Nox leans toward me.
I know he’s going to kiss me and I want him to, more than I’ve ever wanted anything else before. But what I want has never mattered.
“We can’t,” I say.
I pull back, looking down at my gloves.
I can’t touch Nox, or anybody else.
That’s always been my curse. Locked away in my tower, alive but never living, watching as the people around me laugh and shake hands, or sling an arm over their friend’s shoulder. Threading themselves together like it’s nothing.
What if I have to relive the horror of Nox’s death on that beach all over again? Or what if the curse of my touch triggers a new death somehow?
As much as I want Nox, I can’t risk what touching him might do.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I know what my future holds. I’m not scared, Selestra.”
The softness of his voice almost makes me believe it.
I let him slowly slip the gloves from my hand.
Left, then right.
The cool breeze from the cave slips through my fingers.
My heart pounds, punching against my chest like it’s trying to break free.
Nox’s fingers are so close to mine that I almost can’t breathe.
One slip, one fracture of movement and we’ll touch.
I keep my eyes on our hands.
Every inch of me is humming.
“I don’t want to see you die again,” I tell him.
It would break me.
“Don’t focus on that,” he says softly. “Just focus on this. On us. On something happy, instead of constant death. Your magic is more than that, Selestra, and so are you.”
I bite my lip, nodding as the strength of his words shatters my fears.
I want this and him more than I’ve wanted anything in my whole life, and for once it is mine to have. I’m no longer locked in a tower and forced to push my magic away until it is convenient for someone else. This wish, this want, is mine to have and mine to keep.
There is nobody standing in my way but me.
Nox’s hand drifts up my arm and to my cheek, slowly, to make sure I’m okay. I can feel a distinct tingling in my bones. The current of him passing through me, making me feel safe.
That’s when it hits me.
A vision.
It doesn’t hurt or rip through me like the others. As I focus on Nox and not death, just like he said to, the vision washes over me like a familiar river.
Nox and I are in a strange room, draped by ivy and wild daisies. Two thrones sit side by side in a mosaic of green glass, backed by a large stained-glass window that echoes their intricate shape. It lets the sun breathe into the room, radiating coils of color across the stone floor.
Above the thrones, a large chandelier sweeps downward, covered in crystals and entwined by the same deep ivy that circles the hall.
It’s a room of beauty and nature.
Somehow, I know it’s the old palace of Thavma. The once-home to my once-family and all the magic in the Six Isles.
I look down at my feet and see the stone twinkle beneath them like stars.
“Ready, princess?” Nox asks.
He’s grinning, cheeks dimpling in the green light around him.
I reach up to adjust a crown of silver and vines on my head. It twists through my hair like the flowers surrounding us.
I know in that moment that for the first time, I’m not seeing death. It’s something else: life.
Something happy.
Our goddess Asclepina’s magic was rooted in life as much as it was in death: the power to heal and to protect. I’ve never considered that it could mean Somniatis witches can see any future, not just the awful ones.
What if we can see good too?
What if I’m not cursed?
I blink and stare back at Nox in the present.
“Selestra,” he says.
For some reason just that word, just my name from his lips, makes me ache. It pulls something inside me, and I yearn to feel him.
All of him. To let him feel all of me.
When he kisses me, it sets the world on fire.
His lips brush against mine, softly at first, like he’s afraid he might break me. Then when I don’t pull away and the world doesn’t end, I feel him smile against my lips.
One of his hands moves down my body, and gently grazes the small of my back where my shirt has ridden up. The other slides through my hair and finds its way to the base of my neck, pulling me farther into him so that every inch of us is touching.
My tongue feels numb as I drink him in, taste him on my lips. It’s like something inside me breaks free and every touch makes me feel more electric than the next.
Then he says my name again, nothing more than breath on his mouth, and I think I implode.
I am a thousand tiny pieces floating high, higher, and I will never be put back together.
Nox presses harder against me and it all falls away.
Our families. The world. The war.
I’m breathless.
I don’t know how much time passes before we break apart, but it is not enough. It will never be enough.
Nox pulls back, leaving the taste of him on my lips.
“See?” he says. “Nobody died.”
He breaks into a smile, wide and toothy, like he’s made some huge discovery. Like he didn’t just split me into a million pieces and scatter them everywhere.
“Not bad for a runaway soldier,” I say.
My voice is dry and winded.
“Such high praise.”
He reaches out and cups my cheek, strokes his thumb along my jaw. I let my head fall into his palm, finding comfort in his touch. His skin, warm on mine, without any kind of fear or worry seeping into me.
