The Essence

It was impossible. Even with magic, it couldn’t be true. I wanted to say as much, but all I could manage was to shake my head. Yet even that was unconvincing.

Because I remembered him, the way I’d seen him in my dream. The same way he was now.

“Yes,” he asserted, stepping closer and scooping my hands up once again. “And you know it. Deep inside, you remember me, and you know it’s true. I was with you, not once . . . not twice . . . but we’ve shared lifetimes, again and again.” He moved so close I could feel heat coming off of his body and finding its way beneath my nightgown . . . infusing me with liquid pain.

“So why weren’t you with her all along? Why were you with Queen Vespaire?”

He shook his head. “I could never stay anywhere for too long. Look at me, I can’t do what you—she—can do. I can’t change identities. I have only this body, and it never changes. I don’t age. People notice that. People start to question why everyone else grows older while I remain youthful.

“Eventually I have to leave. To wait until”—he tipped his head, his brow furrowing as if he wasn’t sure how to continue—“until there’s a new host. Someone who can invite me back. And then we can be together again. For years, usually, before the questions start again. But this time . . .” His voice drifted off. “This time it was too long. There was no word of a new queen. No new host.” Pain filled his face as he looked at me with so much longing I wanted to reach out and hold him.

No, I insisted, not me. She wanted to reach out and hold him.

“We were apart for too long,” he finished sadly. “But now you’re here again. I knew I’d find you.”

“No.” I shook my head, trying to break the spell I was under. “Not me. Her.” But this time there was less fight in my voice, and even I wasn’t sure what I believed. Every cell in my body responded to him; every nerve bundle, every muscle fiber reacted to his nearness.

“You,” he insisted, leaning down and letting his breath graze my ear.

Sabara’s voice on the other side of my ear kept repeating, Just let me have this. Just let me have this. Just let me have this. . . .

I felt myself close the distance between us, a gap that barely existed in the first place, as I eased myself against him, all the while arguing back with her, No, no, no!

His lips brushed my neck just as I felt a tear slip down my cheek. Just as frustration like nothing I’d ever known before welled inside me.

I’d never been so powerless.

“Um, I’m guessing this isn’t what it looks like.” Brooklynn’s voice came from behind me and I jerked away from Niko’s touch, from the feel of his lips against my skin, as I spun toward her.

She stood in the open doorway, the one I’d just come through, and she, too, was wearing a nightgown. Yet she still managed to look fierce and unstoppable.

I fumbled for an explanation, my mind reeling with possibilities, none of which explained the open hatch in the floor of our bedroom, or the fact that I’d been about to let Niko kiss me. “I—uh—I—”

“Save it,” she interrupted. “All I wanna hear is that we’re going back to our room, and that whatever that . . . that thing in our floor is will not be used again. Understood?”

I glanced nervously toward the unlit tunnel, wondering if Zafir was somewhere behind her.

Her eyebrows ticked up as she crossed her arms. “No. I didn’t tell him,” she answered before I could even ask the question. “He still thinks you’re asleep.” She cocked her head. “In your bed.” Then she turned to Niko. “And you . . .” She took a warning step toward him, her arms falling to her side and her hands balling into fists. “I have no idea what’s going on here, but I’m warning you: Stay away from her.”

“Brook—” I tried to interrupt, to take command of the situation, but she cut me off with a glare so cutting the words slid back down my throat.

Then she grabbed my arm, both of us in nothing but borrowed nightgowns, and she dragged me into the passageway, slamming the door behind us.

“What were you thinking?” Brook asked as I stared out at the flashes of lightning that came again and again, almost without pause.

I wished I could explain it to her, but how could I make her understand? How did I tell her that the ghost of a dead queen was leading me around through underground passageways to rendezvous with her long-lost lover?

Even I thought it sounded like madness.

Instead, I shrugged and kept watching the storm outside.

Brook sighed and joined me at the window. “Did you know the palace doors are barricaded for the night? Because of the storm. No one comes or goes. On Queen Neva’s orders.”

“Why would she do that?” I wondered aloud.

“Ice storm,” Brook explained.

We stood there together, staring out, trying to see past the crystalline blooms of frost that formed on the outside of the glass panes. “It’s similar to an electrical storm, with flashes of lightning,” she said at last. “Only here, they’re far more dangerous. See how the pulses come up from the ground, rather than from the sky? Almost as if they’re made from the ice itself? Before you arrived, we were warned about the danger of the ice storm, that those pulses are drawn toward natural heat, making humans and animals easy targets. Basically, the charges search out anything with a pulse.” As if on cue, a huge flash sparked in the distance, illuminating the black sky beyond the walls of the palace.