Page 24 of Fallen Nocturne

“Are they all dead?” I ask quietly, glancing at the shimmering courtiers turning around us.

“Most of them.” His fingers flex slightly.

I should demand an explanation. Instead, I become aware of every place our bodies touch.

The music builds. We spin through shafts of colored light from the stained glass, crimson and violet and gold washing over us in turns. His eyes never leave mine. Not once.

My heart is beating so hard I can hear it over the harps.

“Have we done this before?” I ask.

“Many times.”

My foot catches. His arm tightens around my waist before I can fall.

A strange ache stirs behind my eyes. I think of dancing, of music, of laughter and bright halls. For one hopeful moment I feel as though memory is about to open for me. Images flicker at the edges of my mind and vanish just as quickly. Every time I reach for them, pain blooms behind my temples.

Then one memory pushes through. A ballroom lit with gold. Music swelling beneath a painted ceiling. Landon’s hand at my waist as he guided me across the floor at the Fae King’s ball.

Landon dyes his hair black whenever he returns to the fae court. Red is considered cursed among the High Fae, an old superstition I have always thought ridiculous. His natural hair is beautiful, but I understand why he prefers not to invite their stares.

Is this dark-haired and masked person Landon?

Could the mate bond have carried me into his dream? The possibility fills me with relief.

Of course it is Landon.

Who else could make me feel this way?

This ache… This sense that I have been walking toward him my entire life without knowing it. The recognition reaches deeper than bone, all the way down to whatever part of me is oldest and truest.

Joy floods through me so fast my eyes sting. The mate bond must have pulled me across the boundary of sleep to find him, showing me what he is like when he is not carrying the weight of being branded a traitor to his kingdom.

I stare at the mask. Fae masks are designed to hide everything.

This is Landon, unguarded and playful, offering me a dance in an empty palace because he cannot say in daylight what the dream allows him to say in the dark.

The music softens and we slow. Ghostly couples turn around us, their silks brushing soundlessly across the restored floor.

His hand tightens on my waist and I look up at him, at the mouth I can see below the mask. I rise onto my toes and claim his lips. The kiss remains brief, no more than a press of my mouth to his, but heat rushes through me as though I have touched a flame.

His entire body goes still.

I lower myself and open my eyes. For one terrible heartbeat, he does not respond.

He stares at me through the mask without blinking or speaking, as though I have done something far more terrible than kiss him. Doubt twists sharply through me.

I have made a mistake.

His hand tightens at my waist. He leans down, slowly. His mouth comes close enough that I feel his breath on my lips. My eyes start to close again because he’s going to kiss me.

“Thief.”

What?

My eyes snap open. “I... I’m not a thief.”

“No?” His gaze drops from my chest to the fold of my nightgown where the dragon sculpture presses warm. “Then what is that?”