But the light was being blotted out.
By blood.
Crimson, thick, sticky blood, oozing from the mortar that held in the glass windowpane, dripping thickly down the sides and pooling on the sill.
She started to tremble. Jacin spun around, following the look. He was silent a long moment before saying, “What? What’s wrong?” He looked back at her.
Something splattered on Winter’s forearm.
She tilted her head back.
The ceiling.
Covered in it.
Red, everywhere. The tang of iron on her tongue. Her mouth was thick with it.
Her chest convulsed with panic and nausea. She shoved herself to her feet and spun in a full circle, watching as the blood came down from the ceiling, soaking into the gilt wallpaper and wood moldings, puddling on the tile floor.
“Winter. What is it? What are you seeing?”
The blood reached her toes.
She turned and shoved past him, scrambling out of the powder room.
“Winter!”
Her bedroom was no better. She froze in the middle of it. Blood had made a waterfall over her bed, staining the linens in crimson, squishing in the carpet beneath her feet. The door into the corridor had a bloodied curtain dripping from the jamb.
No getting through.
No getting away.
She stumbled and teetered on her weak legs, then tripped toward the only escape—the doors that led to the balcony. She heard Jacin screaming behind her, and she hoped he would follow, hoped he would not get stuck here in the suffocating stench, the incessant dripping—
She threw open the doors.
Her stomach hit the protective barrier. Her hands latched on to the rail. The blood kept coming. Pouring out of the bedroom, spilling over the balcony, dribbling down to the garden.
It was the palace. The whole palace was bleeding.
It would fill up the entire lake.
Gasping for air, she hauled one leg up and threw herself over the rail.
Arms locked around her just as her center of balance tilted forward. Her stomach swooped, but Jacin was hauling her back into the room. She shrieked and clawed, demanding that he let her go. If he didn’t, she would drown. They would both be swallowed alive—
He wrestled her to the warm, sticky carpet and pinned her wrists to either side of her head.
“Winter, stop!” he cried, leaning down and pressing his cheek against hers in an attempt to soothe her. “It’s all right, Winter. You’re all right.”
She turned her head and snapped her teeth at him. He pulled back far enough that she barely missed his ear. She screamed in frustration, writhing and kicking, but Jacin refused to yield. “You’re all right,” he whispered, again and again. “I’m here.”
Winter had no idea how long the hallucination lasted. How long she struggled, trying to get away from the blood that cascaded over every surface of the room. A room that had once seemed a sanctuary.
Sanctuary.
There was no safe place. Not in Artemisia. Not on all of Luna.
Except—Jacin.
When her screams succumbed to hysterical sobbing, Jacin finally allowed his hold to turn from the grip of a jailer to the embrace of her best friend.
“This is why,” he whispered, and it occurred to Winter that, at some point, he’d started crying too. “This is why I can’t leave you, Winter. This is why I’ll never leave.”
* * *
The nightmare came again. And again. Weeks of it, incessant.
Gunshots.
Dead eyes.
Blood sprayed on the bedroom walls.
Only, this time, the queen did not simply curl herself against her dead husband and cry and cry and cry.
This time, she took the knife that she had used to stab the thaumaturge and she carved three straight lines into the cheek of Winter’s father.
Winter tried so hard to stay strong, knowing that every time she sought out Jacin’s security, it would further cement his decision to stay. So she rocked herself in her bed and tried to whisper comfort into her own blankets.
Until the night she could stand it no longer.
He was the only place that was safe.
Her nightclothes still damp from the terrors, she rushed out of her quarters, pretending not to notice the night guard who followed in her wake.
Jacin would hold her. Jacin would comfort her. Jacin would keep the nightmares at bay.
Except—Jacin was gone.
That’s what they told her when she arrived, pounding on the apartment door that the Clays had shared with two other families.
He and his family had been transferred the day before and she hadn’t even known, he hadn’t even told her, he hadn’t said good-bye.
Demoted. Transferred. Gone.
Shocked and heartbroken, Winter retreated. She wandered blindly back toward the main corridor of the palace.
Gone.
She’d told him to go. She’d believed it would be for the best. It was the only way for him to have a chance at happiness. He had to get away from Artemisia. Away from the queen. Away from her.
And yet, she had not believed he would really go.
Jacin.
Her dearest friend.
Her only friend.
Just like Selene. Just like her father.
They all left.
“Win—Princess?”
She froze.
Slowly turned.
It was him, but not him.
A hallucination.
Because this could not be her Jacin wearing the pressed uniform of a guard-in-training, his blond hair tucked behind his ears, not quite long enough to be tied back. He stood with his arms stiff at his sides, like he was waiting to carry out orders.
Not a smile.
Not a teasing glint in his eye.
Barely even recognition.
“Jacin,” she whispered to the phantom that looked like her best friend.
His Adam’s apple bobbed with what looked to be a painful gulp. Then his jaw set and he clicked his heels together awkwardly. His gaze lifted away from her eyes, staring at the wall in the distance with the same vacant expression that all the guards had. The same emptiness.
“Shall I escort you to your quarters … Princess?”
Every bit the guard.
Winter, by habit, found herself drawing her shoulders back. A defense. She would hide behind politeness and grace.
Every bit the princess.
It was strange, how quickly it started to feel normal.
They had played this game before, she realized. A hundred times they had played it.
He, the loyal guard. She, the princess he must protect.
“Yes,” she said, as loudly as her voice would allow. “Thank you … Sir … Clay.”
A slight shake of his head. “Squire Clay, Your Highness. Guard-in-training.”
“Squire Clay.” She gulped and slowly turned her back on him, walking dazedly back through the halls.
He followed behind her. Respectful and distant.
Over her shoulder, she dared a nervous smile. “If you aren’t too busy with your training later, Squire Clay, I fear I might need rescuing from a pirate.”
His eyelid twitched. He did not look at her and he didn’t smile—but she caught it, just for a moment. The light entering his eyes.
“It would be my honor, Princess.”
The Little Android
Mech6.0 stood against the hangar’s charging wall, one of hundreds of mute sentinels watching the passengers flutter by with their hovering luggage carts and excited chatter. Before her, the massive Triton hunkered imposingly in the center of the hangar, dwarfing the crowd, as greeters scanned the ID chips of their guests and ushered them aboard. A ship’s maiden voyage was always a festive occasion, but this one seemed more vibrant than usual, as the Triton was about to set the record for largest cruiser ever to be launched. Waiters were passing glasses of champagne to the passengers as they boarded and had their belongings escorted away, women were donning their finest kimonos and hanbok and cocktail gowns, and a live orchestra had even been hired for the entertainment.