Chapter Two—The Union

I never fancied myself the kind of girl who would get all in a tizzy over wedding planning. I’ve always been a calmer sort, collected, with my feet planted firmly on the ground. I suppose that part of me thought I would never actually get married, and that I would live out my days alone. Part of me had been resigned to that fate, embraced it even. But here I was, living the fairy tale. So why did I feel so anxious?

I awoke the day of my wedding—well, “awoke” is probably not the right word. It felt more like I gave up on trying to sleep when the sun finally peeked over the horizon line to bid me good morning. It was cold in my bedroom, and my bed was empty because I’d told Kaz that we needed to adhere to some old tradition where the groom doesn’t see the bride before the wedding. He thought it was weird but had gotten quite adept at fielding my bizarre human requests.

Though to be fair, I wasn’t the only one with strange traditions. One night after dinner, Kaz and I took a bottle of wine out onto the veranda, and he’d lit dozens of votive candles so that when the sun set, it looked like we were surrounded by fireflies. We sat together at a patio table, and I tilted my head back to look up at the endless display of stars, like someone had splattered white paint across a swath of black velvet.

“Can you see your planet from here?” I asked, sipping at the wine with a satisfied hum. We were sitting close together, and Kaz was wearing a fur-lined coat, as though we’d ventured into the frozen tundra instead of the desert at night.

“Not with the naked eye,” he replied, tilting his head back to take in the sky. “And even if we could, we’d be seeing a mere echo.”

“Because the planet doesn’t exist anymore?”

“Just so.”

“And looking into the stars is like looking into the past.”

Kaz smile. “Exactly.” I crept my fingers over the slope of his forearm until he reached across to snag my fingers with his. He lifted my hand and pressed a kiss to the palm of it that sent a shiver through me. “There is something I wanted to talk to you about, Jane,” he said, his voice full of tenderness.

“Oh?”

“A, ah…tradition from my home planet.” He wasn’t looking me in the eye, so I quirked a brow in question. “It may seem strange to you, but what’s actually interesting is that there is precedence for it on this planet as well. I was scouring the history books, and I came across—back in the middle seventeen hundreds, particularly in the Scottish Highlands—”

“Just tell me what it is,” I said, smiling.

“As you’re aware, my vocal chords are synthetic.” I nodded my head in confirmation. “While we do have a language that is codified for written work and messages and the like, the language of my people is a silent one. As such, there isn’t an exchange of vows at our union ceremonies—why should there be, when no one speaks?”

“Sure,” I said with a shrug. “I guess that makes sense. So what do you do instead?”

Kaz hesitated. “Well.” He turned in his chair so that he was facing me, and he took my hand again, the way people do when they are going to deliver very bad news. “Because so much of our communication is about the open expression of raw feeling or uncensored thought, the union ceremony centers around a silent practice of scarification.”

I blinked. “Come again?”

“During the ceremony, the two people who are going to be joined together go under the knife, and the symbols of each other’s houses are carved into the flesh. Nothing too damaging, nothing that will cause blood loss or anything like that. Just enough for a symbolic exchange to take place. And the ritual is twofold: we shall have each other’s symbols on our bodies for the rest of our days, and the experience of the pain will open us up so that our minds and hearts can be heard even in the silence.”

I scoffed, unsure of what to make of this. “So, you want me to…what, exactly?” I found myself drawing my hand away, as if in preparation to protect myself against maiming.

But Kaz was shaking his head. “I am not asking you to do anything,” he said. “I understand how outside of your experience this would be, and the last thing in the universe that I want is to make you feel unhappy or uncomfortable in any way. But I did want to broach the subject, since this is a part of the world I come from, part of the experience I would like to bring to this planet.”

I drew my feet up onto the edge of my seat and hugged my knees to my chest, chewing contemplatively at my lower lip as I turned his words over in my head. “What is the symbol of your house?” I asked, allowing my vanity to win out.

Kaz stood up and unzipped his jacket, turning so that his right side was nearest to me before he lifted up his shirt so that I could see the series of hexagons that shimmered on his hip. I ran my fingers over them to find that they were slightly embossed and felt almost as though they were made of silver thread. “Why do they look like that?” I asked. “Like they reflect the light?”

