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Because I, like Erik, knew what it was to wear my thorns as armor. To ache, and to wield my suffering as a weapon against everyone around me, even those who didn’t deserve to hurt.

“You want the truth?” I choked out. “Fine. The truth is that I am not the woman who can choose an apartment in the city and plant gardenias on the balcony. I am not the woman who can visit all your favorite places and picnic with you in the mornings. I have been in pain for nearly all my life, and I don’t know if I can ever fully erase that pain. I don’t even know if—” I broke off, began again, “if I deserve to try. You may want me now, but you don’t know me. Not really.” I shook my head, exhausted, willing him to understand. “If Erik doesn’t end up hurting you,” I said, “then I will. And I don’t want to.”

Keil watched me for a long while, the carriage wheels clacking over the heavy-breathing quiet.

At last, he leaned forward again, coming directly into my line of sight. The lights beyond the window danced in his earnest gaze.

“Is that who you think I want?” he asked quietly. “That woman you described, with the gardenias and the picnics?” He reached toward my lap and gathered my fists between his hands, his knuckles resting on my knees. “I don’t know her,” he said. “I know you, with your barbed words and your thoughtfulness. Your dry humor and your brilliant insights. I know how you operate from a place of strength time and time again, even when you feel you’re at your lowest. I know the sound of your laughter from across a room, and the shape of your smile against my mouth.” His voice hitched, his throat bobbing with emotion. “I know it all, Alissa. And the knowing has only made me want you more. You may wish to control everything else . . . but you cannot control that.”

I watched, glassy-eyed, as he drew my hands toward him—never holding me by the wrists, never shackling me in any sense of the word. Just cocooning my fingers in his warmth as he brought my knuckles to his lips. He kissed my right fist, then the left, until both my hands unclenched automatically at his touch. Until my specter turned as soft as honey inside me, lapping against the walls of my resolve.

“You are the most courageous person I have ever met,” he said, his breath grazing against my skin. “So please. Do not be a coward now.”

I swallowed hard, knowing he was right. I was afraid—so deeply terrified of hurting him, of losing him. And yet I didn’t know how to move through that fear when all the blood from my past was still trickling into my every breath.

I opened my mouth, not even sure of my own response, when Keil suddenly straightened, his eyes darting to the window.

“What—?” I began, but he released my hands abruptly and thumped on the ceiling.

“Stop the carriage,” he called.

We halted on a nondescript path, the foliage thick on both sides. Keil opened the door, and I realized why he’d stopped. He must have smelled it through the gap in the window before the scent had hit me.

Smoke.

We tumbled onto the road, Valeria and Dashiel doing the same a little way ahead of us. Val’s expression had gone slack with a horror I’d never seen on her face before.

It was only as I remembered Dashiel’s previous comment that I realized where we must be. And realized, too, that the reddish light hazing into the air was not the city’s lantern glow.

My stomach dropped. Because this was the Ansoran settlement.

And it was on fire.

45

We raced through the foliage, brambles snapping underfoot, ash thickening the air. As we burst onto the edge of a hill, horror pinned me in place.

Not far below, the settlement was in chaos: violent flames and black columns of smoke, hacking coughs and roaring heat.

Valeria darted forward first, and the rest of us followed, noticing who she’d spotted: Osana, sweaty-faced and breathing heavily, shouting commands over her shoulder as she supported the weight of a young man.

“What happened?” Val ran to hold up the man’s other side.

Osana’s eyes widened when she saw us, but she recovered quickly. “Nobody knows.” She turned toward a group still scrambling between the houses. “Leave the supplies! Clear out the northern sector!”

Fresh panic seared through me. “The northern sector?”

She nodded. “That’s where the fire originated. It spread from there faster than we could control.” Her gaze welled with a deep sadness that mirrored my own.

Because the northern sector belonged to the Daradonian refugees.

Before I could think better of it, I turned and sprinted into the thick of the heat.

Keil called my name over a sudden crash-and-crackle behind me—a structure collapsing between us, blocking his way.

I bounded over littered supplies, avoiding the pails of water that people tossed in every direction, the liquid gushing out in steaming arcs. Embers zipped like wasp stings against my skin—and still, I ran toward the people of Daradon. The people of my home.

Someone cried out, and I skidded back as a woman staggered toward me, her dress more fire than fabric.