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Without letting myself think, I grabbed the box and shoved the latch hard. It popped open with a creak, and I fumbled it back onto the pedestal. Then I stepped away, needing a moment, both hands pressed to my racing heart. I half expected something to come surging out at me.

Nothing did.

Instead, a new sound filled the chamber. A wet, rhythmic thumping that turned my stomach over. I crept closer, every sense on a knife’s edge, and even before I looked, some deep, certain part of me already knew what I would find.

Resting on a bed of deep purple velvet was…

A heart.

A real human heart.

Raw and organic and shockingly, obscenely out of place.

And it was beating!

“No… impossible,” I muttered, shaking my head as if this would help rid me of the sight.

It looked fresh, slick, and visceral, as though it had been set there only moments before. I wanted to run from it, yet my fingers drifted helplessly above it as if they were no longer my own. I felt the cold pouring off it in waves, stinging my skin, as if the thing were drinking the very warmth out of the room.

I shouldn’t have touched it.

I knew that. Every fiber of my being knew that.

Yet the tips of my fingers brushed the slick, cold flesh anyway.

And then the chamber… dissolved into darkness.

I found myself standing in a cramped little workroom, dirty pots stacked high beside a great tub of water. A young man lounged against a narrow worktop, his dark hair falling in waves to his shoulders, and the breath caught in my throat.

Because I knew that face.

Or near enough. He looked like both Atlas and Lazaros, a blend of the two. The same proud bones, the same dark eyes, though his mouth curled into something far more arrogant than I had ever seen on either brother.

A crown I recognized was nestled in his hair.

Hyperion.

It had to be… their father.

He was looking right at me, and I started back before I realized he was actually looking straight through me. His mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear a word of it. I turned and found myself face to face with a young woman of about his age, her dress patched and threadbare, a world away from his fine clothes.

When I looked back, he was still speaking, in silent words, and her eyes crinkled at the corners before she threw her head back in a laugh I couldn’t hear. But I could see it in every line of her, in the bob of her throat, the rise and fall of her chest. The young king’s eyes lit like a struck flint, and I could clearly see the love blooming between them.

The room began to fade, and I dropped to a crouch as vertigo rolled through me.

A stone step rose up beneath my hands, and I stumbled upright. They were there again, the same man and woman, he in his exquisite clothes, she in her servant’s rags. Only now we stood in a narrow, winding stairwell, her back pressed to the cold stone, and he braced over her. For one ugly moment, I thought he meant her harm. Then their mouths met, their hands grasping at each other with a passion I knew far too well. My heart twisted for Atlas as the scene blurred and spun faster and faster until the world melted away, and I squeezed my eyes shut as I braced.

The first thing I noticed about the next vision was that I could hear it this time. And the woman’s voice, when it came, was the one that had called me from my bed.

It was wrecked with emotion, and it tore into me as she faced Hyperion, his face gone pale, his eyes wide.

“I’m so sorry, Hyperion. I know this will ruin you. A bastard for a child, and born of a servant, no less. What are we going to do?” She sobbed into her hands in the middle of the room, and every part of me ached to cross the space. To put my arms around her and tell her it would be all right.

His lip trembled, and he rushed to her, taking her tear-soaked hands in his.

“Melanthe, you must be quiet. Someone will hear.” He drew her head to his chest, stroking her hair, pale gold and falling in loose waves down her back. “Hush, now. This stress is not good for the babe. We will find a way, do you hear me? Don’t you fret over any of it.” His face was a portrait of devotion as he held her, pressing her hands to his chest. “Everything will be well.”

Her sobs slowly quieted, until there was only the catch of her breath and the soft sound of his hand moving over her hair. Then she drew back, wiping her cheeks.