Going home meant darkness, and bed, and precious little to distract him from his own thoughts.

Placid Abigail flicked her tail at him when he ventured too near with the pitchfork. The tangerine tom, which had no name, hunched low on the crossbeam separating the stalls, following Jesse’s every move with slitted orange eyes.

The Germans were bombing again tonight, miles up the coast. He wondered if she was hearing it, too, then pushed the thought aside, concentrating on the arc of the iron tines, the span of the ash handle against his palms. Hay mounded up, moved. Mounded, moved. Abigail’s hooves like black crescent moons against the straw.

forever yours, forever not.

Pain began to gather between his shoulder blades, a welcome thing, knifing lower down the path of his spine. He was breathing harder, immersed in the earthy aroma of manure and alfalfa and the greasy bite of the smoke curling from the lanterns. He wished absently for a kerchief; drops of sweat began to sting his eyes.

He didn’t need Abigail’s sudden stiffening to know that she was there, nor the tom’s swift desertion.

The stars announced, here, here she is, and he didn’t even need them to know.

Jesse knew she was there because, very simply, his pain vanished. His irritation with himself and the world: vanished. And as he straightened and turned, all the star-brightness within him flared into that want again.

Abigail backed up hard, knocking into the stone wall. He set the pitchfork aside and placed both hands on her to soothe her, looking past her to the stable doors.

Lora stood uncertainly at the entrance, her arms and torso shrouded in a wrap, one foot cocked back behind her with her toes in the dirt, as if she meant to turn and bolt at the slightest sound.

So he didn’t say anything. Only looked at her, helpless, yearning.

Zula, Abigail’s foal, began to snort and stomp. She kicked at her stall door, once. Twice. Like a cue in a play, a pair of distant explosions echoed it.

“Those dreams I’ve had,” Lora said, beneath the increasing clamor of horse and bombs and door. “The ones where I come to you at—at night. Were they truly dreams?”

her time is coming, her time, the sacrifice. tell her.

Jesse turned his face away so she couldn’t see what lived within him. He gave Abigail a final rough pat, grabbed the pitchfork, and left and latched the stall.

“Come on,” he said, walking past her, tossing the fork behind the trough outside. “You can’t stay here. Come with me.”

The stars approved, a swelling chorus of sound that he could not have blocked from his ears any more than he could his own heartbeat.

destiny along this path. delight both dark and bright.

A concept so cerebral as destiny wasn’t what lit him to fire inside.

Delight, though. That was another matter entirely.

...

“I started to dissolve today. Into smoke or mist or something.”

We were walking away from the castle and the stable and Hastings’s view, enfolded nearly at once by the soft charcoal dark. I didn’t see the need for subtlety.

“Did you?”

If Jesse was surprised or appalled, none of it was revealed in his tone. He didn’t even glance at me, not that I could tell. His pace didn’t falter.

“Yes,” I said firmly. “Atop the roof of the castle. At the very edge. I was—I don’t know how to describe it. I was almost in a trance of sorts. I had climbed out to the edge of the battlement, but I didn’t even see it. In my mind, in my memory, I was back at the orphanage, back during this one night when I was much younger, and I …”

“You what?” he asked, still undisturbed.

“I jumped out the window there. From the top story. I jumped.” I heard the doubt in my own voice and hurried on. “And there was only the courtyard below me, not even a dirt one but one made of cobblestones. I’m sure it was real—but I never got in trouble for it. And I wasn’t hurt. I don’t even remember how I got back inside.”

“How do you know you almost went to smoke today?”

“Sophia saw it, though she thought it was an illusion. She stopped me just before I—” I shuddered despite myself. “Before I jumped again.”

“I see.”

I bit my lip. “I think it was real. That time at the orphanage. So I need to know if it was also real with you.”

We’d ended up next to a hedge pruned to resemble a loping hound. In a few weeks it would probably come into ferocious bud, but tonight it was skeletal, all bare branches and thorns.

Jesse was staring at me; I felt it, although I didn’t raise my gaze above his chest.

My dreams of him had been so … intimate. The thought that they might have been more than dreams both excited and mortified me.