“The nanites we use to repair the cuts—it’s an aesthetic choice.”

“I’ve seen another similar design—one on your arm. What does that one mean?” Kaz returned to his seat and peered out at the endless expanse of stars.

“It’s from another life,” he said.

We sat in companionable silence as I considered the notion of someone carving into me like a roast chicken on my wedding day. But I was marrying an Alien man, so perhaps I should embrace some of his more alien ways. And the design was beautiful—not a tattoo at all, but a scar that had been knit together again by a coterie of tiny robots. What a time to be alive.

“I’ll do it,” I said at length “You will?” He asked, grinning broadly.

“I get to decide where the incisions are made?” I asked, and he gave a nod of his head. “Good. I want it, the same size as yours, on my left forearm. So that I can look at it and admire it.” He leaned forward and kissed me, and I smiled as I kissed him back.

“You have no idea how happy this makes me,” he said, taking my hand and lacing my fingers with his. “But what shall I have done?” he asked at length. “What is the symbol of your house?”

I furrowed my brow, but there was only one obvious answer. “A circle,” I said. “To represent the earth itself.”

~ * ~

So when I got up that morning, there was a twinge of trepidation at the pain that was to come. I didn’t have any tattoos and I had been a child when I’d gotten my ears pierced, so I was not confident in my pain threshold. I was also not confident in my ability to not get blood everywhere, so wearing a white dress was right out.

It was red, and beautiful, and designed by the two boys who would be my sons. My sons. But this dress wasn’t a series of nanites that could disappear with the push of a button. It was a real A-line gown in silk the color of red wine. With a sweetheart neckline and cap sleeves, the skirt was ruched and plump and wearing it made me feel like Cinderella. Alice Fairfax came to help me get dressed, doing my hair for me and applying my makeup, making sure that everything was just so.

She had me in a robe, seated at the vanity in the bathroom, futzing with my hair before she set about styling it.

“Are you nervous?” She asked, working my curls with a flat iron.

“Yes,” I said quickly before I even had the chance to censor myself. “Very.” But Alice was just smiling.

“You’ll be all right.”

“I’m nervous about the ritual,” I said. “That’s all. Not about the getting married part, not really. I love Kaz—what more could I want?”

She patted my shoulder, peering into the mirror so that our gazes met in our reflections, before she continued to straighten my hair. “You make a lovely couple,” she said. “And I think you will be very good for him, in more ways than one.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate that.”

“And who knows,” she went on, setting the straight iron aside and gathering bobby pins to put in her teeth as she worked, “maybe you will be the first human woman to bear a hybrid child, and wouldn’t that be exciting?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed, perhaps less assured than I meant to sound, “exciting.”

Once she’d straightened my frizzy mass of curls, she gathered my hair into a very smart French twist, which she secured with pins. I had to admit, I was impressed. She’d forced my hair into submission; I’d have to remember to ask her for some tips and tricks once the day was done.

“I want you to know, Jane,” she said once she’d finished, “that you’ve come to mean a great deal to me since you arrived here. And that I hope, once you are lady of the house, you will continue to find my services valuable.”

I had to laugh a little—she was scared once I was in charge that she’d be out of a job. But I had no idea how to run a house the size of Thornfield, so as far as I was concerned, she had job security in perpetuity. I stood up and placed a kiss on her cheek. “Deeply valuable, Alice,” I said. “You are as much a part of this place as the walls or the grounds. I hope you’ll stay on forever and feel at home here.”

She smiled up at me and patted my hand. “Thank you, Jane,” she said. “Now, let’s get you into that dress.”

I shrugged out of my robe and made my way into the bedroom, whereupon I tossed it onto the mattress. My necklace had been used to construct a series of rather racy undergarments—that I had designed alone myself, not with anyone’s help, least of all the boys—and I blushed to let Alice see me in them. But she made no remark, merely took the gown down from its hanger and opening all of the clasps so that I could step easily inside. We brought the bodice up over my thighs and hips together, and I slipped my arms through the little cap sleeves even as Alice set to work doing up the clasps on the back.

