E very time I closed my eyes, I saw white. White isn’t even a color, merely the absence of one. Above all, white is empty.

I hated white, and yet it followed me everywhere. Everything was empty, now. There was nothing in my head but my own thoughts. Nothing in my lungs but my own breath. There was only one heartbeat throbbing beneath my skin. My body was cavernous, lonely. Now everything I wished to escape merely echoed, louder than ever.

There was nothing so terrible as to be so alone.

That aloneness consumed me in my dreams. I had forgotten what it was to dream—how overwhelming they are, when you were forced to bear the brunt of them alone. Most of the time, my dreams were the worst moments of my past.

But rarely—very rarely—they instead brought me shards of connection.

I always knew when it was them—Tisaanah and Maxantarius. You know the shape of someone’s mind when you have lived inside of it for so long.

I knew Tisaanah’s shrewd determination and the vulnerable heart beneath it, and so I knew it was her when I saw flashes of a slender body falling, a throat opening, the feeling of sadness as the wind rushed around me.

I knew Maxantarius’s sharp mind, and so I knew it was him when I saw a white ceiling covered in circular marks, felt overwhelming pain, felt myself being swept away by a terrible force.

For one beautiful moment, I was not alone. I tried to cling to that moment of connection to them, but my past took me anyway.

My dreams brought me to another familiar place. I was in a strange circular building of stone, surrounded by humans. I was falling to the ground, my muscles suddenly useless. I was screaming Ishqa’s name and watching him turn away. A gust of wind fanned out his golden hair as he left me here. Left me alone to half a millennium of torture.

I woke up screaming.

The figure beneath me let out a mangled cry. I barely heard it. My fingers found my attacker’s throat. Limbs flailed. A strike hit my cheek, and I snarled, returning it in kind.

For the first time in days, I felt mercifully powerful. I loved anger. Anger was red and black, screams and shouts. The opposite of emptiness. The opposite of white and white and white.

It was Ishqa’s face hidden under that mass of fair hair. Ishqa, who had betrayed me. Ishqa, who had ruined me.

I grabbed a dinner knife from the tray, raised it, and— “Aefe!”

The shout made me freeze.

I hated the name. I was not Aefe.

Someone yanked me backwards. I flailed out, teeth bared, knife swinging. I struck something.

“Stop. Stop.”

The tighter the hold became, the more I thrashed. A hand gripped my wrist, twisted, and the blade went clattering away. I didn’t care—I fought just as hard, with my teeth, my fingernails—

Until my back slammed against the ground. The world slowed. My breath heaved.

Caduan leaned over me, his hands pressed to my shoulders. Violet slashed his left cheek, the blood threatening to drip on my face. His eyes, bright like the sun through leaves, grabbed my attention and refused to relinquish it. They were solid. Real.

My breath slowed.

“She tried to kill me!” the maid shrieked, across the room. Low murmurs joined her. Footsteps. Others were here.

Caduan did not look away. I did not understand faces and all the wordless things they said. Most of the time I did not try. And yet, in his eyes, I saw something that made me want to squirm away. I welcomed a

strike or a shout. Caduan’s piercing observation was more frightening than any of those cruelties.

“Let me go,” I snarled.

“I will if you allow me to.” His voice lowered. “It was only a dream.” My face snapped back towards him, anger flaring.

How dare he say those words.

“No,” I hissed. “It was real for so many days.”

Something shifted in Caduan’s eyes. “Not anymore. You are safe.”

You are safe, Tisaanah used to whisper to me, in the mind we shared—a mind that now belonged to no one but me.

“I am not safe!” “Aefe—”

“Do not call me that. I am Reshaye.”

“You are more than this,” he murmured. “Let me go!”

At last, he obeyed. I scrambled away from him, pressing myself to the corner, my eyes darting around the room.

My bedchamber was large, with tall ceilings that let in fractured light through warped glass. Some said it was beautiful. Servants commented on the fact that I had been given a prime location, on the top floor of the castle. They said it with an odd tone, as if there was something strange about it.

I didn’t care. I felt nothing when I looked at this place. Beautiful things were abstract shapes meant for a different soul.

Now, half a dozen people clustered in this room, looking at me. Two of Caduan’s advisors helped the blond maid from the floor and a guard led her away.

I disliked the way they were looking at me.

