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When I woke, my entire body ached.

I groaned loudly, burying my face in the pillows, pushing Sebastien’s hands from my waist. My mouth was dry, lips cracked, and my head throbbed with the ferocity of a thunderstorm. I thought I might die of thirst, but the pounding in my head told me not to move. Not until the world stopped spinning.

Sebastien stirred, but still I didn’t budge, the weight of the skies pressing down around my skull. After a few moments, he nudged my ribs and I pulled myself upright, stomach lurching.

He sat beside me, holding out a wooden cup. ‘Drink.’

I took it and drank eagerly, the water trickling down my chin, but I didn’t care.

‘Better?’ he asked, watching with a smirk as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, passing him back the empty mug.

‘Marginally,’ I grunted.

Sebastien chuckled. The rawness of his laughter resonated in my chest, making me forget, momentarily, my discomfort. I stretched out my tired limbs as he set the cup down and lay back, fingertips whispering down the ridge of my spine. It was still early – too early to be awake. The room was streaked with soft blue light, the first herald of dawn, and already the sun felt too bright, too intrusive.

I sank back into him, nestling my face in the bridge of his shoulder. My fingers skimmed over his torso, my body sluggish, limbs heavy from exertion, threaded with an unfamiliar ache.

Outside, snow fell. Frost licked the windows and the fleecy clouds gathering at the sea’s end promised something even colder to come. My eyes travelled to the roses wreathed through the canopy as a petal parted from its stem and drifted, red as blood, on to the mattress beside me.

Something in my stomach grew heavy at the sight. Why were they dying?

Sebastien shifted beneath me and I looked up to find his gaze trained on my face, burning away the last embers of sleep.

‘What’re you thinking about?’ he asked, voice sweeping through the quiet room.

‘Just . . . everything,’ I mumbled.

His arms tightened around me. ‘That isn’t a proper answer.’

I tipped my head up and shot him a triumphant smile. ‘Well, now you know how it feels.’

I felt his answering laugh in every part of me. I pressed my face back against his rumbling chest, unable to shake my smile. We lay in silence for a long time, cocooned in warmth beneath the slowly descending petals.

I skimmed a hand up his chest, coming to rest over his ribcage. My fingertips drummed against his skin. There it was – the root of every reason we could never work.

‘Is it really gone?’ I whispered. ‘Are you really . . .’ I couldn’t bring myself to say the word. Heartless had always been an epithet, a title. I’d never imagined it could be true.

Sebastien exhaled, then nodded.

My own heart thudded immeasurably louder. ‘How? Did someone . . . cut it out?’

Hair fell across his face. ‘Aye,’ he said, a new kind of darkness shadowing his eyes. ‘I did.’

A chill swept through me, ominous and cold as the frost outside. I tried to picture it, to imagine the Heartless King – then, just a king – on his knees before some monstrous god, a blade in his hand as he carved open his own chest.

‘What could possibly be worth your heart?’ I asked, my fingernails digging into his skin, into that hollow place, unable to fathom his emptiness.

I felt his lips in my hair, his breath coiling in the shell of my ear as he said, ‘There are some things we’d sacrifice anything for.’

I shivered. I knew the feeling; the determination, the courage I’d never possessed before, rearing its head in a moment of need. He was right. I’d risked everything, and I’d do it again.

‘Tell me,’ I said.

‘You can’t fix me,’ Sebastien grumbled in reply.

‘I know.’

His gaze burned deep into mine – he knew what I was asking, which part of him I longed to understand. He took a long, heavy breath and I waited, settling my head against his chest, my heart fluttering wildly. Finally, he spoke.