Page 103 of To Dance with Death

His lips, soft on mine.

Rain, glittering.

Stained glass.

Steaming water.

Then—

My father.

Blood. An injured Gustav.

Me, trying to run, to get back to them—

I’m moving before I think better of it, my vision awash in smears of light. I grab for the wall, the doorframe, letting it clear, and then I rip open the door to Anton’s room.

Empty.

Heart pounding, I race through his wing, then across the bridge.What was Anton thinking, forcing me back here? Does he think I won’t return? Fool.

Then another realization sends a stutter into my heart.

I don’t know how long it’s been. From what I can tell, it’s evening, but has a day passed or mere hours? Has the deadline come and gone?

My body begs to collapse by the time I reach the tunnel leading through the mountain and into Moranya’s Citadel—only to find it guarded.

“Let me pass,” I say to the Aegis. Three of them stand there, hands clasped around their reaper’s axes. They don’t so much as look at me. But when I try to press through them, I’m shoved back. “You are not to enter. His Gloriousness’s orders.”

Oh, the way rage boils within me. I shake with it. Bunch my fists, my fury fueling my resolve to wring his neck,shakethe care out of him.

With a groan, I pivot. March back through the palace, resolute on finding him. Screaming at him, for all the good it would do. But as I pass through the halls, weariness clings.

I failed to bring Anton back to himself. To convince him toact.

And yet…I saw it. I saw how much he cares, despite his denial. I search for him—through each level. All the places I’ve found him before—deep in his cups, laughing the night away. But he isn’t there. He isn’t in the gardens or the pavilion. I could check the roof, but my body is ready to give out with each step. After being in the land of the living, everything is once again heavy, the pressure painful.

I want to lie down, give up. But then I think of Gustav, of Laurent, of all my friends and how this war will destroy everything. It pushes me onward, offering the illusion of strength where there is none, and I climb one more set of stairs, never mind that it hurts to breathe.

“Vasalie?”

Dizzy, I spin on my heel—foolishly so when the world tilts. But then Sundar is there, gripping my arm. “Fates, where have you been?”

I collapse in his arms. Mercifully, he catches me with an arm under mine, and, seeing that I’m breathless, he shepherds me down the hallway leading to his room.

There I tell him everything about our time in Ansa. The workshop, the sketchbook. How fruitless our quest was, and how I placed my hope in Anton after that. I even admit to the night we spent. I tell Sundar what Anton told me: that he promised fidelity. And how I told him that I loved him in turn. How he tore my heart out, after that.

The last bit of determination I have whittles away when I speak it all aloud.

“Hope is lost, Sundar,” I breathe, my palms falling open as if dropping the last of it.

“Never. We still have one day. The Syndicate meeting is tomorrow. And Anton is inlovewith you, Vasalie. Everything you told me proves it further. Give him another chance. Go to him one last time,” Sundar says, shoving the last modicum of hope I’d dropped back into my hands.

I blow out a breath. “I have to find him first.”

The day I woke in Razam and found Anton’s memories lost, I made a vow to believe in him. To save him. Since then, he has kept me close. Safe. He’s shown me who he is—his inherent goodness, even after he thought everyone betrayed him.

He is running away from everything he loves because he isafraid.Afraid of being betrayed, of not being loved at his best—and at his worst.