“I saw a vision.”
“My death?” he asks.
I shake my head, grinning. “Life.”
All this time I’ve been worrying about my magic being caked in doom, but what if all along I only saw those things because I expected to? Because I was told that I would and let it be the only thing to plague my thoughts?
Years spent believing I couldn’t touch anyone, and it was all lies.
I used to sneak out to look up at the moon and the stars, to whisper my secrets to the night for safekeeping, and hoping desperately it would whisper answers to any problems I had. Give me strength to overcome them. But the stars never held any answers, they were just lights. The strength was always inside me. And so was the light, brighter than any the stars could hold.
I won’t ever let that be extinguished again.
We rest for only a couple of hours before I wake to hear the cavern humming.
I open my eyes and the air glitters with tiny yellow lights that I quickly realize are butterflies. Their wings flap in song, filling the cavern with a gentle hum.
I push myself from the floor and follow them.
“Selestra, wait a second.”
Nox clambers to his feet to stop me, but I head onward, ignoring him. “They’ll lead us to where we need to go,” I say.
“They’re butterflies,” he protests. “They’re not leading anyone anywhere.”
I look at him. This tousled warrior wishing to change an entire world but unable to have a little faith first.
I’m still dizzy with the feel of his fingers in my hair and his lips brushing across mine. With the future of a life beyond war and locked towers that he opened for me. I wish I could have stayed in that moment with him forever, but we have a war to win first.
“Your butterfly led us somewhere,” I remind him.
Nox’s frown relaxes. He places his hands gently on my shoulders. “I suppose if I’ve learned anything by now, then it’s to trust you with my life,” he says. “So lead the way, princess.”
I grin. I would kiss him right here and now if I didn’t think it would cause me to lose all focus.
We let the butterflies lead us through the trees, fluttering in and out of the branches.
Eventually they come to a stop by a single tree, unlike any of the others. It has leaves instead of crystals and a decaying trunk that opposes any beauty surrounding it.
Underneath its branches is a large wooden trunk, next to a pile of bones and a rusty sword.
“Over there!” I say, excited at the thought that I was right after all. “This must be what Eldara wanted us to find by heading north.”
Nox raises his eyebrows. “A trunk in the middle of an underground forest?” He seems unconvinced.
“It’s a special trunk,” I say.
Nox gestures to the ground, where another set of bones lies beside it. “Bet the last guy thought so too.” He shoves his hands into his pockets. “If it’s not a ladder out of here, I’m just not sure how useful it’s going to be for us.”
Except I know I’m right. I can feel the magic reverberating off this thing, chorused by the hum of the butterflies.
I reach out a hand for the trunk.
“Selestra,” Nox says in warning. “I don’t think you should do that.”
I pay no attention to him, flicking up the hook that seals the trunk.
Nox steps toward me. “Really,” he says. “It could be a—”
I hear a brief whirl and then Nox is pushing me to the floor.
We splash into the water just as an arrow whips by my head and stabs into the tree trunk.
“What was that?” I ask, eyes wide.
Nox gets quickly to his feet and glares down at the box. “I bet that lock is rigged,” he says. “It’s a booby trap.”
“A what trap?”
He turns to me, eyes alight in amusement. “What word is giving you trouble?”
I roll my eyes and get to my feet. Before I can think of a retort, the bones beside the trunk rattle.
We turn together to see the shattered pieces jumping from the ground. They crawl slowly toward each other and we can only watch as the bones slot into place and rise to a stand.
I stumble back a step as a disjointed skeleton raises its rusted sword.
“I told you that your aunt wanted to kill us,” Nox says.
The skeleton juts its blade out to him and Nox manages to block it artfully. He swipes his own sword upward, then slashes it in an arc over his head and across the skeleton’s neck.
The creature pauses and then reaches down to pick up its dislodged skull.
It places it back on its neck and stabs at Nox again.
Nox’s eyes widen as he skitters backward.
“It didn’t die!” I yell.
“Yes, princess,” he says. He blocks another blow. “I noticed.”
I cast my eyes over the skeleton, but I don’t see a jewel like there was with the ghost who attacked us. There’s no sign of an artifact to be smashed that could quell this magic.
“How do we kill it?” I ask desperately.
“I was hoping you could figure that out,” Nox says.
He ducks down, narrowly avoiding the skeleton’s blade, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
Forget bleeding out; one nick from that rusted thing and he’d probably die of infection.
Nox rolls forward and out of the skeleton’s path, coming up behind it. He slices it across the back, but his sword simply clatters against its rigid bones.
