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Her heart slammed against her chest. She was going to die.

Hands grabbed at her, wrestling with the jellyfish coiling tightly around her limbs. She reached out, trying to latch onto one of them, anxious to feel human flesh beneath her own rather than the empty grasp of water.

The familiar scent of lavender curled in her nostrils. Panic deeper than her fear of drowning gripped her heart, squeezing so tightly she forgot she couldn’t breathe. Behind the darkness of her heavy eyes, a thin trail appeared. It was faint at first, a few fuzzy flecks mingling with the shadows. Then it ignited in a stream of smokey purple. It wound through the air, thin and feathery. She shouldn’t have been able to touch it, yet as she reached a hand out, she found herself latching on to something.

A memory swelled inside her, a sense of haunting familiarity, urging her on.

She followed the trail of smoke, hauling herself closer inch by inch.

Her vision blurred. The lavender scent was overwhelming now.

As her mind waned further into oblivion, she was left with the echo of one thought.

This moment… It felt nearly identical to the time she had tried to get her memories back.

Before her lungs gave into the water and the darkness fully consumed her, Thicket managed to murmur one last word.

“Mymeri.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Hair whipped across Thicket’s vision, tossed wildly by the wind. The light brown strands weren’t jumbled and chaotic as they looped around one another in a spiral, but were as elegant and straight as the fine point of a blade.

Thicket had seen this hair before, cascading around the back of a vanity chair and falling against her cheek as a venomous voice hissed, You will never be enough.

It was Lavender’s hair.

But… What was it doing in her dream? She was dreaming, right? The scent of lavender was everywhere, seeming to make up the entirety of the air she breathed. She had thought it had been leading her to her memories, but this moment felt like all the other image dreams she had. Except this time, she wasn’t watching through her own eyes.

She was watching through Lavender’s.

Lavender raked a hand through her hair, catching the fine strands around her fingers to push it back from her face. She must have been in the Desert Mountains, for from her vantage point, she could make out the entirety of the crimson sands that made up the Desert Kingdom—including the domed palace rising from the dunes. Early morning light bleached the vibrant red of the desert into a lackluster russet, which even the sky seemed to adopt, staining the blue with a whisper of pinkish-brown. It softened the harsh desert, making the hiss of sand skittering and the gusts of mountain wind feel serene rather than intimidating.

Footsteps crunched on the rocky ground behind Lavender. A massive wolf padded up the slope. With the dust from the russet sand, its thick white coat appeared stained with blood, further accentuated by its glinting ruby eyes.

“Enola,” Lavender said. “Did you bring it?”

In response, the alpha symbol blazed across the wolf’s forehead.

A trill cut through the mountains, half shriek, half song. A bird larger than both Lavender and the wolf shot from around a peak, circling around before landing at Lavender’s feet. The crown of feathers around its head was nearly identical to the sand it perched upon, tinged with flecks of gold that glittered in the rising sun.

A phoenix. They were real and every bit as magnificent as Thicket imagined them to be.

The wolf’s alpha symbol pulsed, as though the phoenix was fighting its control. The battle was ultimately lost. The phoenix bowed its head in submission.

“Very good, Enola,” Lavender purred. “I wonder what my dear sister will make of this.”

The screech of metal ricocheted off the mountain’s jagged walls. The tip of a blade fell into the sand, just inches from the phoenix. Thicket thrashed, but she was unable to move, unable to stop Lavender as she raised the sword above the phoenix’s head.

Thicket’s vision went dark right as the blade came down.

“Thicket!” a feminine voice said. “Thicket, can you hear me?”

Thicket fought against the image of her sister’s hair, whipping in the wind. Of the phoenix, head bent and accepting the death about to come. Of the wolf with its stained white coat and those ruthless crimson eyes…

A head laid across her chest. “She’s breathing, but it’s shallow.”

A rough hand shook her. “Princess.” A curse. “If you die, I swear on all twelve chalices…”