“There,” she said at last. “Now for the finishing touch.” She laid a pair of red satin slippers on the floor, and I slid my stockinged feet inside of them. “Now let’s admire the final product.” She directed me gently to the corner where there was a standup mirror. And when I looked at my reflection, I hardly recognized myself. I was beautiful. Like actually beautiful. I smoothed my hands over the front of my dress and felt the softness of the material, beaming like a beauty queen into the mirror.

And maybe this was part of it, part of why I’d been so happy at Thornfield. Never in my life had I felt like anything of worth, not really. I never hated myself, never thought of myself as stupid or ugly, but just plain and inconsequential. But at Thornfield, I held a position of authority over my pupils, I did important work educating the next rulers of the Ivaldan people. And I felt beautiful, all the time. I wore beautiful clothes and found a man who gazed at me as though I were a rosebush in springtime. I had value here, and in other people finding value in me, I had come to value myself. And that burst of self-assurance is what made me truly beautiful.

“Thank you for your help, Alice,” I said, turning to embrace her. “You do good work.”

She chuckled a little, clasping her hands in front of her. “I try,” she said. But there was a sadness in her eyes that was undeniable, and I found myself untying the knot of her hands so that I could grip them in my own.

“What’s the matter?”

And she actually sniffled a little. If I weren’t mistaken, I could have sworn that Alice’s black hair had picked up even more grey since my arrival. The lines around her mouth and eyes had unquestionably deepened. “My heart just goes out to you, Jane,” she said, not quite looking me in the eye. “To reach this day and have no mother here to help you dress, no father to walk you down the aisle. No sister to stand beside you, no friends to help you celebrate.” I didn’t say it, but I was inclined to note what a downer she was being on my big day.

“It’s all right,” I said, trying to proffer a convincing smile. “I have you, don’t I?”

“Of course,” she quickly rejoined. “But it’s only…don’t you have anyone who’s still…you know…asleep?” She locked her eyes on me then, and I could see what she was aiming at right away, as soon as our eyes met.

But I just shook my head. “No one,” I said. And, much to my chagrin, I asked the question she was waiting for me to ask: “Do you?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Shocking. “My son.” She hesitated a moment, drawing away from me and moving toward the window. Her silhouette was framed prettily in the morning light. “He is a good lad, my son. Not much younger than you—twenty. Or, I guess…29, now? But asleep at 20.” She peered at me in periphery over her shoulder. “It keeps me up at night, thinking about him all alone in that stasis chamber.”

“Understandably so,” I said, in a vague attempt at comfort.

“The thing is, I don’t know when they’ll rouse him. Or if, in fact, they’ll wake him at all.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” I asked, suddenly conscious of how I’d searched the room I knew so well for any time-telling device; I was uncomfortable, and it manifested in the rapidity of my heartbeat and the clamminess of my palms.

“He’s…” she paused, canting her head gently to the side. “He’s a good boy, he really is,” she said. “Deep down.”

“Deep down…?”

“He got into some trouble—he was in prison.” She moved away from me then, as though she was afraid to go on, afraid she might spoil her case.

“What happened?” Alice moved to the Divan and took a seat; I wanted to sit beside her, but I was afraid to wrinkly the satin of my gown.

“He got into drugs as a teenager,” she explained with a wave of her hand. “Fell in with the wrong crowd, that sort of thing. And when his hoodlum friends pressured him into robbing a liquor store for some quick cash, well…” she shrugged. “He was never the strongest of boys, you understand. He was easily manipulated.” When she looked up at me then, I could see where her cheeks were streaked with tears. Wrinkles be damned, I took a seat at her side. “He’s not a bad person, you have to believe me.”

“Of course I believe you,” I said, placing one of my hands over both of hers and giving them a squeeze.

“But you understand, I must ask you: will you please get Master Kain to wake him up? Please?” She was a moment away from dropping down to her knees to beg.

“I don’t know that I have any sway over what Kaz does or does not do,” I said, my brow knotting.

“Maybe not now,” Alice conceded, “but you will after you’ve married him. I’m sure of it. Then he’ll have to listen to you.”

