Page 96 of Lustling

I step toward the door because all the waiting in the fortress feels like standing at the edge of a cliff while the cliff crumbles. I have felt the braid; I have known ribbon and armor and light. I have felt what we can nearly do together. I reach for the handle because I believe I can be the blade that severs his ritual from within.

The metal is impossible—cold as winter glass, burning at once. I feel the hum of them all beneath my skin, a third rail of safety and danger. I whisper into the seam: hold me.

Just before my fingers close on the cold, a voice cuts through the dream as if someone has yanked back a curtain.

“Lillien. Don’t.”

It is Deimos’s voice, ragged and immediate, threading through sleep and stone. For a heartbeat my hand hesitates on the handle and the steam curls like a question.

My breath hitches. The decision tastes like iron.

Then I turn the handle. The door gives. Steam licks my face. The smell of something old and cruel fills my mouth. The dream folds shut like a hungry mouth.

I am swallowed by the red.

FIFTY-NINE

It starts as a whisper, her name folding into the edges of my mind before I can tell who says it first.

Then I see her. She stands in the dark before a door that should not be, blood-red and slick. Steam clings to the seams like a living thing. My hands go cold from the sight of it.

“Lillien, don’t,” I call, stepping forward. For a long second she does not look at me. She only stares at the door, like it promises something she believes she needs.

When she turns, our eyes meet. They are wide and wet and full of apology.

Don’t, I try to say again, the sound strangling inside my chest.Do not go through that door.

She hesitates and her fingers hover above the handle. She leans toward me, whispering, “I’m sorry.” Then she turns the handle.

The door opens with a hiss. Wrong light spills out, red folded over black.

The moment she steps through I feel it: a blade sliding between my ribs. The bond between us tears. I lunge and my hands close on empty air.

And then he is there. Zepharion stands just beyond the threshold with one hand on her shoulder as if she already belongs to him. He looks at me and his smile is triumph.

I wake with a sound in my throat. One breath before, she lay warm and small against me, fingers curled in the edge of my shirt. The next breath is empty.

I sit up so fast the sheet drags across my skin. My hand gropes at the linen and finds only heat left behind. I reach through the bond. Nothing answers. No spark. No thread. Cold, like rope that has been severed and left to fray.

“Lillien?” I whisper. The word dies against the stone.

Bastion sleeps with one arm thrown where she should be. Cassiel rolls in shadow. Only I feel the absence.

I swing my legs over the bed and stand. My whole body screams. I call again, louder. “Lillien.” No answer. My stomach turns to ice.

On the floor by the bed a faint dark smear crawls across the stone. Ash. Fresh, curling upward as if it still breathes.

“No,” I say. My voice is thin.

I shove harder through the bond until my palms burn. I try to pull her back. She is not just gone from the bed. She is gone from us. The fortress seems to hold its breath. Every promise I ever made to her hammers inside my skull. We are not going to let anything happen to you. I promised.

I promised, and she is not here. This time I scream her name. “Lillien!”

My shout rips the night. The sound strikes stone and returns soured. Bastion jolts upright, eyes blown wide, a blade in his hand before he is fully conscious. Cassiel snaps upright from shadow, all measured motion and sudden focus.

They feel the change now. The lack. I choke out the truth. “She is gone. She—she is gone.”

Bastion launches from the bed and throws the blanket aside. He stomps toward the door, bare feet slamming the floor, hands clenching until the knuckles whiten. “She was right here. She was with us. She would not leave without—” His voice tears itself apart. He punches the nearest wall and the stone answers with a hollow sound. Blood wells at his knuckles. He laughs, a short, dangerous sound.