Unfortunately, Ruby has no such filters. Leaping onto my shoulder, she thrusts her tiny fist into the air. I watch, equally horrified and spellbound, as she turns an invisible lever that slowly lifts her middle finger toward the Six.

“Sit on this and spin, Evermore scum,” Ruby cackles.

Someone just kill me.

Thank the Shimmer class is dismissed before Inara has time to retaliate. But by the glares both the Six and Prince Hellebore throw me on their way out, I know both will fight for the right to stamp me out of existence.

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I wait until everyone files out to gather my things. This day just keeps getting worse and worse.

Now, more than ever, I’m determined to win the first gauntlet and prove to everyone I deserve to be here.

8

I wake up thrashing and clawing at my throat. Blood wets my fingertips. Crap. Not again.

Pressing my hand lightly to the broken skin where my neck meets my collarbone, I staunch the bleeding as I focus on dragging air into my lungs.

That was . . . awful. The nightmare still clings to my skull like the cloying aftertaste of store-bought tea. Blinking up at the metal rungs of the bunk above me where Mack sleeps like the dead, I count the metal slats.

One, two, three . . . see, you’re fine. Fine.

The bobble-head Eclipsa gave me—an alarmingly realistic version of her right down to the silver braid and dagger dripping blood—watches me from my nightstand.

“The nightmares are getting worse,” I inform the bobble-head assassin. “And considering how bad they were to start with, that’s not good.”

Bobble-head Eclipsa openly judges me with her silence.

Groaning, I jackknife to a sitting position. Goodbye, sleep.

It’s the third night this week that I’ve slipped into Valerian’s dreams, which aren’t really dreams but fragmented memories that make most horror movies look tame. Wiping at the sweaty strands of my hair pasted to my forehead, I try to make sense of this new vision.

Valerian is young, not much older than twelve. He’s tied to a post in the Winter palace courtyard. The air is crisp, cold. Enough that his ragged breath spills from his lips in crystalline clouds.

It’s the middle of the night, the moon, a swollen ivory globe, hung low in a dark winter sky. The entire palace had been dragged from their beds and gathered around the courtyard.

Even dreaming, I had enough sentience to understand it wasn’t real. And yet, I still felt everything.

The light breeze that lifted the hair from the nape of his neck. The sting of the magic-infused rope cutting into his wrists, breaking open the scabs from only a few days ago.

A dark shadow emerges from the crowd. Up until that moment, Valerian has felt nothing. His emotions schooled into a hard wall of granite, unbreakable.

The coldness, the emptiness . . . it’s horrible. An all-consuming ache of nothingness.

But the second his grandfather stalks toward him, Valerian goes rigid. Desperate for anything to block the swell of emotion raging inside him, he shoves his face into the ragged ashwood post he’s tied to, the one embedded with shards of iron.

Two mortal poisons—iron and ash. Both meant to hurt him. Break him open.

Splinters of the lethal wood cut into his cheek. White-hot pain flares. He shudders, welcoming the feeling. Grasping onto it. Trying to drive it deeper inside him to purge his emotions.

But he fails, and a tiny sliver of fear pierces his heart. He recoils from the feeling, but he knows—he knows his grandfather has felt it.

Just like all the other times, he tries to force the word down into his chest. Tries to choke on it rather than let it escape his lips.

If he could, he would rip out his own throat rather than say it.

“Mother. Please, Mother.”

Three words. Three fricking words that undo me. He’s never talked about his mom. Not once. And yet the ferocity with which he longs for her in this dark moment . . .

She isn’t coming. She never does. And the betrayal of it wounds him to the very core. Not the end of the whip. Not the ash splinters or the iron fragments that tear at his flesh.

The pain from his mother’s absence is the torture he can’t endure—the weapon he can’t fight.

I want to scream, to punch someone as I feel him sag against the ashwood pole, defeated. Rage like I’ve never felt before splits me open, matching the agony that crashes over him as the wood burns every inch of flesh it touches.

His heart stutters into a weak, unsustainable rhythm; the air wheezes in his throat.

The poison from the ashwood and the iron is slowly killing him. And still. Still. He thrusts his body against it, giving the poison more and more access. Using it to drive his mother from his heart.

The pain becomes a touchstone. A fiery inferno that eats away at every part of him, so that when the first strike of the whip cracks open the skin of his back—it’s swallowed by the miasma of writhing agony claiming every cell in his body.

Willingly inflicted agony.