“He’s an elected official, Alice,” I said cautiously, “not a King. I won’t have any more power after the ceremony today than I do right now.”

“But will you ask him to consider my son’s case anyway?” She asked, and there was nothing in the world that could have compelled me to deny her.

“Yes,” I said at last, “of course I will.”

“Oh, thank you, Jane,” she said and threw her arms around me, pressing her damp face into my bare shoulder. “Bless you.”

I shifted uncomfortably underneath the weight of her attention but forced myself to smile all the same. “It’s really nothing,” I said. “And you know I can’t promise anything.”

“I know,” she said, wiping at her eye with one lithe finger, “I know. I’m just grateful that you’re willing to try.” She took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly through flared nostrils before rising to her feet and smoothing the skirt of her trademarked black dress out over her thighs. “Now,” she said, putting on a smile the way most people put on a party dress, “let’s get you married.”

~ * ~

When we’d begun the process of planning the wedding, and when it was determined that the ceremony would take place in considerably shorter order than I ever could have anticipated, I was told that it would likely need to be a daytime affair. “It’s autumn now,” Kaz said to me one afternoon as we took a stroll through the succulent garden, “which means that the temperature drops to uninhabitable numbers after the sun goes down.”

I laughed. “You can’t be serious.”

But he was, and he said so: “Quite.”

And so it was determined that it would be a luncheon affair, which the ceremony in the morning, and brunch served with mimosas and bloody Marys and a wonderful spread of breakfast and finger foods. It served me well, except that I thought I would have appreciated the cover of night for the drinking and dancing. But with how lovely I felt in my red gown, I decided I didn’t need it at all.

Alice Fairfax walked me down the stairs and through the dining room, where most of the party would take place. The ceremony itself would happen by the pool, beneath a white latticework arch with vines and roses growing all over it.

The beauty of the space nearly took my breath away: The chairs had been situated on either side of the pool, and the aisle went through the pool itself: a plexiglass walkway had been set up in and atop it, and there were floating lilies and candles in the glimmering water on either side of the walkway.

The sun was hanging just below its apex, and it cast everything in warm, white light: the day shined, and so did Kazimir.

He was wearing black slacks and an ornate Ivaldan belt that bore a similar hexagonal shape to the one that was cut into his body, the one that would soon be cut into mine. He was bare-chested in the sunlight, the wriggling light from the pool water sending glowing tendrils to dance across his skin. He stood with his hands at his side, but his eyes were locked on me, and I saw how much he loved me. He didn’t need to say it; he didn’t need to say anything. It was written plainly on his face.

The string quartet went into a sweet, melodic rendition of Pachelbel's Canon, and I took in a deep breath before willing myself to stop out onto the nearly translucent plexiglass. I moved slowly in step with the music and tried not to lose my footing and fall sideways into the pool; the very notion of it made a wide grin break out onto my face.

I didn’t really know anyone gathered around. There was Alice, of course, who had taken her seat near the front next to Sarah Reed. And Tox and Pim were standing behind their father. But that was everyone I knew, save for the familiar faces of the house staff who were busy at work scuttling to and fro across the grounds in preparation for the afternoon’s feast.

But I walked down the aisle and I smiled at my Kaz, and I tried not to worry myself about the pain to come. And when I reached him, having made my way safely and dry across the pool, Kaz approached me and took my hands in his, pressing a series of fluttering kisses to my fingertips “You are a vision,” his whispered, and I felt a flush warm my cheeks. He directed me toward the chair that would be mine and gripped the back of it while I sat down before he took his place beside me.

The music shifted to something darker in tone, haunting like a lullaby, and two Ivaldans I did not recognize knelt in front of us, one in front of me, and one in front of Kaz. They produced two small tools out of a band or folded satin: they looked like pens, almost, with a fine diamond tip at the end. The Ivaldan man assigned to me had skin purplish in hue, with white ivory horns that swept back over his crown, and when he knelt down in front of me, he smiled and ran his hand over my left forearm, where the scar would go.

