Magiano throws up his hands. His eyes turn distant, and his pupils turn again into slits. “Yes, I know,” he growls sarcastically. “That’s all you see. Your victory. Your prince. Nothing else.”

I blink, confused for a moment, and then I realize that he’s talking about himself. He is standing before me, confessing something, but I am not hearing it. I’ve forgotten our moment under the stars, when his kiss brought me calm like nothing ever has. I do not see him. I hesitate, torn between my anger and confusion, and say nothing.

When I don’t reply, Magiano shakes his head and leaves the room. I watch him go before turning back to the window. The anger continues to churn inside, blackening my heart. I don’t want to admit it, but I find myself aching in his absence, missing the light that he brings. We shared a moment, I remind myself. Nothing more. Magiano is here because he wants his gold, not because he’s in love with me. He’s a trickster and a thief, isn’t he? The familiar feeling of betrayal wells up in me, memories of how others have turned their backs on me in the past, and I recoil, folding away my thoughts about Magiano. Caring for a scoundrel is a dangerous thing.

When I look down at the soggy grounds below, I can see Enzo standing near the entrance. Behind him, small fires still dot the scorched earth of the courtyard.

Magiano’s right about this, at least. There is a distance about Enzo that has not faded since he returned. Tonight, it seems as if he were not really here at all—like his thoughts don’t linger with the Daggers, or with us, but with something far, far away, in a realm beyond the living. I watch his dark figure in the night, then push away from the windowsill and head out of the room. I head down the hall, then the stairs. I ignore the mercenaries chatting with one another in the house’s crumbling entryway. I make my way outside, where the rain is still soaking the air. I stop a few feet away from Enzo. It is quiet out here, and I can see only the two of us. I wrap my arms around myself in the cold, then approach him.

He turns to look at me. The tether between us pulls tight.

“What’s wrong?” I ask him.

He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he turns back to the storm with a frown, the distance still plain on his face. It takes me a moment to realize that he has turned in the direction of the ocean. I feel a deep ache in my chest.

He is here, but he doesn’t want to be.

He nods once as I come to stand beside him, acknowledging my approach. Even now, he still has the air of nobility, an unspoken sense of authority. It gives me a glimmer of hope. “I am thinking of an old tale,” he says after a long silence. His voice is deep and quiet, the voice that I remember. Why, then, does he seem so different? “‘The Song of Seven Seas.’ Do you know it?”

I shake my head.

Enzo sighs. “It is a ballad about a sailor who spent his entire life and fortune sailing the oceans, searching for something he’d never actually seen, someone he’d never actually met. Eventually, he reached a place far in the north where the sea was frozen solid. He spent a month wandering through that dark wasteland, before he finally collapsed and died.” He stares off into the forest. “All that time, he was searching for a girl he’d loved in a past life. He had been searching in the wrong lifetime, and he would never be in the right one again. So it would go, until the end of time.”

I stay silent. The rain stings my face with its cold fingers.

“I feel as if I were out to sea,” Enzo says quietly. “Searching for something I don’t have. Something only the sea can give.”

He is searching for the Underworld. Just as Magiano had said.

I’m suddenly angry. Why must I lose everything that I care for? Why is love such a weakness? I wish, for an instant, that I didn’t need such a thing. I can win the same things in life with fear, with power. What is the point of searching for love, when love is nothing but an illusion?

I reach through our tether, and he shudders at my touch. Do you remember, Enzo? I think sadly. You were the Crown Prince of Kenettra. All you ever wanted was to save the malfettos and rule this nation.

Magiano’s words haunt me. Did Enzo ever love me? Or do I love something that never existed?

When we stand this close, our tether pulses with life. Enzo turns to me, then takes a step closer. The power between us leaves me dizzy. The threads of my energy dart out and seek him, and he seeks back. It is as if he were clinging desperately to the spirit of life inside me, clawing on top of it as a drowning man would push his rescuer underwater in an attempt to save himself. His soul is alive, but it is not living.

Still, I can’t break myself away from the twisted feeling of this union. I want it too. So when he wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me closer against him, I let him. His hands run through my short hair, tugging at it. I struggle for air, but he pulls me back down by meeting my open lips with his own. Panic shrouds my mind, my illusions burst free, and my alignment to passion roars in my ears. I am caught in the maelstrom. I can feel him overpowering me now, the tendrils of his unnatural energy, tainted by the Underworld, wrapping around my heart and covering it with black threads. This is the danger of our tether, as I always knew. He is too strong.

My energy soars, pushing back against the rush of his. I shove him off me with a violent strength I didn’t know I had. My darkness wraps around his heart and digs its claws in. Enzo shudders, and the whites of his eyes turn black.

Then I blink, and it is no longer Enzo before me. It is Teren.

I open my mouth to cry out, but Teren puts a hand over my mouth and shoves me against the wall. He presses a sharp knife against my chest. The blade digs in, hurting me. This is an illusion, I tell myself over and over. But why does the blade hurt?