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Thicket didn’t know what to say. The… rawness in his eyes. It looked like an open wound, clean cut and neat, showing the pale pink flesh beneath. Showing the emotions within.

So instead of speaking, she reached out, brushing her fingers against his cheek.

Marcellus closed his eyes, as though her touch was torturous. He let her trace the lines of his jaw. But as she trailed her hands lower, he leaned away, shuttering his emotions with a scowl. “I ask that you keep your distance. Otherwise you might give me the wrong idea. I do not wish to cross more lines than I already have.” Despite his words, his hands trembled.

Thicket pressed her lips together. “You asked me if I loved Elian,” she said quietly. Marcellus stiffened. “The answer is yes. I do. I probably always will.”

He nodded, jaw clenching. He wouldn’t look at her as he went to rise. “Then I wish you all the best, Princess.”

She grabbed his wrist. Forcing him to stay. To hear her. “You have to understand. Elian gave me light when I needed it most. He picked me up and made me feel whole again.” She cupped her hand to his cheek, forcing him to look at her. “But Marcellus, you showed me I already was.”

He shook his head, as if trying to scrub her words from his mind.

“That doesn’t change anything.” He pried her hand from his cheek. “There isn’t a single reality where we are meant to be together. Not with you as a princess with the strongest magic in the world, and me as a guard with the weakest. How can I expect people to accept me if they didn’t even accept Delmore, who was born with royal blood and has power beyond my wildest imagination? I don’t care what anyone thinks of me. I never have. I’ve never sought their validation or approval. But I care about what they will say about you if you are with me. I don’t want to be another reason for people to question your capability to rule.”

“All my life,” Thicket said softly, “I have done what others wished of me. I have been held to standards I can never hope to meet. For once, I want to be selfish.” She looked at him, taking in the sharp slant of his eyes to the tension in his full lips before her gaze fell to her lap. “You are right. We aren’t meant to be together.” He flinched. “But I don’t want what we have, what I feel for you, to be determined by fate, or something written in the stars centuries before our time. I want it to be here, now. I want it to be something I choose. Something I fought for.”

The smallest flicker of hope burned in his eyes. His finger twitched, as though wanting to draw her closer, but he curled it into a fist. “What if your memories come back and you realize Delmore was the one for you all along?” He hesitated. “What if you decide I’m no longer enough?”

Thicket took his hands in hers. He didn’t fight her this time, letting her grasp hold of him the way she had been unable to while in the dream of darkness. “I am not the same person I was before the curse. Nor am I the same girl you talked off the ledge of a clock tower. I have changed. Even if I do one day get my memories back, it won’t erase who I am now. What I feel now.” Her eyes fluttered as she looked down. “You once asked what happiness looks like to me.”

Marcellus swallowed. “And what is that, exactly?”

She swept him into an answering kiss.

It was unlike any other kiss she experienced before.

This was like a billion jolts of electricity sizzling across her body, sparking and snapping as they settled down into her blood, her bones, making her feel oh, so light.

She dug her fingers into his hair and he gripped the back of her dress, pulling her tighter to him, deepening the kiss. The sun broke from the base of the sky and the world exploded with golden light. Beside them, the astromeia flowers bloomed, showing off the brilliant stars they had captured.

Thicket’s heart sang. This moment was perfect. Better than anything she had ever dreamed. Better than the fairytales. Better than imagination could ever allow.

That was until darkness crept into the corners of her vision.

The last sensation Thicket had before her vision went black was the tumble of her stomach as she fell from the edge of the clock tower.

Chapter Sixty-One

Thicket always seemed to find herself falling. She fell and fell, tumbling through the darkness. Light exploded around her blinding her, yet, unlike all the other times, it was painless, pure—unearthly in its white, achromatic beauty.

Too soon was it washed away by a sea of color. The hues sped past her eyes, blurring together, moving, spinning. Round and around and around and—

Everything stopped.

Stilled.

Dangled in mid air, like buckets of paint hung from the sky.

Then, they started to merge, piecing together like a puzzle. No. Not just one puzzle. Many. Hundreds, thousands—maybe even millions. They circled around her like a murder of ravens before slamming into her with the force of a quadrillion suns.

Each image cut through her, impeding upon her skull, invading her head. But it wasn’t a true invasion. It was a replacement. The pictures stacked themselves neatly in her mind, as if arranging books on a shelf. Each image had a place.

All at once, everything stilled. Thicket’s reflection stared back at her. She was grinning, eyes alight and body bouncing in her seat as two maids attended to her. One stood behind her chair, watching the other apply powders to her face.

They were getting her ready for her first ball. Thicket had seen many balls before when she snuck out of bed to spy through cracks in the servant’s quarters, but this was the first time she would be allowed to go inside. Her legs kicked, rustling the fabric of her dress. She had chosen green.

Green was her favorite color because green was like her. Vibrant and full of life, something that couldn’t be tamed, her parents had said—just like her name.