“She shouldn’t have been here,” Caduan said to them, quietly but firmly. “No one is supposed to wake her. And I specified no blondes.”

The two advisors looked at each other. One was a woman, short and delicate with cropped gold-copper hair—Luia, the Chief of Military. The other a dark-haired man with broad shoulders and a strong jaw—Vythian, the Chief of Coin, though he looked better suited to the fighting ring than a coin room.

“My King…” Luia said, quietly.

“Not now.” Caduan turned to me. I stared at the ground, but I felt the searching weight of his stare bearing into me. “I’ll be back soon, Aefe.

Rest.”

Rest. I hated rest.

The three of them left, leaving only me. For a moment I stood there, breath still heaving. Then I crossed the room and pressed myself to the door.

Beyond it, I heard the whispers.

“…allow this to go on.” Luia’s voice.

“It has only been a few months.” Caduan’s.

“You made a considerable investment in her,” Vythian said. “Time is not in our favor.”

“You need to ask her,” Luia hissed. “We need her. After last night, it’s clearer than ever. We can’t win a war like this.”

A beat of silence. I could imagine a withering stare. “We will not win it with her, either. Not yet. She isn’t ready.”

Yet.

The word formed a hot ball of anger in my stomach. Anger and—hurt?

I did not know why it surprised me. It shouldn’t. It was all anyone had ever wanted to do to me. What use was I, after all, but to be a weapon?

Two footsteps, as if he started to walk away. I pressed closer to the door, ears straining.

“When will she be ready, then?” Luia’s words came sharper, louder. “When the Aran queen cements her human alliances and sends half a million men to our doorstep? Or perhaps after she perfects her experiments and—”

“Enough.” Caduan spoke quietly, but the word sliced through the air, demanding silence. “Do you understand what she has gone through? Do you understand what they did to her? Five hundred years of torture. They took everything from her. Her name, her body. Everything. All so she could become their weapon. Their desires were more important than her soul.” His voice drew closer, low, simmering. “And what,” he breathed, “are you now asking me to do? Do you want me to make that decision again? Become just as monstrous as the humans?”

Several long seconds.

“Of course not, my King,” Luia said, finally. A low murmur of agreement from Vythian.

Caduan’s voice faded down the hall as he said, “Don’t propose such a thing again.”

HOURS PASSED. I lay on the floor and looked up at the stars through the glass ceiling. Had I liked looking at the sky, once? Now it just made me feel small and lonely. When I was with Tisaanah and Maxantarius, my world was swaddled tightly around me. I was nestled securely in the thoughts and mind of another. Even when I was confined, I was not alone.

Not like now.

Once the quiet crept in, I was desperate to distract myself. I closed my eyes and tried to seize upon that moment of connection I had felt earlier that day. Strange, how the brush of intimacy made my loneliness sharper than ever. I reached for them, but felt nothing but my own mind.

I was there, lying in the middle of the floor with my eyes closed, when Caduan returned.

“You should try the bed,” he said. “It’s very comfortable.” I did not look at him. “I did try. I don’t like it.”

“Why?”

“It is…” Too much. Too many different textures touching me. Too soft.

Too smothering.

I gave up on trying to find words, instead pressing my palms flat to the floor. “This is better.”

“Alright.” He leaned over me and looked down. Now he wore a simple white shirt and breeches, plain even by the standards of peasantry. For some reason, I liked this, as if there was something about his current appearance that was disarming.

I swiftly drowned that thought beneath my anger. He was simply using me. I was a tool to him. He brought me back to life for his own selfish purposes.

No better than any of them.

“Come with me, Aefe.” He held out his hand.

I did not move. “Stop calling me that. It is not my name.” “It was once. Would you like to choose another one?”

My teeth ground. He didn’t understand. Names were for living things. I was not one of them.

“Come,” he said again. “Where?”

“Let’s do something different. I want to show you something.” When I stared blankly at him, he said, “Unless you would prefer to sit in this room, alone.”

Silence. I closed my eyes again. Caduan let out a long, slow breath.

“Very well,” he said, softly, and began to walk away. “Then sit in this room, alone.”

Alone.

The word twisted a knife in me. I did not want to go with Caduan. And yet, the idea of lying here in my own loneliness for hours more seemed… seemed like agony.

“Wait.” I opened my eyes and sat up. “I will go.”