And because it was the union of both an Ivaldan and a human, we had retained the services of a protestant minister, who had been standing behind the Ivaldans and had been thus revealed when they came forward to take their places. The minister was a comforting presence: plain and balding, he was precisely what I had always pictured when I thought the word “minister” in my mind. And he had a voice as calming as his demeanor.

“Dearly beloved,” he began, his tone smooth like milk chocolate, “we have come together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony. The bond and covenant of marriage was established by God in creation, and our Lord Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by His presence and first miracle at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. It signifies to us the mystery of the union between Christ and His Church, and Holy Scripture commends it to be honored among all people.”

I swallowed hard, closed my eyes, and tried to relax. And the words of the minister had distracted me enough that I was startled to feel the sharp end of the Ivaldan’s blade slice into my flesh. But I would not cry out. I would not. My skin burned as they worked with a calm and steady hand. They were meticulous but fast, and when I dared to open my eyes and examine the work, I saw that they were nearly finished with much more celerity than I had anticipated.

After a minute or two of work, I stopped feeling it. Not completely, I was still aware that they were slicing into the sensitive skin of the forearm, but my body had released so many endorphins that I was starting to feel high. A surge of happy chemicals swept through me, and suddenly, I wasn’t focused on the minister’s words, and I wasn’t focused on the pain of the cutting, I was focused on the ritual of it all, and what it meant for me and my new husband. I turned, then, to look at Kaz and found him staring at me; and we smiled.

And he was right: I could hear him plain as day, clearly as if he were speaking directly to me. He was saying Nothing has ever been more mine than you; no one has ever been more yours than me.

And then, the cutting was done. Blood dripped down my arm, and down Kazimir’s, and we stood up and I felt suddenly dizzy, like my feet might give out. But Kaz caught me before I could even teeter and hooked his arm with mine so that our bloodied parts were pressed together. “Blood of my blood,” he whispered.

“Blood of my blood,” I replied.

“Kazimir,” the minister said, and when I turned, I could see that he was somewhat uncertain about the proceedings. I couldn’t help but wonder if no one had thought to mention the fact that this wasn’t going to be a purely Episcopalian ceremony. “Will you have this woman to be your wife; to live together with her in the covenant of marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful unto her as long as you both shall live?”

Kaz looked at me, and I thought my heart would crack open under the weight of how much he loved me. “I will,” he said. Of course he would. He didn’t have to say it; I already knew.

“And Jane,” the minister went on, “will you—”

But something was happening, something that made the minister cut off the vows and turn to look and see. Something that caused a stir in the guests and made them wrench around in their chairs. Something that drew Kazimir’s attention away from his bride, and something that dulled the ache in my arm and the swirl in my head. There was a crashing coming from the house, as though a great many plates and pieces of furniture had been thrown down or upturned, respectively. I furrowed my brow and stared at the house, blinking back the sunlight until a band of people in black came pouring out of the house. They were mostly human beings, but there were a couple of Ivaldans with them. I recognized a few from the party that had been thrown here the night of my engagement. But there was one face that truly stood out: Blanche Ingram.

“You must stop these proceedings at once,” Blanche said, striding confidently across the aisle and approaching us. She wore black jeans and combat boots and a leather jacket, and her blond hair was pulled back in a pair of braids. “Master Kazimir Kain is not free to take a wife.”

“I beg your pardon?” Kaz said, looking befuddled. “What on earth do you mean?” And then, finally finding his indignation he demanded, “and what is the meaning of this disruption?”

Others were making their way toward us, a young man in particular with a mop of thick, black hair, and a beard, through which cut a pair of emerald green eyes. He was standing behind me in an instant, as though he were there to escort me to a prison cell or else sweep me off my feet. I inched away from him, pressing my body into Kaz.

“Kazimir Kain is already married,” Blanche went on. “To a living, breathing creature. One of the last remaining Ivaldan females.”

My heart lurched up into my throat as I searched Kaz’s face for answers. “That can’t be true,” I stammered, feeling faint. “Right? Tell them they got it wrong.”

“I’m sorry, Jane,” Blanche said, looking genuinely contrite. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”

“You can come with us, Jane,” the man behind me said, and I could feel his fingertips on the back of my elbow; I drew away like he was made of open flame.

