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“Did you summon the hallucination in my mind?” I call up to him, biding my time as I try to figure out a way around him. “Did you tell me that I could breathe, that none of it was real?”

He just gives me a mysterious smile and doesn’t answer, as if suggesting that I’d fantasized about him on my own. “It just seemed like you needed some help,” he replies.

“Why help me?” I demand.

“Keeps it fun, don’t you think?”

An obvious lie, but I decide to go with it as I slowly start to climb the steps. “Our ideas of fun may differ,” I call up to him. “But I also imagine that you aren’t here to play nice. Not if you might potentially lose this mission.”

He leans against the railing to observe me. “That’s where you don’t know me at all,” he answers. “Why have an easy time, when I can give us both a good challenge?”

There is no tell on his face, but I still sense something else under his smooth words and easy smile, something I can’t quite put my finger on. My gaze flickers to the silk bracelet on his wrist, and in this instant, I wish I could wear it, if only to know whether he was lying.

“You seem far too delighted by this. Then again, stealing something is right up your alley, isn’t it?”

He shrugs. “Most museum objects are already stolen, aren’t they? Are we doing anything different?”

I take another step toward him—then halt, looking through the gap in the stairwell to see that the staircase spirals down seemingly to infinity. Another lie of Étienne’s doing.

Étienne notices my hesitation with satisfaction, assuming that his optical illusion must be working enough to make me dizzy. He braces himself against the railing—then jumps over it.

I snap out of my reverie in an instant. As he hurtles toward me, I sidestep, pressing myself as flat as possible against the wall.

He barely misses. As he whirls to face me on the steps, my hand shoots out and closes around his wrist. Instantly, I feel the heat of his soul streaming through my palm, compelled to leave his own body.

Étienne shudders, yanking his hand away and stumbling backward, slightly weakened.

He lunges for me again as I race up the stairs. His hand clamps down on my shoulder.

Wind roars past my ear. I open my eyes to see myself falling from the railing, hurtling down the center of the stairwell as the spirals of steps race past me. My stomach drops—my chest aches. I instinctively try to grab on to anything.

It’s not real.

The reminder flickers in my mind. I squeeze my eyes shut, then try to pivot my thoughts away from the certainty that I must be falling through the air.

But with my eyes shut, I suddenly stop feeling the drop in my stomach and the pain in my chest. It is as if I had been looking at some sort of circular screen around me, playing a scene of me falling down the stairwell.

Focus. It’s an illusion, and you’re still standing on the stairs.

I grit my teeth. My eyes fly open. This time, I ignore the blur of motion around me and force myself to my feet in midair. Then I twist around, reaching for an invisible spot where Étienne had been moments before he grabbed me.

My hand closes miraculously around his neck.

Suddenly, my surroundings snap back to reality—I’m standing on solid steps in the stairwell, and Étienne is before me, and I’ve grasped his throat. I shove him against the wall with a snarl, breathing heavily as I get my bearings. Even though the dizzying sensation of falling is gone, I still sway on my feet, still feel my knees trembling.

Étienne narrows his eyes at me, but I can tell he’s gasping for breath, his body weakening once more in my clutches as I pull on his soul.

He gives me a harsh smile. “Why do you even want to become the Regent of Death?”

“Why did you want to become the Regent of Lies?” I counter.

“Comparable, are we now?” His hand closes around mine, but even this grip is weak. “I thought you didn’t care for this life.”

I grit my teeth. “No one cares if any of this matters to me. You, least of all.”

He pauses at that, just for a beat, and in that moment I meet his eyes and see something familiar flicker across his gaze. His smile loses its harsh angles, turns softer, more tragic.

“If only you understood how much we have in common,” he says.