touching, but lingering close.

Zhenjun’s gaze landed on the mote drifting near my fingers. His eyes narrowed. He stepped forward, hand raised, electricity glowing around his fingers. Power, I realized, energy.

My hand closed around the mote before he could reach it.

Pain hit me like a freight train, sharp, deep, stealing my breath. I choked on air, frozen midmotion, and for a second, I forgot how to exist. My vision went white, hot and blinding, flashing once, twice, then easing as if draining away.

I sucked in air as the room swam back into focus. Ivan was curled against my side, holding me up, touching me—because only in this place could I be solid to the living.

“Fuck, that was terrible.” I had no idea what had just happened. The mote was gone. Had I killed it?

A quiet pulse of energy stirred inside me, faint but present.

No. I’m here.

Zhenjun hovered, power vanished from his hand, but his expression remained tight. “Must you touch everything? Like a child who cannot believe fire burns until they feel it for themselves.”

“I thought they were just fragments of emotions?”

“They are. Discarded. No one wants to keep pain.” His gaze was cold, assessing. “Do you? Why would you touch it? Let it sink in and weave itself into your being? Now you’ll never be rid of it. And you don’t even know who it belonged to.” A pause. “What if it was from the ex-lover who tried to kill you?”

If all that remained of him was this nightmare, would I have wanted this to be the last of him? The pain had vanished, but the memory of it remained vivid. A warning.

My gaze swept the room, taking stock of the many motes floating around after having followed me. It brought a new meaning to the concept of hell.

“What usually happens to these remnants?”

“They eventually fade,” Zhenjun said, “or sink into the weave to find a new place in the design. Pain is fleeting, but sharp, and always on the horizon.”

Well, that was a glass-all-empty point of view. And usually, I was the pessimist in the room.

“Letting it merge with you has given it new purpose.” Beau re-entered the room with a tray of cookies, each bigger than my hand, and another pot of tea. “Life is rarely without hardship. But it is how mortals progress.”

If there was any semblance of who the pain belonged to, there wasn’t enough left to identify.

Would it matter? Did I hate Cassidy for what he’d done? Yes. Was he a very evil man? Probably. But we’re all the heroes of our own stories. Maybe he had a backstory that led him to that madness.

I’d never know.

What I did know was that wasting time and emotion on a dead man would whittle down my existence faster.

“Should I be sending them back into the weave or merging with them?” I asked Beau instead of Zhenjun. The witch seemed more willing to create rather than simply destroy.

Beau set the tray down and settled back onto his cushion, taking his time. He poured himself a cup of tea, then another, sliding it across the table toward me like an offering.

“Is that the right question?” he asked.

I thought about that for a long moment. The unfamiliar pulsing inside me had faded, as if the mote had fully merged with me, though the memory of that excruciating pain still lingered at the back of my mind.

“I touched it.” But it hadn’t been the first time. In the warehouse, one had clung to me before finally dropping free. It had chosen not to attach. “They choose?”