her arms over her head, crouching, and only stood when she realized that the branches formed an arched ceiling. She stood in a wide, open room, a medieval hall of a fairy-tale castle. The trunks became the walls around, adorned by great murals depicting the first act of
“Dance with me,” the wolf said, shifting. Now he wore Prince Albrecht’s costume and looked ridiculous. He had Jasper’s face again, too.
Whatever face he wore, Annabella knew him for what he was and had danced with him for the last time.
Annabella wasn’t about to playact his fantasy. She looked away.
“You loved me once.”
She didn’t dignify that with a response. She’d been performing at the time, the Shadows making her judgment questionable. Her judgment was just fine at the moment.
“What about now?” Jasper morphed, took on height and broadened, and became Custo. Annabella’s heart tripped in her chest.
A low-down, dirty, rotten trick. Very wolfy. But at least her anger got the best of her fear. She dared to ignore that, too.
“You will forget him,” the wolf said. “Memory doesn’t last long here. Eventually you will be mine.”
Not going to happen. Not in a million years. She already belonged to someone, and she wasn’t giving him up in her heart. This new reality she would endure, moment by moment, until…Until what? The end of the world? Until the little voices said, “exit this way”? Didn’t matter. They were both in for a long wait.
The wolf bowed like a prince in a ballet, like Albrecht, and then split into creeping darkness, his shadows, leaving her alone.
If he meant to scare her, he got it wrong. Alone was wonderful. Alone she could think, steel herself for what was to come. She hoped he left her alone forever.
She blinked, and a banquet was laid before her, the rich table filled with every kind of delicious food she could conceive.
She double-blinked. The food was still there.
The feast before her was every holiday dinner, roasted meats and their accompaniments, as well as great baskets of perfectly ripe fruit—oranges, pomegranates, thick bunches of grapes. These were circled by baked delicacies, her favorites, the rich, creamy desserts she forbade herself for dance. Napoleons, eclairs, and, hooray!—cheesecake. The smells were tantalizing, intoxicating.
Annabella’s mouth watered, her belly ached, and her body complained with deep fatigue.
The spread looked so dang good.
But it was
Except, her mouth watering…the immortal fae might not need to eat, but she was human. If she didn’t eat, she would die. And she wasn’t quite ready to cross that boundary yet. The Ice Bitch had openly acknowledged that Annabella was dangerous. Could do stuff. And the freaky voices seemed to agree.
Maybe there was hope yet.
So how was she supposed to keep her strength when she was hungry? How could she fight the wolf with her blood sugar plunging? Low blood sugar always made her cranky and weak. How could she be ready for anything if she did not eat? She needed nutritious sustenance.
Annabella reached for a chocolate nub, but the whispers stopped her.
The voices were faint, timid, and many layered.
They made no sense this time. Annabella popped the chocolate into her mouth. The morsel melted in delicious ecstasy, the texture smooth as velvet, the taste dark like sin and sex. It made her tingle all over. Why had she been dancing all her life when she could have been eating?
The voices whined, redoubling, as if in warning.
Annabella didn’t care. Could they say, “delicious”?
She dipped a finger into the edge of a napoleon and licked the cream. Scrumptious. Her heart was thundering in her chest, a pleasurable coolness crawling over her skin. The silvery sensation hit her blood and had her cells singing, her vision slightly blurring. Yeah, baby.
What she needed was a fork and a plate. No sooner than she thought it, they appeared, the utensil made of heavy gold, the plate edged with it.
Annabella set to work. The feast was delish, every taste decadent. And no matter how much she ate, she never became full, another happy wonder of the magical dinner. She worked her way down the table and finally collapsed—
Reaching toward the heaping basket, she noticed a set of doors beyond that came together in one great arch.
What was through there?
She forgot the fruit and rose, the simple movement thrilling her muscles, bones, her nerves that crackled along her skin. She exited into the forest clearing.
But where she was, and why she was there, she had no idea.
She didn’t feel right either. Her body had no weight, as if the air carried her in its subtle currents, eddies tugging at her and floating her skirts.
Forever midnight filled the sky. In the trees, soft glows flitted behind the tall trunks. She almost made to follow them, but her gaze was captured by a grave, heaped with flowers.
So sad. Whose?
She tiptoed forward, skimming along the grasses, to examine the marker.
Grief welled in her heart, and she crossed her arms over her chest. Love, life lost. An eternity consigned to an existence as a wili, haunting the night.
A sound behind her, and she turned.
It was Albrecht, her love, coming to bid her farewell.
Perhaps the stars would stretch the moment, and they could dance, one last time, until dawn.
A tree was stalking him, or Custo had passed that gnarled trunk for the third time. Either was possible, so he kept going, straining for any sound or movement that might lead him to Annabella. He saw only great, luminous forest stretching out of layered shadows and heard only hushed whispers taunting his course. What he wouldn’t give for a bagful of bread crumbs. He was getting nowhere, and sick to death of it.
“Annabella!” he called at regular intervals. If he attracted some other Shadow creature, he’d pin the thing down and demand directions, but except for the indistinct voices, the wood seemed unnervingly uninhabited.
Deliberately doubling back on his path, he caught his first flash of movement and leaped toward it, scrabbling over a root-bumpy rise for a better view.
He called through the trees. “Annabella!”
But instead he found a man dressed in mottled green-gray combat gear, armed and ready for action. Custo tripped to a stop. It was Adam, his face set in his I-know-what-to-do expression, eyes direct, jaw tight.
“What are you doing here?” Custo asked, half excited, half concerned. Adam was supposed to be warning Luca about the wraiths.
“I came after you to help,” Adam said, “and I found her.”
Custo’s heart leaped. Trust Adam to be able to navigate in these shifting woods. Anyone else and he wouldn’t believe it. “Show me.”
“This way.” Adam took off at a wary jog, careful to slow at blind spots along the way and test uncertain
