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There is a moment during nightmares when the terror becomes too great to bear. When the only thing to do is scream inside your subconscious—an internal, gut-ripping sound—in the hope that you might just scream yourself awake.

I felt that same scream climbing inside me now.

The pressure of it clogged my throat, emptied my head, left a roaring in my ears, as the king’s mouth moved against my skin once more, obscenely intimate.

“Do you like the dress?” he whispered.

And my faculties returned.

I wrenched forward, scrambling frantically out of his hold. But I only managed to bang my hip against the table before he spun me around, slamming me against the tentpole so hard that the back of my head reverberated from the force.

My specter surged out—a wild, desperate eruption, too fluid with my fear.

The power broke around his shoulders like a wave, and he tutted. “There’ll be none of that.”

Then my focus narrowed on the sensation of a cool blade pressing against my throat.

I froze, knowing he was not using the weapon to keep me still, as he had that night in the palace tunnels. From the way the blade’s edge dug into me, hard enough that my raging pulse drummed against the steel, I knew that this time, he would gladly make the cut.

But for now he held me in place, simply because he could, his breath hot against my face, his tight fist crushing my wrists together, the wall of his body blotting out the light and throwing me into darkness. His knife was thin and sickle-shaped—somehow more terrifying than an ordinary blade—and I trembled as he scraped its curved edge up the length of my throat and used it to tilt my chin up.

I met his gaze, and my specter turned liquid inside me. Because despite the weeks that had passed, I might as well have been back in the palace kitchens where we’d left off: trapped in his grasp as he loomed over me, his expression sculpted from ice, his pupils reflecting the image of my own horror.

I will find you, Little Thorn, he’d said that night. It will be in my hands again.

And now the compass felt impossibly heavy at my thigh.

“I could have poisoned you,” he murmured with the voice of a lover. “Do you know why I didn’t? Because my guards have eyes on our lovely Perla. And if anything happens to me, they will gut her very slowly and very painfully. Is that what you want?”

“No,” I breathed, the pressure of the blade making speech difficult.

“Then tell me you understand.”

“I understand.”

He leaned closer, lashes dipping, his mouth stopping inches from mine. “Tell me you’re going to be very good for me.”

I tried to swallow and failed. “I will,” I said, the words a wisp of air against his lips.

Erik must have read the truth in them—must have known that I wouldn’t fight him while he held Perla’s life in his hands—because, satisfied, he released my wrists.

His posture loosened as he exhaled, his forehead sinking to rest against mine. With the knife’s edge trapping me in this position, I didn’t dare lurch away.

“Do you know how many of my dreams you’ve haunted these past weeks?” He skimmed his blade down my exposed neckline as though in a caress, leaving a trail of goose bumps. “How many times you have stabbed me, and I, you? How many mornings I woke with the taste of you in my mouth?”

His free hand came up around the back of my head, cradling a tender spot that must have bruised when he’d flung me against the pole. If not for the blade he positioned against my stomach, we would have presented the perfect image of reunited lovers: all heavy breathing and softly spoken words.

“How?” I whispered, voice strangled.

He knew what I was asking—how did you find me, how are you here?—because he huffed a dark laugh that sent my heart rate climbing. “If you didn’t want me to know what you were doing on this side of the sea, you shouldn’t have paraded yourself like a party gift sent on my behalf. I look forward to repaying the empress for the way she degraded you.” He peeled back an inch and looked me over, his gaze settling on my white lace glove.

I tensed as his fingers closed around my wrist again, and he brought my hand between us. He nodded to the glove and smirked. “Is that for me?” he asked, clearly knowing about Banarrati customs. Knowing I’d worn this glove on the pretense of saving my touch for him alone.

I was shaking too hard to form a fist as he drew the top of my index finger between his lips. And, leisurely, holding my gaze, he scraped his teeth up its length until he’d gathered the empty tip of fabric. Then, in a more pulse-pounding echo of when he’d first removed my gloves during Rose Season, he slowly dragged it away, leaving my skin exposed.

He adjusted his grip to take the glove from between his teeth, and then sighed, looking down at the thorn cut on my finger. The cut that now smarted from the soft pressure of his bite.

“I was disappointed,” he murmured. “Hurt.” He briefly brushed his lips against the pad of my finger, as though to kiss the wound better. “Yet I take my share of responsibility for your actions. Daradon is your home, and I made you feel as though you had to run from it. But you should have known that I would forgive your treason. You acted out of fear.” A little frown creased his forehead. “You still do.”