“Kaz,” I said, pressing my palms to his bare chest and really feeling how cool he was to the touch. “Kaz, look at me.” But he didn’t. “Kaz.”

His jaw cut a stern line as he let his eyes rove over the disrupted gathering, and even though he wasn’t speaking yet, I could feel his heart radiating out of him. I felt his panic, his rage, and I felt a shift in the air when he made his decision. “Very well,” he said. “It’s done, now.”

“What’s done?” I asked, trying just to get him to look at me, his erstwhile bride, but he wouldn’t. “Kaz, is it true?”

He broke away from me then and marched into the house with Blanche Ingram hot on his heels. I followed next, the bearded man close behind, and the boys and Ms. Fairfax after us. Kaz headed into the house, past our wedding table, up the grand staircase, and beyond the bedroom that had been my comfortable bubble for the past few months. At the back of the house, past even where Kaz’s master suite had been, was a door.

It was old wood with an iron lock and doorknob, and I’d passed it before but had never given it much thought. A linen closet, I thought, or an upstairs pantry. I didn’t see Kaz create the key, but I knew it was composed of nanites when, after he unlocked it, it dissolved again and trailed into his glimmering tattoos, like the ones we hadn’t gotten to finish this day.

He opened the door and hesitated, turning around to look at us. But his eyes never alighted on me, not once. Instead he sought out the faces of Ms. Fairfax and his boys. “Alice,” he said in a pleading tone, “please keep them down here.”

And Alice nodded her head; did she know? “Come on, boys,” she said, “come with me, now.” Dazed, they did not argue, and I watched their forms disappear down the hall toward the nursery.

A small crowd had gathered around us, comprised primarily of the men that Blanche had brought with her, but I saw Sarah Reed in the crowd as well and felt myself drawn to her. I wanted to be among friends, and I could see no others before me.

“You and you,” Kaz said, pointing first to Blanche and then to the bearded man, “the rest must remain.” Blanche nodded her consent, and the bearded man gave me a gentle push forward until the four of us were making our way up a very narrow staircase to an unseen landing. We left their band of men behind and eventually found ourselves in another world entirely.

The small upper landing was constructed to look like some sort of cavern of the fae, what I could only imagine parts of Kazimir’s home planet looked like. Shimmering crystals in rich purple hues grew up the wall and hung down from the ceiling and were even gathered in manageable clusters on the packed earth floor. They seemed to have their own light source, casting the room in a purple haze.

And I heard her, or felt her, before I saw her. The spirit of a woman displaced, whose soul was crying out I’m so cold, I’m so cold.

In the middle of the room there was a fire pit constructed in stone, where a small fire burned beneath a tent of twigs. The temperature in the space was easily 90 degrees and stuffy, but I was too distracted to note my own discomfort. For there she was, in thick fur robes, kneeling by the fire.

She looked up when she heard us approach, her when she saw Kaz, she smiled a broad, toothy smile and the energy in the room shifted, pulsing with love, love, love. That was her. That was Kazimir’s wife. She wasn’t dead at all—she was a prisoner in a tiny room in a large house.

She shrugged out of her fur robes, and I saw how lovely she could have been. Her skin was sapphire blue, her eyes were a gunmetal grey. And her horns were black like Kaz’s. But she was a knot of scarring from head to toe, twisting her blue flesh like the bark of a tree. She threw her arms about Kaz, and he pried them gently away. When he did, I saw a peacock pin glimmering on the front of her tunic.

The peacock. It looked exactly like the hair comb I’d worn to the party when Kaz and I got engaged. And I realized that she had given it to me; I couldn’t help but wonder why.

“They speak the truth,” Kaz said at last. “This is my wife.”

“I don’t understand,” I stammered. “Why…why didn’t you tell me about her? You said she had died, you said she—”

In that instant, the lovely, frail creature threw herself onto the small fire until her tunic caught fire and threatened to engulf her in flame. Kaz darted over to her and threw the fur robes around her until the fire was smothered; I smelled the scent of burning flesh. Kaz hugged her tight and she seemed to relax in his arms. I felt jealousy like a sickness in the pit of my stomach.

