The faint light cuts shadows across Keir’s cheekbones. He lifts a hand and rests it, gently, against my hip.
His skin burns feverishly, and my chilled flesh drinks in that warmth as if it longs for it. His thumb brushed against my abdomen, and our eyes meet. My skin explodes like starlight, painting shadows across the wall.
Suddenly, I can’t breathe.
“Who is your father?” he breathes.
A week ago I wouldn’t have given him a name. But there’s a weakness within me that I can’t hide. I yearn for the heat of his touch, for the look he gives me.
And maybe there’s a part of me that is all swept up in this game of pretend.
If I close my eyes, maybe I could still be Merisel, his beloved future bride.
“You know who it is,” I whisper. “There is only one wraith that could steal hundreds of fae maidens from their beds.”
“Raesh. The King of the Wraiths.” His fingers skim the slope of my side from hip to ribs. His thumb works its devastating magic, for it brushes, just faintly, against the undercurve of my breast. “I knew, Zemira, but I wanted the truth from your own lips.”
I shudder.
“Leave him,” he says simply.
An incredulous laugh bursts from me. “And go where?” I hold up my glowing arms. “One hint of this and my head is removed. There is nowhere I can go.”
Nowhere that is far enough to escape my father’s wrath, and nowhere that would welcome my kind. Not to mention my soul….
Heat burns to life in his golden eyes. “There is one court that would have you.”
What? My throat grows tight.
Keir rolls onto his hands and knees, his knuckles resting on the bed on either side of my hips as he leans forward. “I told you I was searching for a bride, Zemira. I told you I had waited hundreds of years for this moment. The stars aligned when I sent out that Summons. She was always going to arrive at that moment of time. My bride was going to walk into my court, and I was going to claim her. And the second you appeared, I knew you were the one fate had gifted to me.”
“No.” My protest is weak.
“Leave him. Come to me. You want the truth? You have rooms awaiting you at my court. You have an entire wardrobe of clothes. You will be safe. Protected—”
“I can’t leave my father!” I wrap my arms around me. And I would. I would if I could, but with that soul-trap around his neck, my father owns me. “He’d kill me if I even think about it.”
“He has to get to you first,” Keir points out.
I rake my fingers through my hair. This is a nightmare. Because he tempts me so. “You don’t understand. He doesn’t have to find me. He doesn’t have to get to me. He can kill me with a single snap of his fingers at any time he chooses.”
Keir goes still. The dragon’s a dangerous presence lurking behind amber eyes. “How?”
I shake my head. This isn’t happening. This is surreal. I can’t believe he still thinks I’m the bride who was meant for him, even after everything I’ve said and done.
Dreams don’t exist.
Fate isn’t meant for girls like me.
“Please don’t.” I wrap my arms around myself. “I know what I am, Keir. I’ve made my peace with it. And while it’s incredibly tempting, I’m a wraith. You’re accepted within the Blessed courts now, but if you take me as your bride, you won’t be.”
“I don’t give a fuck about their acceptance.”
I meet his eyes. “I can’t be what you want me to be.”
Keir stares at me for long seconds before he sighs in surrender. “You’re not merely a wraith, Zemira. You’re fae too. And if you want the truth, I think your mother was of the Court of the Moon and Stars.”
“What?”
The Court of the Moon and Stars is mere myth to most of the fae these days—though I have wondered whether my gifts came from there. Once upon a time it sat high in the Forbidden Mountains, a palace carved of alabaster that gleamed like the moon itself.
It was destroyed several decades ago by an avaricious king.
“Why would you say that?” I can’t bear to sit still any longer and push off the bed. There’s some escape in movement, in pacing—some escape from the emotion clawing its way up my throat. For as long as I can remember, my mother has been a mere shadow to me.
I don’t know her name.
I don’t know where she came from.
I don’t know if she had sisters or brothers, or parents. Or if she liked cheese or blackberries or riding or painting. I don’t know anything about her.
All I know is that she had eyes as clear as an alpine lake, just like mine.
And that she gave me three names.
She loved me. She loved me enough to name me true, according to the old ways. I have to believe that. I have to. But it’s a knot that twines its way around my heart like strangler vines, because no one and nothing has ever loved me, and if I cling to that… then it makes the stone weight in my chest feel a little like a heart.
“Because the Queen of the Court of Moon and Stars was a Shadow Walker, just like you,” he finally says. “It ran in her blood, and some say it’s the reason her court was shattered. She had three daughters, each as fair and lovely as the others, and each one powerful and dangerous. Myrinda, Amithiele, and Zyra Starsworn.”
My breath catches as he conjures a ball of light into his hands. Movement swirls within it as it spins, letting shadows dapple over the walls. It’s like a snow globe. A child’s snow globe. But it’s not glass. No. It’s a dream. A fragment in time, captured within a tiny
