“My...name?”
“Yes. You’re Harlowe, but Harlowe what?”
“It’s...” I blocked out the storm’s wildfire roar, the way blood was oozing down the wallpaper. Queen. He’d called me a queen. Think about that. “I don’t have a last name. Not anymore. My parents took me into the swamp and walked away and...I buried their name out there. In the marsh. Now I’m just Harlowe.”
The nightmare screamed. My hands curled into claws, my arm yanking against its socket in a quest to dig my own heart from my ribcage.
Kyven took hold of my wayward wrist and pinned it to the mattress, so much more gently than the manacle did. “All right, then, just Harlowe. Listen to me. Right now, I’m just Ky. All right?”
I nodded. “Ky.” I hefted his name like a shield.
“Yes, good. Now here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to stay with me. Because this storm, it’s nothing but fear, trying to swallow you up. Everything it says, everything it shows you, is a lie. And while it’s strong, you’re stronger. You might be just Harlowe, but you’re also a survivor.”
“I’m...not.”
“You are.” He imbued the words with steel conviction. “You survived the swamp. Years of solitude. A homicidal alligator, for Hyperion’s sake. And you’ve survived these nightmares. Countless times before.”
Amryssa was screaming. So was Olivian and everyone else, their cries saturating the walls, vibrating up through the floors.
I was losing.
I knew before it happened, anticipated the break of the dam just before the flood carried me away.
The nightmare ripped me from the haven of Ky’s arms. He called my name—once, twice, again, but I couldn’t hear him anymore.
I was drowning, dragged into the depths by the monsters that would gnaw me into nothingness. I tried to claw my way back, but he was gone, my bright oasis swathed by darkness.
I sank into the murky fathoms. Down, down, down, to where nothing remained but the screaming.
15.
Consciousness seeped in, layer by layer.
Soft, gray light.
A steady heartbeat. Pattering rain.
Then pain. Lots of it. Deep and old, laced along the framework of my skeleton.
I groaned and forced my lashes apart, expecting an eyeful of ceiling. Instead, I got a rain-studded windowpane, an expanse of red sheets, and a bare, solid chest beneath my cheek.
I was...lying on my side. Unchained. Wearing only a chemise. With a half-clothed prince serving as my body pillow.
I raised my head, my cheek unpeeling from its resting place, then abandoned the effort when the room began a sick whirl.
“Ugh.” My face thwacked back down. An arm tightened around me, and I craned my neck to find crystalline eyes trained on me.
“Good morning,” Kyven said.
My belly rippled. I probably would’ve thrown up all over him if I’d had anything in my stomach to eject. “Is it?”
“I can’t say I have any objections to waking up this way, so yes. It is. At least from where I’m standing.”
“But you’re lying down.” My voice sounded like a rusty tap being forced. “And you could at leastpretendnot to be so fucking cheerful.”
His chest hitched with suppressed laughter, which had the inconvenient side-effect of ramming an icepick through my skull.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
