“Alie, wait.” Her fiancé caught up with her, holding out his elbow.
She looked at it as if he were offering her an insect. She said nothing.
With a sigh, Jax dropped his arm. The only time she ever sawhim look anything but completely self-possessed was in moments like these, when he tried to act like her betrothed and there was no incentive for her to match his performance. It almost made her think that, for him, it wasn’t all a farce.
That was a dangerous line of thought.
“May I walk you to your apartments?” he asked, stiff and formal.
And there were enough people still in the atrium that it would look odd if she refused.
“Yes,” she said.
He smiled at her. Just the barest corner of one.
Jax didn’t offer his arm again, instead ambling beside her as Alie made her way out of the atrium and toward the turret stairs. They walked in silence, and while it wasn’t exactly comfortable, it didn’t make Alie feel like she was on the verge of a full-blown panic, either. Small mercies.
But when they reached her door, Jax reached out and touched her arm. Anxiety bloomed just below her breastbone, her stomach hollowing.
“Alie, I…” It was strange to see him lost for words. Jax stopped touching her, as if suddenly aware that it wasn’t welcome, and tucked his hands behind his back. “I understand that our circumstances are not ideal.”
“That,” she said primly, “is an understatement.”
He lifted a shoulder and let it fall, conceding. “But I truly want to have a partnership,” he continued. He didn’t meet her eye, instead looking at the pothos vine curling over her door. That nervousness, again, making him strangely vulnerable. “I want us to be friends. I wouldn’t presume to ask for anything more, but I hope we can cultivate that.”
“A friend wouldn’t lie,” Alie said. “A friend wouldn’t chase all of my other, true friends out of the damn country. A friend wouldn’t use me for power.” She looked up at him, resolutely set her chin. “I don’t know you, Jax Andronicus. And I do not care to.”
She stepped into her room without looking at him and closed the door. She didn’t need to tap into air threads to hear his sigh or the soft pad of his boots down the corridor.
Alie slumped once she was alone in the dark, blowing out a harsh breath and making one white curl flutter on her forehead. She stripped out of her gown and left it on the floor, collapsing on the unmade bed in her chemise.
She had things to do.
It was easy to fall asleep. Alie had never been someone who struggled with it; her body let her rest without much fanfare. But this kind of dreaming took precision, keeping a handle on her mind even as it slipped into sleep. She’d perfected the technique with the same determination she’d used to hone her croquet swing and the steps of a complicated minuet. There was no skill she could not acquire, given proper time.
An island. That’s where this kind of dreaming took her. A beach, white sand beneath her feet, cliffs at her back, and foaming blue water before her, meeting the equally blue sky in a blurred horizon line. The beach was silent, even the waves soundless.
There was no one here. That didn’t surprise her. There never was. According to the books, dreamwalking could be done by any two people with power from the Fount, and the more you had, the easier it was. But Alie assumed that in order to truly dreamwalk, you had to be using that power.
And she was, apparently, the only one foolish enough for that.
Something flickered in the corner of her eye. Short and softly curved, long brown-gold hair, the runnels of a new scar.
Alie shot to her feet. “Lore?”
And there she was, just for a moment. Long enough to turn and look at her, long enough for her eyes to go wide.
But then she vanished, and Alie was all alone on the beach again.
CHAPTER FOUR
LORE
Abandon not your fellow faithful.
—The Book of Mortal Law, Tract 90
Every day on the Burnt Isles was mostly the same, which was comforting, in a way. Wake up at least an hour before dawn, wipe at streaming, reddened eyes. Eat the tasteless porridge slopped into the same tin cups you used for your allotted water breaks, the only meal you didn’t pay for. Covering your mouth to filter the ash, wrapping your hands if you had the cloth to spare, grabbing a pickax, heading to the mine.
