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Burned.

By iron-tipped whips, bars, and blades.

Wren couldn’t touch the iron key in Dante’s Bookstore. Iron was the choice of every weapon in the dungeon, and wielded with hands clad in black leather gloves.

My dreams were of Faerie.

My prisoner was High Fae.

And I was travelling through it, in real life, towards the cell in which the beautiful, tortured body from my dreams was being held captive.

Wren was leading me right to him.

One by one, the pieces fell into place.

Wren was the invisible force holding me back every night when the torture was completed with that impossibly strong and disarmingly familiar grip. Even his scent had been familiar, though I’d mistakenly relished in the cologne, not realising who he was. Until then.

I was dreaming of Faerie, but this time I was alsoinFaerie.

I’ve made it this far.

And so I screamed louder than I ever had before, until my eardrums buckled against the decibels and my throat turned dry.

“Lucais!”

And then I woke up.

Two arms, tense with corded muscle, lifted me from the bed.

“Aura. Aura, wake up.”

I was trembling all over, my head lolling against something warm and hard. My eyelids fluttered against the sleep glue that had stuck them together, straining to burst open. But itwas dark in my dreams, the moonlight retreating from the cell as if I’d scared it away, and I was still searching for his face…

His fingers brushed the hair away from my eyes, tangling in my sleep-tossed curls. He lifted my head with that hand while his other arm curled around my waist and my legs, pinning me to his chest.

“It’s okay,” he murmured. It was like I was underwater, hearing him call out to me from above the surface. “It’s just a dream.”

Lucais.

Lucais was here. I’d found him. I’d passed through the gateway, made it out of the Forest, and he had escaped from his cell.

I had no idea what was supposed to come next, but I opened my eyes.

It was not Lucais holding me on the bed.

The face staring down at me belonged to his keeper.Mykeeper.

Wren.

Chapter thirteen

Elera

Ididn’t know ifWren ever truly intended to sleep outdoors because I woke up the next morning to find him lying sprawled across the green rug on the floor beside my bed.

I kicked him awake, and we ate breakfast together in brooding silence.

Shortly afterwards, we left the cottage and continued our walk further into the Court of Light and closer to the dungeon where Wren was almost certainly holding somebody prisoner.