Prologue
The sky falls in torrents of onyx like a silent rain that can’t be felt. It soaks into your pores, invading your warmth until you feel nothing.
Ruby gems sparkle at a distance, creating a network of stars as my only source of light. Then a slow seeping fire licks my toes, crawling up my legs to my hands as I hold them in front of me, too shocked to do anything. The heat constricts my skin until I squirm to kick off its searing chokehold.
It’s angry. And it’s eating me whole until there is nothing left.
I shut my eyes, accepting fate.
“I want to see you one last time,” I tell it.
I’m pulled into its clutches and released onto a black-soiled clifftop overlooking water that catches no light. My knees and hands dig into the coarse earth as I become aware of my new surroundings.
There he is. The one I dream of every night.
His tall form is masked in shadows of dark red. His wide shoulders are draped in jeweled robes with gold adornments, and a flush of tattoos covers his neck. As he turns to me, his silver-white hair falls to the side in a curtain around his face, and his eyes blaze fire.
He’s the most handsome man I’ve ever seen, with sharp features and smooth skin. His body is young and muscular but his eyes are ancient.
I reach for him, my fingertips burning with desire to trace his face and kiss his lips.
“You come to me in pain every night. I can never reach you. Let me touch you—how can I help you?”
This time, finally, I reach him.
My hands find his face and he is real beneath my palms, solid and warm in a way the dream has never allowed before. I can feel the line of his jaw, the faint tension in it, the way he holds himself very still as though any movement might break whatever has allowed this to happen. His skin is smooth and fever-warm and beneath my fingertips I can feel something else ... a heat that has nothing to do with tenderness, building quietly from somewhere beneath the surface, patient and inevitable.
His eyes close. Just for a moment. Like someone receiving something they had stopped believing they deserved.
“It is I who must help you.” His voice is raspy and raw, like it’s been burned by the fires of hell.
Before his arms can envelop me, he bursts into flames.
The outline of his face is barely visible as his jaw opens to scream.
“No! Save yourself!”
His voice is full of sorrow. It’s too late. The fire spreads to me and I scream as my skin is peeled back, the pain cut off suddenly as the flames strip everything away. Through the top of the fire I can still see his eyes. They look so human now — normal eyes, but full of tears, his brows pushed together in anguish.
The last thing I hear before the fire takes my ears is weeping, and a faint voice that says “I’m sorry.”
