Page 64 of Bonds of Starfall

He was staring at her like he knew her.

"Ves, you’re here." The music was loud and disjointed, falling into a hypnotic beat, but his eyes sparkled like the gems on his cheeks. The sound of his voice twisted through her chest, sharp and familiar in a way that made no sense.

Rin shook her head softly. "Who are you?"

Cyrus Soltren’shand grew slack. The glass slipped from his grip, shattering on the floor in a hundred crystal shards. Each one like the memories he shared with her. A few revelers nearby stopped dancing, staring at the glass on the ground and the small puddle of purple, before cheering, dropping their own glasses in a shattering symphony.

Cyrus ignored them all.

Vesperin didn’t remember him.

She didn’t remember him.

Oh.

Oh.

He could tell from her eyes. A strange shade of grey, all the color had been leeched from them—same as her hair, pure white, sucking up all the flashing neon lights inForget You Not.

Hisclub. A place he’d crafted for all the ones who needed to forget. For a night, for an hour…

The only price was one they didn’t know they were going to pay: when they woke up the next morning, empty, forced to face whatever they had run from the night before.

It was Vesperin.HisVesperin. Undeniably.

On Sibeth, in his club, and she looked at him like he was a stranger, and not the male who had watched as his father drove a jeweled dagger into her heart in her past life. He had been waiting for three hundred years. Incubi and succubi were immortal, and she had not been. The dagger had pierced her heart easily, and he had been forced to watch as his father, King Soltren, taught the first in line for the throne a valuable lesson:

Nothing was more important than the crown.

Three hundred years of wishing her reincarnation would show back up, each decade rolling by and eroding his reserves of hope.

Until here. Until now.

Until her.

But he hadn’t touched her yet.

That was all. He had to touch her for her to remember him.

Cyrus shoved past the dancing bodies, feeling time still around him. The music had turned to a haunting, electronic beat, whistling like dark anxiety.

Right before she jerked away, his fingers brushed hers. He waited for her to gasp, to cry, to jump him.

But her cold fingers slipped from his grip and slammed up to her chest, a threatening glint in her hard, grey eyes. "Back off."

She didn’t remember. Why.Why?

Would he have to touch her better, harder? Kiss her?

Cyrus was used to this. It was fine. He was fine. He would be fine.

He was well-versed in the art of playing pretend, of donning masks for the masses. He was a prince, after all.

The crestfallen set to his face shifted imperceptibly, in the span of a breath. His eyes grew dark, his lips quirked up into a sensuous smirk, and he let the tension in his body bleed away as he allowed his eyes to dip and skim over the sight of her, drinking her in like he was starved.

She didn’t remember him.

Or was she just playing?