Bile tickles my throat. He was twelve. Twelve. And he purposefully brought himself to the brink of death as a giant eff you to his grandfather, King Oberon.

I press my knuckles into my damp temples, trying to chase away an oncoming headache. Not for the first time, it comes to me that there is so much more to Valerian than what he reveals to me. Maybe he’s smart to hide the darker side of himself.

Because, quite frankly, that part of him terrifies me.

I kick off the light gray sheets, slide from bed, and cross the floor, desperate to purge the memory from my brain. Phantom needles of pain still prick my skin. As unnerving as the memory-dreams are, once my horror fades, the pity takes hold.

If Valerian knew I was reliving his most painful memories every night, he would feel violated. I still haven’t figured out if we’re actually sharing a dream, which is just another layer of fuckery in this whole effed up situation—because that would mean he also relives that agony every night—or if I’m somehow receiving his memories.

Wonderful. I’m a radio set to the Valerian’s Soul-Crushing Memories frequency.

Same as the last few nights, I pluck my phone from where it’s charging on the dresser, check the screen for a text from him, and sigh.

Nothing.

My blurry-eyed focus slides to the date on the glowing screen. Three days—it’s been three days since Hellebore announced the gauntlets, and I don’t feel any more prepared than I did then.

Maybe less, considering the nightmares and my lack of sleep.

After school combat training doesn’t start until week two. Meanwhile, Eclipsa canceled our last few morning training sessions.

I double-check our text chat, relieved to see this morning’s session in four hours is still on.

Four hours. I wipe at my groggy eyes. Just thinking about the first gauntlet sends my adrenaline into overdrive. If there was a shot in hell of waking Ruby from her snorefest, I would force her to use one of her calming spells—which she’s aptly named sleepy-sleep magic—to lull me into my dreams.

If the past two nights are any indication, I’d have more luck talking the moon from the sky than rousing her.

I shoot a longing glance at my bed. It’s not you, buddy. It’s me.

Now fully committed to getting up, I run through a short list of ways to use my time. Study. Finish the pile of laundry in the corner. Write out my weekly email to my aunts . . .

I exhale. Too restless. My body feels jacked, my legs twitchy and wired.

Only one activity cures my increasingly anxious moods.

As quietly as I can, I slip on my last clean pair of gray jogging pants, my sports bra, which is still a bit damp after last night’s handwashing, and my Nike trainers. My phone goes into my handy pants pocket—a luxury only brands you can’t find at the dollar store employ.

After brushing my teeth, slapping my tangled hair into a ponytail, and grabbing one of my new AirPods—Mack’s other birthday present—I slide out the door.

When I get to the bottom of the first floor stairwell, I freeze.

Oops. I forgot about the new dorm monitors.

Each mortal dormitory now has a lower Fae guard who ensures shadows aren’t sneaking out at night. After what happened with Evelyn, they’re being extra cautious.

Lucky for me, our nighttime chaperone is an ancient gnome who sleeps—and snores—all night long.

Must be nice, I think as I tiptoe past the lime green club chair she’s sunk into.

The second the brisk morning air meets my sweat-damp skin, I set my music to my favorite new band and burst into a sprint. From Eclipsa’s torture sessions, I know the track around the lake is three and a half miles.

Three and a half freaking miles. That I’m going to run willingly. With no one chasing me.

Why do I hate myself?

But as my shoes pound the springy grass, still wet with dew, and my lungs draw in huge gulps of fragrant air, the nightmare falls away. The pixie punk band The Wailing Shadows helps. Valerian introduced me to them three weeks ago, and I haven’t tired of their playlist yet.

The pixie wails build up to the crescendo, and I align my rhythm with their haunting voices. I focus on my breathing. The smooth, mechanical movements of my limbs.

My mind begins to wander . . .

And runs straight to Valerian. He’s like the awful pop single you swear you hate yet play over and over. I keep waiting for the day my mind gets tired of him, but so far, that hasn’t happened.

Stupid how much I miss seeing him. The last text he sent said he’d be back in a few days, by Friday morning.

Which sucks major orc balls.

I desperately need to train with Valerian so we can smooth out any issues before the first gauntlet. We haven’t physically been around each other. At least, not closely. Not in the way protecting him demands.

What if the tension from not solidifying our bond hinders my focus somehow?

Just the thought of Valerian in tight sweatpants and no shirt—because of course my imagination insists he be half-naked and glinting with sweat—lights the smoldering ember of desire in my belly I can never quite extinguish.

A sudden, terrifyingly powerful ache shivers through my core—