“She is the last remaining Ivaldan female,” he said. “But it seems as though she will eventually meet the same fate as the others.”

“All of their women died off in the first several years of their occupation of this planet,” Blanche explained. “The symptoms were a chill, then a cold, then the madness set in.”

“Most of them,” the bearded man went on, “ended their own lives, setting themselves on fire just to get warm enough. But others died of common earth conditions like the flu or pneumonia.”

“But I took care of her,” Kaz went on. “We were able to stave off the madness for a while, but when it gripped her…” he shook his head, gripped her by the shoulders and directed her toward a small four-poster bed at the back of the room. Its posts were also covered in crystals, and the blankets on the bed were quilts and furs. “She demands a fire at all times, and when she doesn’t have one, she lets out a psychic cry, that rattles me to my bones. So I keep her here, a small fire burning at all hours, and someone is always with her. Usually Sarah Reed. But when she needs a break, I will sit with her myself. She is rarely left on her own.”

“The fire,” I whispered, “the fire that almost killed you. The fire I rescued you from: she set it.”

Kaz nodded his head in confirmation, a sad smile playing on his lips. “She was afraid I would be cold.” I was trembling myself, though it was hot in that room. I looked down and vaguely noted the drops of blood that had dripped from my arm onto the packed earth floor, and I felt my heart launch itself up into my throat. I thought I would be sick.

“May I?” I asked gently, gesturing toward the Ivaldan woman whose name no one offered to tell me, whose name I wasn’t sure I wished to know.

“Of course,” Kaz said, and I brushed past Blanche to kneel at her feet. She peered down at me from deep set eyes that seemed totally lucid and lifted one fire-gnarled hand to my cheek.

“I’m so sorry,” I murmured to her, and she just looked at me. I tugged my engagement ring off of my finger and pressed it into her hand, closing her fingers around it, before rising to my feet.

My head was swimming as I turned on my heel to head for the door. But Kaz caught me by the arm; I felt like I was about to topple over, but I would give him no excuse to hold me in his arms.

“Jane, my love—” I spun around at this and stared him down.

“Don’t,” I hissed. “Don’t you dare.”

“Please,” he went on, his hands out in front of him, palms up, like a prayer. “You have to understand: she has lost all of her faculties. She isn’t in there anymore, Jane.”

“That isn’t the point, Kaz,” I spat back. “You lied to me. You were prepared to marry me when you weren’t free to do so. Does that mean nothing to you?”

“I don’t love her; you must see that.” Kaz came toward me, and I could feel the beat of his heart in the air all around me. It was a powerful force, that heartbeat. He was a powerful man, and I wondered again if I’d been somehow bewitched. “I had to help her, Jane. I had to keep her here, safe. She is the last.”

“Her presence here isn’t the problem!” I shouted, attempting to blink back my dizziness.

“Jane, you should sit—” the bearded man said from behind me, but I waved a hand at him, and he was silenced. Blood, more blood. On my dress this time. Good thing I’d chosen red.

“Jane,” Kaz said again—why was everyone saying my name over and over? “I only thought that you and I could be happy—”

“Yeah, we could have been. If you had been honest with me from the beginning, we probably could have been.” I put one of my hands on the crystal wall: they were warm to the touch. Somewhere in my periphery, I saw the female Ivaldan spin in a circle, drawing ever nearer to the fire. Maybe next time she dove for it, she’d take us all out with her. “What about your sons?” I asked. “What about the boys?”

“What about them?”

“Do they think their mother is dead?” And Kaz’s blank expression was all the answer I needed; I wailed in dismay.

“How could you, Kazimir Kain?” I brought my hands to my face and felt a dry sob wrack my body. “How could you lie to them?”

“Jane,” he said, his voice cracking with the force of it all, “please.”

“No,” I said, shocked at my own self-assurance. “I’m done.”

I made my way toward the narrow hall and then down the stairs, but the world began to blur as I moved. Was I crying? I steadied myself with my hand against the wall as I descended the stairs, but my vision was narrowing.

“Jane?” I heard Blanche say from behind me. “Jane, are you all right?”

But the air went out of me, and all the world went black.