With unsteady steps, she crossed to the vanity and sank onto the cushioned stool, finally confronting her reflection in the silvered glass. A stranger stared back at her—cheeks flushed, hair tumbling in wild disarray over hershoulders. The tiny pegasus hairpin gleamed amid the waves, the only remaining anchor from her earlier, more composed self.
I promise to thoroughly impress you before this game is through.
It hadn’t been merely a game though. She’d known that from the moment Evryn had first pressed his lips to her skin. His voice echoed in her mind, low and rough with desire, his words a whisper against her throat. Her fingers rose unbidden to the spot where his lips had brushed, where she could still feel the ghost of his touch.
Tell me when to stop.
But she hadn’t wanted him to stop. That was the terrifying truth of it. If panic hadn’t overtaken her at the last moment, she would have let him continue. Would have pulled him closer. Would have surrendered completely to whatever lay between them.
She reached up and gently touched the pegasus hairpin, the delicate lumyrite wings cool beneath her fingertips. The gift he’d crafted with his own hands. For her.
“This is madness,” she whispered to her reflection. If she truly cared for him—if he truly cared forher—what did that mean for them? For this farce that was soon meant to come to a close?
Oh, darling …
A hundred ridiculous pet names, butdarling… That was the one that was real. That was the one that slipped past her defenses and melted something inside her. And his voice—deep and quiet and ruinously husky. It had the power to undo her entirely.
She needed to speak to someone, needed to make sense of the chaos in her mind before it consumed her. Without another thought, she crossed to her bedside table and withdrew the small silver hand mirror.
“Petunia,” she whispered, pressing her palm flat against the glass.
The mirror’s surface rippled like disturbed water, then went dark. Mariselle waited, counting her heartbeats. When nothing happened, she pressed her palm to the glass again and began pacing the length of her room.
“Petunia,” she repeated, more insistent this time. “Wake up, Tunia, please. It’s urgent.”
The mirror remained dark for several more moments before flickering to life, revealing Petunia’s face, half-obscured by tangled hair and one cheek squashed against a lace-trimmed pillow. Her eyes blinked blearily. “Mari?”she mumbled. “Whaswrong? Someone better be dead for you to have woken me at this hour.”
“Tunia, I think …” Mariselle stopped pacing, her gaze focusing somewhere beyond the mirror, seeing again the liquid heat in Evryn’s gaze. “I think …”
Petunia rolled onto her back and moaned sleepily. “Could we perhaps continue this discussion at a more civilized hour when you’ve determined precisely what it is that youthink?”
Mariselle refocused on her cousin and took a breath. “I think I love him.”
Petunia blinked, sleep clearing from her expression. “Who?”
“Evryn.”
Petunia pushed herself up in a flurry of tangled hair. “You cannot be serious.”
“I’m entirely serious.”
“Oh, Mari, no!” She threw herself back onto her pillows with a groan. “IknewI should not have left the two of you alone there tonight. I could tell something was different.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Mariselle moaned, resuming her pacing. “We’re supposed to end this entire charade soon, but now … now I cannot stop thinking of him, and I want to be near him all the time, and I want to say things that will make himsmile, and when he touches me, even just the slightest?—”
“Stop.” Petunia held up a hand. “You’ve clearly lost your mind. I suppose the kiss of the Rowanwood plague does that to a person.”
Mariselle gave her cousin a rueful smile. “There was no kiss. There wasalmosta kiss—and my entire body almost ignited in the process—but I left before anything more could happen.”
“Oh, thank goodness. Perhaps you still possess some sense.”
“But what am I to do? Our families … well, mine at least is determined that a Rowanwood-Brightcrest union shall never take place.”
“Mari …” Petunia sighed, shifted against her pillows, and tucked her hair behind one ear. “You need to be sensible about this. Is it even real? I don’t want to hurt you by pointing this out, but Evryn is likely leading you on. He has a reputation, remember? This is probably nothing more than a game to him. He’s spent years perfecting the art of charming women into losing their composure. You’re just another conquest.”
Mariselle slowly shook her head. “I don’t believe that’s true. I might have agreed with you a few weeks ago, but now …” She sighed dreamily as she lowered herself to the edge of her bed. “You haven’t seen how he is when we’re alone. How different he is. So … attentive, thoughtful, sincere. Especially in my dream. You know how difficult it is to be anything but honest in a shared dreamscape.”
Petunia shoved herself upright again, eyes widening in complete horror. “Mariselle Brightcrest! Youdream sharedwith him?”
