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“No,” she said, diverting his attention again. This time she dropped his wrist. She walked backward toward the bed. “Sit by me,” she said. The way his eyes darkened, she knew her voice was soft enough, tempting enough. “Distract me.”

“From what?”

“Fear,” she said, and she made her voice even smaller. “Loneliness.”

Thaddius’ expression immediately solidified. He grinned once more in that icy, dangerous way she now recognised as derision. “You do not make a convincing mouse,” he said, staking her where she stood. “Fear doesn’t seem to concern you. Though, it should.”

Then he left, closing and locking the door behind him. Farra was left alone for another night. Alone, but alive.

The following days were a series of failed attempts on Farra’s behalf.

Each time Thaddius entered the room to deliver her food and water, she tried to engage him in conversation, in anything that would see him linger for more than a few seconds. Sometimes, he sent humans in – slaves with their tongues cut out. People she recognised from the Ledge. They came to collect her bed pans and redress Thaddius’ bed. They looked at her with mournful eyes and departed, unable to answer her questions. Would she wind up like them? Muted and enslaved?

Thaddius remained steadfast in his supposed dispassion for her, though she did not believe it. He had brought her here for a reason –herspecifically. At times, he betrayed a flicker of interest, of attraction. But whatever emotion came to pass over him was then quickly thwarted by a stony veneer.

Farra took to sleeping as much as she could to pass the time. It was odd, how very lax she had become in such a short period. How complacent. She no longer woke to the sounds that echoed through the castle walls. She knew Thaddius remained outside and it somehow comforted her. She slept with her back to the door and did not fear she would be ripped from her bed in the night.

She was plagued by terrible dreams, mostly of falling. Each time she closed her eyes, she was tipped over the edge of some great height, and the sensation of plummeting turned her stomach over; it seized her.

One such dream was filled with nothing but that unending fall. No surrounds, no sound at all, just an interminable, sightless drop. She could not see the ground rushing up to meet her from below, could not wake herself before the collision came. This time, she collided with ground, and she felt herself burst on impact.

She awoke to the sound of screaming, to large, cool hands on her cheeks, and it took a second longer to realise the screams came from her.

“Shhh,” a voice whispered in the dark. “You are well.”

She blinked, gulping a lungful of air. The bed covers were twisted around her body from where she had likely thrashed. She wore nothing beneath them, but the Glacian did not look at the slithers of skin that were revealed. Instead, his eyes trapped hers. “It was a dream,” he said now, his voice so achingly gentle it was difficult not to melt into the hands that stroked her jaw. It was difficult not to take comfort from them.

She swallowed past the pain in her throat, raw from her shrieks, and simply stared back at the creature poised above her, over her, wiping the tears from her face.

“Normally, you do not wake,” he said in that same voice, low and melodic.

Farra frowned. “I’ve screamed before?”

He sighed quietly. “Every night.”

Her stomach fluttered. She wondered if he’d comforted her before exactly like this, without her knowing.

“What do you dream of?” he asked suddenly, uncharacteristically. In all their interactions, he had never once lingered. Now, it seemed as though he could not stop himself. He searched her face with need, with some sort of deep-seated curiosity.

Farra found herself wanting to tell him. “I dream of falling.”

“Falling?”

She nodded.

He considered her answer for a moment, then smiled inadvertently. “My greatest fear as a child was falling. I dreamt of it often.”

“One with wings still fears falling?”

“One must learn to use the wings first.” He grimaced. “It requires repeated failure.”

Farra tried to conjure an image she had not considered before – a Glacian offspring. “I cannot think of you as a child.”

“We all were once. However long ago it may have been.”

“Exactly how old are you, Glacian?”

“Far older than any creature ought to be.”