Page 19 of To Dance with Death

My Jewel.

He blurs into being like a conjuring, there within the glass. Justbehind my reflection. An aberration, limned by an absent moon. He is colorless, even paler than I remembered, and just as beautiful. There is a starkness to his gaze that sends a frisson of fear down my throat so fast, I almost choke.

Illian.

“How?” I breathe. Yet I already suspect. Sundar was right. He is no mere hallucination.

I died; I came back. Even Queen Sadira had wondered what effects that might have.

We are uniquely connected,Illian says.Perhaps because you did the honors.

“And what an honor it was,” I shoot back, though he seems unaffected.

He lets a knuckle slide down my shoulder, though I feel nothing.A shame you didn’t entertain me sooner, when I might have spared you this prison.

That calm, smooth tenor. The tone he always used when delivering word of my tasks, as if they were as inconsequential as breathing. Yet it’s almost as if his voice is confined to the depths of my mind.

“Here to mock me, are you?” My eyes move over him, taking in those strange, wavering contours. He shouldn’t look regal in those tattered, dark clothes as he moves beside me, and yet he does.

His eyes, once dark, now almost seem lit from within. He wraps his hand around my reflection’s waist.Oh, how I’ve missed that mouth.

I step backward, my fingers grasping for the candlestick holder, wrapping around it once more. “Leave me alone.”

His gaze slips to my hand.What, do you plan to shatter every bit of glass in this room?

“If it means not seeing you.” I raise it to strike—

Do that,he says,and you’ll never see my Fates-forsaken brother again.

I halt mid-swing, my breath caught in my chest.

His lips peel into an unsettling smirk.Ah yes. Your little king has escaped the custody of his friends. Don’t you want to know how to find him?

Anton…escaped?

“You’re lying.”

He rolls his eyes.I wish I was.

I watch him, note the distaste in his expression. The annoyance.

He is telling the truth. My pulse leaps into a harrowing flight, and despite how much I hate Illian, despite that I will never trust him, I can’t help but ask, “Where is he?”

Lounging about in Moranya’s Lair. Where else? I’d bet she came to collect him the moment you left. Probably made him an offer he could not refuse, which would explain why he’s lazing about like the king of the underworld, ruling in her stead.

“He wouldn’t.” He never took her hand, not even before he knew me. I turn my gaze about the room, only to find Illian in the window. I whirl, and there he is in the basin mirror. He is transposed across every reflective surface—

Wouldn’t he?Illian says.He seems to be rather enjoying himself, if you ask me. I’m sure she’ll make her realm so appealing that he can’t help but give in and stay.

Give in? Stay with her forever? “As in…among the dead?”

His lip curls.He is as alive as ever, much to my annoyance. For now, that is.

Alive, yet in the Realm of the Dead? But why? “You can’t mean to help him. Why tell me this?”

My reasons are my own,he says.

“Not good enough.”