Page 74 of Thief of Hearts

It was not what I wanted. But it was what needed to happen. For both our sakes.

I moved away from him and it was so difficult. Perhaps this was the reason why my mother never formed real romantic relationships. It would be so easy to lose myself in him. To forget about everything and everyone else and just be with him.

Maybe that’s not a bad thing, a voice that sounded annoyingly like Lia’s said inside my head.

Zain would have his life and I would have mine. Although he had mentioned thinking about his future . . . What if he saw me in it?

I moved his dog over so that I could get into bed. There was a whooshing sound as Zain fell face-first onto his bed and immediately started to snore. I bit my lip so that I wouldn’t laugh—it seemed like a good thing that I hadn’t taken him up on his offer. It looked as if things would have ended quickly.

We both deserved better than that.

I was in the dream again with Invara. Everything exactly the same as it had been every other night.

Win.

Determined to speak to her, I did my best to get a sound out. I wanted to ask her what she wanted from me, why she kept saying the same word every night. Why she was so angry.

But there was this rumbling sensation, a sort of negative noise, that reminded me of a horn. It caught me by the throat and I felt like I was being smothered.

I began gasping, trying to breathe, when the dream suddenly changed.

It was dark. As my eyes adjusted, I realized that I was in a covered cart. I sat on a sumptuous bed that filled the entire cart.

Zain sat across from me.

“Pretend,” he said.

“What?”

It was like he couldn’t hear me. “Pretend, just for tonight.”

“Where are we? What is going on?”

“Of all the things I’ve lied about, I have never once lied about that.”

I was so confused. This didn’t make any sense.

“Illora.”

Someone was shaking me out of my dream and I pulled out my knife, putting it to their throat.

“It is me, illora. I have been victorious in my quest!”

“Zain?” I felt so groggy but I pulled the knife back. “What time is it?”

“The beginning of the fourth watch.”

That meant it was three or four o’clock in the morning. I groaned and sat up, my head still spinning. “Your quest?”

Had he actually found a boar somewhere? And when did he sneak out? How had I not heard him? He couldn’t have done it quietly. It concerned me that I hadn’t woken up when he left.

Maybe I had some residual effects from the medicines.

He stepped into the moonlight with something wiggling in his arms.

“Is that . . . a pig?”

“It was the closest thing I could find to a boar!”