I reached out and touched the nose of the hound, pressing the pad of my thumb into a thorn. Behind us, Iverson loomed, a monolith dividing the wind and clouds.

Jesse shoved his hands into his pockets. “What do you think, Lora?”

A flash of irritation took me. “I think that I asked you first. And I’d appreciate a straightforward answer, if you please.”

“Do you hear them? The bombs?”

“Yes, but—”

“Do you smell the burning?”

“What burning?”

“From the bombs,” he said patiently. “From the fires they’re starting in the towns.”

I started to shake my head. My lips began to form the word no, but then I hesitated. I became aware that I did smell something, something faint and horrid. Acrid chemicals. Singed meat.

The no strangled in my throat.

He nodded grimly, reading my face. “It’s not supposed to be like this, you coming into your gifts in stages. But, then again, you’re exceptional in every way, Lora Jones, so perhaps the regular rules don’t apply to you. I don’t know. And I don’t know if what happened to you at the orphanage was real, but from what I understand, when you transform fully—especially the first time—there is a price to pay.”

“What do you mean? What price?”

“Pain,” he confessed, on a hard exhale. “I’m sorry. There’s always a sacrifice for every gift. It’s … it’s rather a rule of the universe, really. You were granted a great gift, so your sacrifice will be great, as well. That ensures the balance of all.”

I recoiled from the hound, balling my hand into a fist against my stomach. “Well, what manner of pain? I mean, how much?”

“A great gift,” he emphasized, low.

“Oh.” I was abruptly short of breath. “Of course.”

Stupid, stupid—how stupid that I hadn’t thought of it before, that it would hurt. Obviously it would. And then I couldn’t stop imagining it: my body bloating, mutating, into something hideous and snakelike. Something grotesque. My skin stretching shiny thin, my bones cracking and shifting and reknitting. My teeth sharpening, my tongue splitting. My hands and feet twisting into claws—

“Stop,” Jesse said.

I stared up at him, almost panting with fear.

“Stop, beloved,” he said more gently, and took up my clenched fist with both hands. “I’ve upset you, and I shouldn’t have. I don’t want you to dread yourself. I don’t want you to dread what is to come. Like I said, you’re exceptional, so there may be nothing to worry about at all. But whatever happens, whatever you face, I’ll face it with you. Do you hear?”

“How can you say that? It nearly happened on the roof today. You can’t know—”

“I will be with you. We’re together now, and the universe knows I won’t let you make your sacrifice alone. Dragon protects star. Star adores dragon. An age-old axiom. Simple as that.”

I looked down at our hands, both of his curled over mine. I unclenched my fist. Blood from the thorn smeared my skin.

“The universe,” I muttered. “The same universe that has produced the kaiser and bedbugs and Chloe Pemington. How reassuring.”

With the same absolute concentration he might have shown for turning flowers into gold, Jesse Holms smoothed out my fingers between his, wiping away the blood. He turned my hand over and lifted it to his lips. His next words fell soft as velvet into the heart of my palm.

“Those nights, in the sweetest dark, we shared our dreams. That’s your answer. I was stitched into yours, and you were stitched into mine, and that was real, I promise you.” I felt his lips curve into a smile. The unbelievably sensual, ticklish scuff of his whiskers. “Very good dreams they were, too,” he added.

It was no use trying to cling to mortification or fear. He was holding my hand. He was smiling at me past the cup of my fingers, and although I couldn’t see it, the shape of it against my skin was beyond tantalizing, rough and masculine. I was a creature gone hot and cold and light-headed with pleasure. I wanted to snatch back my hand and I wanted him to go on touching me like this forever. I wanted to walk with him back to his cottage, to his bed, and to hell with the Germans and school and all the rest of the world.

But he looked up suddenly.

“They’re searching for you,” he said, releasing me at once, moving away.

They were. I heard my name being called by a variety of voices in a variety of tones, all of them still inside the castle, none of them sounding happy.

“Go on.” With a few quick steps, Jesse was less than a shadow, retreating into the black wall of the woods. “Don’t get into trouble. And, Lora?”

“Yes?”

There was hushed laughter in his voice. “Until we can see each other again, do us both a favor. Keep away from rooftops.”

...