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He jerked beneath her touch and she leaned over him, this time shaking him harder. ‘It’s a dream,’ she said again. ‘You need to —’

With a ragged gasp, his eyes flew open, molten silver and savage.

And then suddenly Thea was on her back, the full weight of him pressed against her as he pinned her to the ground, panting.

‘Hawthorne,’ she said. ‘It’s Thea. It’s me, the Alchemist.’

But his gaze was feral, as though he had no sense of who she was or where they were.

‘Wilder,’ she said his given name softly, but as a command. ‘Wilder.It’s Thea.’

Slowly, the Warsword blinked. The glaze over his eyes faded. ‘Thea…?’ he breathed.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded.He’s never said my name before, she realised, suddenly more keenly aware of his body against hers.

He seemed to realise at the same time and jolted back as if burned.

The cold swept in where he’d touched her.

‘I’m… I’m sorry,’ he murmured, his shoulders sagging. ‘I don’t know what happened.’

‘You were having a nightmare,’ Thea told him, sitting up. ‘It’s my fault, I tried to wake you. Probably not a good idea —’

‘No,’ he cut her off. ‘I needed to… I… Thank you,’ he finished, not looking at her, but staring at the ground as though ashamed, his chest rising and falling as he fought to steady himself.

She waited, knowing there was a pocket of time between nightmare and reality where the two were still blurred, where skin still crawled and hearts refused to slow.

‘I have them too,’ Thea said quietly.

At last, he met her gaze, silver spearing celadon.

‘What about?’ he managed.

‘The past. At least, I think it’s the past,’ she told him.

Nodding, his eyes met hers before trailing over her, assessing. ‘Did I hurt you?’

‘No.’

His broad shoulders sagged, and he started to nod, but then froze, his attention drawn to her chest. ‘What’s that.’

Taken aback, Thea looked down. One of the buttons of her shirt –his shirt– had come loose and her fate stone had slipped free. It rested between her breasts; the jade catching the light of the embers. Her hand went to it, hastily trying to tuck it back beneath the fabric, but Hawthorne was faster.

He closed the gap between them in a second, his fingers curling around the stone, turning it over in his grasp. ‘I haven’t seen one of these in a very long time.’ His breath tickled Thea’s face.

‘Then you do know what it is.’

He traced the number engraved there, the rest of him deathly still. ‘I spent a good deal of my apprenticeship travelling to and from the winter kingdom of Aveum…’ he told her slowly. ‘The royal family, the Duforts, come from a long line of powerful seers. During my time with them I learnt enough about these stones to know the havoc they wreak on people’s lives.’

Thea was quiet. Besides Wren and the comments Audra had made on their ride, she had never heard anyone talk of fate stones.

‘What doestwenty-sevenmean?’ Hawthorne asked, still uncomfortably close.

Twenty-seven. The number that had haunted Thea for longer than she could remember. The number she thought she had made her peace with time and time again, only to have it laugh in her face. A number that only gave her a single piece of a much larger puzzle – roughly when she would die, but now how, not why. She fought the urge to snatch the stone from his hands and step back. The physicality of his presence was nearly overwhelming, the scent of rosewood soap and leather everywhere at once.

‘Althea?’ He said her name, and she realised with a heart-pounding start that she liked the sound of it on his lips. ‘I know no two fate stones are the same, so what does this one mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ she lied, reaching for the stone gently. ‘I don’t know what it means. It belonged to a friend.’