Page 142 of Claimed

‘The Glass seems interested in you. Do not tempt metaphors.’

‘You’ve been spending too much time with me.’

‘Yes.’

His tone gives the word too much weight.

I look up. Mistake. He’s staring at me as if I’m a miracle and an executioner. His eyes are silver-bright, not with hunger this time, though hunger is never exactly absent with him. This is recognition. Grief. Awe. The kind of look that makes a person feel seen all the way down to the ugly foundations.

‘What?’ I ask.

He doesn’t answer. Instead his thumb brushes the side of my face so gently I want to cry again, which feels excessive and inconvenient because we have already filled that quota.

‘You are changing,’ he says.

My stomach flips. ‘Into what?’

‘Yourself.’

Oh. Fuck.

That’s worse than any horror answer.

I try to sit up. The room tips, but I manage, mostly because Valentin moves with me and arranges the pillows behind my back as if I’m a difficult royal relic. I glare because it is expected. He ignores me because he’s an arrogant nightmare.

Across the room, the Heartshard Glass shows me in fragments.

I stare. And for the first few seconds, I don’t understand what I’m seeing.

The woman in the largest shard is me. And also not the me I woke as this morning. The differences are subtle and devastating.

My face has softened in some places and sharpened in others, as if someone has wiped soot from a painting and revealed colour beneath. My eyes look brighter, hazel threaded with bluish gold I barely remember noticing as a girl. My hair carries hidden depth under its darker tones, old warmth freed from under Selphine’s careful dulling.

My mouth is still mine. My chin. The stubborn angle of my head. Eira Cross is there in every line of defiance.

But Lyra Hannigan is looking back. Older. Bloodier. Alive. A sound escapes me. I hate it immediately.

Valentin’s hand settles at the back of my neck. ‘Breathe.’

‘I am breathing.’

‘Do it convincingly.’

‘Shut up.’ The phrase comes too easily. So does the faint curve at his Netheris-hot mouth.

Then we both freeze when we feel a presence brush the bond.

‘What the hell is that?’

Valentin’s jaw clenches. ‘It is irritating, but harmless. Merely a psychic knock.’

I’m grappling with that when Rowan’s voice flows into my head. Our heads, I assume.

Sweet fucking fires of Netheris. What is this? Grand Central Station? Anyone can just walk in?

She needs rest, Valentin, she says. Real rest. Not interrogation. No mating ritual attempts while her throat is one bad decision from reopening.

I nearly choke. ‘Mating ritual attempts?’