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Phury reached out and mirrored the exact position of her hand. As his palm hit the pane, he felt the warmth of her radiating through the window.

His father smiled and mouthed something.

“What?” Phury asked.

We are so proud of you . . . son.

Phury squeezed his eyes shut. It was the first time he’d ever been called that by either of them.

His father’s voice continued. You can go now. We’re fine here now. You’ve fixed . . . everything.

Phury looked at them. “Are you sure?”

Both of them nodded. And then his mother’s voice came through the clean glass.

Go and live now, son. Go . . . live your life, not ours. We are well here.

Phury stopped breathing and just stared at them both, drinking in what they looked like. Then he placed his hand over his heart and bent at the waist.

It was a farewell. Not a good-bye, but a fare . . . well. And he had the sense they would.

Phury’s eyes flipped open. Looming over him was a dense cloud cover . . . no, wait, that was a lofty ceiling made of white marble.

He turned his head. Cormia was seated beside him and holding his hand, her face as warm as the feeling in his chest.

“Would you like something to drink?” she said.

“Wh. . . at?”

She reached over and lifted a glass off the table. “Would you like a drink?”

“Yes, please.”

“Lift your head up for me.”

He took a test sip and found the water all but ephemeral. It tasted like nothing and was the exact temperature of his mouth, but swallowing it felt good, and before he knew it he’d polished off the glass.

“Would you like more?”

“Yes, please.” Evidently that was the extent of his vocabulary.

Cormia refilled the glass from a pitcher, and the chiming sound was nice, he thought.

“Here,” she murmured. This time she held his head up for him, and as he drank, he stared into her lovely green eyes.

When she went to take the glass from his lips, he clasped her wrist in a gentle hold. In the Old Language he said, “I would wake like this always, bathing in your stare and your scent.”

He expected her to pull away. Get flustered. Shut him down. Instead she murmured, “We cleaned up your garden.”

“Yes . . .”

There was a knock upon the temple’s double doors.

“Wait before you answer that,” she said, looking around.

Cormia put the glass down and padded across the marble. After she took cover in some yards of white velvet draping across the way, he cleared his throat.

“Yeah?” he called out.

The Directrix’s voice was kind and respectful. “May I enter, your grace?”

He pulled a sheet over himself even though he had his pants on, then double-checked that Cormia wasn’t visible.

“Yes.”

The Directrix pulled back the vestibule’s curtain and bowed low. There was a covered tray in her hands. “I have brought you an offering from the Chosen.”

As she straightened, the glow in her face told him that Layla had lied, and lied well.

He didn’t trust himself to sit up, so he beckoned her with his hand.

The Directrix approached the bedding platform and knelt before him. As she lifted the gold top, she said, “From your mates.”

Lying on the tray, folded as precisely as a map, was an embroidered neck scarf. Made of satin, and inlaid with jewels, it was a spectacular work of art.

“For our male,” the Directrix said, bowing her head.

“Thank you.” Shit.

He took the scarf and splayed it out in his palms. Citrines and diamonds spelled out in the Old Language Strength of the Race.

As the gems sparkled, he thought they were like the females here in the Sanctuary, held so tightly in their platinum settings.

“You have made us very happy,” Amalya said with a tremor in her voice. She got up and bowed again. “Is there anything we may get you to repay this joy of ours?”

“No, thank you. I’m just going to rest.”

She bowed once more, and then was gone like a gentle breeze, departing in a silence that was tragically full of anticipation.

Now he sat up, but only with help from his arms. On the vertical, his head was a balloon, light and full of nothing, bobbing on his spine. “Cormia?”

She stepped out from behind the drapery. Her eyes went