Page 113 of A Dance of Lies

“Your wing,” I breathe. “No—I must return to my room. If he finds that I’m missing . . .”

“It would be far more dangerous if he hears of you sneaking back to your room the very hour he himself returns from the brothel.”

I blow out a breath. He’s right.

He tugs me along, guiding me to a guest room off a branching hallway. “You can sleep here.”

So matter of fact. “Someone will see me in the morning, surely.”

“In the morning,” he says, “I can create enough of a distraction that you can slip back out undetected. I’m rather good at that.”

Exhaustion rakes over me again, so I merely nod and slump onthe bed. The room is small and windowless, alabaster stone wrapping the walls aside from a painting or two. At least the bed is soft and pillowy. Anton tells me he will have someone send me breakfast in the morning and that we will figure the rest out after that. I barely hear him, already half asleep.

This time, I dream of a throne.

It is familiar. A pillar of carved stone filigreed with iron, set high on a dais before which I stand. But try as I might, I cannot see who sits upon it. So I turn.

And forget that I am dreaming.

Gore paints the room in shreds of red and black, blood thick as tar smeared across the floor. I trip over my heels as I stumble back, only to hit a wall of glass. I try another route, but the same glass blocks me on all sides, caging me in—

I throw myself against it, but it doesn’t budge. I kick and claw, but it only shrinks until I can’t move at all.

A prison.

No.

I splay my hands, glancing about for any sign of help. Beyond the horror, doors open to flitting figures. A battle. Awar.Spears are thrown. Axes swing past. Heads are severed, and I cannot, cannot get free, the blood about my cage rising like a flood—

I don’t know where I am.

I wrench forward, only to slip, my legs splayed beneath me. And I am bound, cocooned in fabric that sticks to my sweat-slicked skin like glue. The air is stale. Hot. Unmoving. My heart riots. I follow the line of the wall, but that too is stone—

A prison.

A cell.

Darkness, shrinking.

I cannot breathe.

I cannotbreathe.

Panic swings me into full hysteria. I claw forward, wrestling against whatever it is that clings to me, until I find a faint sliver of light like a crack in the wall. I scamper toward it, shove my fingers into the gap, pull—

A door. It’s a door. I manage to pry it open, then I’m spilling outward, into some unknown hall, my equilibrium tilting like a wave-thrown ship. I knock into a plinth, the vase atop shattering across the floor, but I need air. I stumble on, the tile cold against my feet. Dimly, I hear someone calling my name.

The voices. Always the voices.

I collide with something hard.

“Minnow?”

I try to look up, but the rhythm of my panting sends a swirl of stars across my sight.

“Vasalie,” says a voice, soothing, soft. A voice I know. “I need you to do something for me. It will sound strange, but it will help. I need you to breathe in and tell me what you smell. Give me three words for it.”

I shake my head, because he doesn’t understand—