Think, I tell myself. How does one kill a dead thing?
Not that I care to admit it, but killing a human is simple. They’re fragile and easily broken. They bleed and they break, and even someone like me—with the ability to heal—isn’t invincible.
Even I can’t survive having my head chopped off.
“Whenever you’re ready to lend a hand!” Nox calls out.
He slides out of the way of yet another blow, his feet splashing in the shallow water.
“I’m thinking!” I shout back.
I bite my lip.
Just like Nox to not give me a minute to come up with a plan. Never mind that I’ve been saving him day in and day out since we first met.
I pause, giving in to a smile as an idea crosses my mind.
The first time I helped Nox at the After Dusk Inn, I did so by nearly draining a man of his life force. Perhaps this skeleton can survive being chopped and dismantled, but that’s only because something—some kind of energy—is animating it.
If I drain that away …
“Cut off its head again!” I yell to Nox.
He pauses, confused, but does as I ask, sweeping his blade across the skeleton’s neck once more.
Its skull splashes to the ground.
“Pass it over to me!”
Nox wrinkles his nose and kicks the skeletal head toward me.
I kneel down as the skeleton’s body skitters across the pool of water, searching for the missing part of itself.
“What are you doing?” Nox asks.
“What I always do,” I say. I place my hands on the skull. “Saving your life.”
I can feel the life force of the creature the moment I touch it. It’s weak, like a fading song, or the last glimpse of sunlight before the dark descends.
I open myself up to let that essence funnel into me, dragging it from the creature’s bones and into my heart.
Its life. Its energy.
It’s not like what I did with Nox, where I tugged gently on his threads. He opened himself up to me, but this skeleton fights.
I have to pull and claw.
The headless skeleton pauses and shakes. Its bones rattle across the cavern. Then finally, it collapses into a heap on the floor.
“You okay?” Nox asks, coming to my side.
“Fine,” I say, nodding. My heart races against my chest, like it’s fit to burst. “I feel great, actually.”
It’s like I’ve just eaten from the grandest banquet and I can still taste every ounce of it on my tongue. I feel energized.
Full.
“You know, you’re kind of scary sometimes,” Nox says. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”
I shoot him a look. “You’ve always been on my bad side.”
At that, he grins. A true smile that steals my breath.
Sometimes I think that Nox is like the wind, going from storm to breeze, from powerful to gentle. From a person I never wanted to know to someone I can’t imagine not knowing.
As a team, we feel almost unstoppable.
Nox gestures toward the trunk. “Time to see if you were right,” he says. “Go ahead.”
I kneel beside it and take in a breath.
Whatever’s inside this should be our way out. A pass for the tests and trials Eldara set us. This will prove that Nox and I are worthy, and we can be transported out of this place.
We’ve faced decayed forests, ground that has tried to swallow us whole, ghost warriors, perilous bridges, and skeleton attackers.
If Eldara wanted to see if we were ready, then she’s seen enough.
My heart thumps like a war drum as I flip open the lid and lean to look inside.
A flash of blinding light bursts out from it, like a storm was contained inside.
Nox and I fall backward and I rub my eyes as my vision readjusts.
A furious hissing fills the cavern. When I blink the world back into existence, I see that the trunk is filled with snakes.
My eyes widen as the first of what looks like dozens begin to slither out.
Quickly, I scurry back over to the trunk. But before I can close the lid, I see the jewel. A tiny green thing in the center of the box.
It calls out to me, just like I felt when I first saw the cave. It feels so familiar, as though a piece of me is hidden inside it.
In awe, I reach out toward it.
The snakes curl around it.
One hisses up at me. Its forked tongue sways, yellow eyes meeting mine as it rises upward.
Eyes we share.
I stare at the creature and it stares straight back at me, like it’s seeing into my soul.
“Watch out!”
Panicked, Nox shoves me backward and away from the box, drawing the ire of the creatures inside. I blink, snapping myself out of the daze as they lunge out at him.
Quickly, Nox slams the lid of the trunk closed, decapitating several of the snakes in the process. Their heads fall to the floor where Nox kneels.
My eyes widen.
“Selestra.” Nox’s voice is throaty and low.
“It’s fine,” I say, shaking my head to right myself from the trance-like state.
What was that?
“I’m okay,” I tell him.
“Speak for yourself.”
Nox turns to face me, clutching at his arm. Red welts rise up from his skin, dripping blood on the floor.
Snake bites. Too many to count.
“I think they might be venomous,” Nox says.
And then he slumps to the ground.