Her days passed in a heavy haze of fragrant herb-laced daydreams and smoky nightmares. Her mismatched eyes opened to walls of dirt dappled by golden sunlight that faded to rusted orange as the hours passed, to the barred shadows of limbs as healers walked to and from her sickbed, to visions of glittering teeth that snapped at her face before the girl jolted awake and realized that at some point her eyes had shut. The gauzy curtain separating reality and the web of her mind blurred almost completely, its diaphanous fabric fluttering back and forth behind the blank mask of her face. Awake or asleep. Real or imagined. Just as the gentle chemicals faded and clarity encroached on her limbo, Losa would jump upright in her hospital room, gasping, her brain locking down to replay the terrible crime she’d survived over and over and over until Khaleesi or Hellene managed to subdue her before she injured herself further. Swallow this. Calm down.

In an effort to stave off the horrors that threatened to consume her and undo their exhaustive treatments, her healers had aggressively medicated Losa into the vagueness that smothered her now. It wasn’t so bad . . . and in fact, as Losa drifted in and out of her faerie slumber, she thought she’d never been happier. The rapid snapshots of violence that scared her so badly her heart thrashed in its cage happened infrequently, and she could count on another dose of poppy to chase those gory visions away. Nothing hurt anymore. She used to awaken, skin crawling with memory, places of her aching that could not be ignored. She ripped herself from dreams with her own shrieking. When she leapt to her paws in sudden terror she inevitably crashed against the side of the den, her injured shoulder refusing to support her weight. But after countless days here, resting, breathing bouquets of chamomile and lavender and other nameless flora, pain lifted from her body. Perhaps Losa was better now.

Or maybe the doses had just gotten more powerful.

She couldn’t tell anymore. The earthen bird just swallowed when they told her to, and allowed her thoughts to tumble endlessly in their watercolor stream of light and dark.

At some point Losa had truly slipped into sleep. She’d been thinking about The Monster’s claws digging into her flesh when in desperation she choked down some dried leaves someone had left outside the den. Soon the phantom digging of nails in her sides faded . . . her hitched breathing slowed . . . different scenes unfurled behind her eyelids . . . safe. She snuggled further into the hollow her tiny frame had indented on the den’s floor, tail draping over her elegant muzzle. Her spine pressed into the firm earth wall behind her . . . but it wasn’t earth, it was the broad expanse of someone else’s back, stiff with muscle, a mountain guarding her from danger . . . the same someone shifted positions to embrace her closer, his scent more comforting than any pharmaceutical cocktail . . . and his nares were pressing gently into the side of her neck . . .

And Losa realized the dream-touch was a real sensation—

“Hurricane?!” The damsel barely managed to pipe out his name; it felt as if she were speaking underwater, syllables distorted and slow. Reflexively she lurched away from the soft pressure nudging her nape, all at once disappointed to realize no one had been with her in the den and surprised to see a heavenly white figure illuminated in the den’s doorway. At last her bleary vision managed to focus on a familiar face. Losa blew out a quiet breath. No matter how many times she saw him, she would always think of Aindreas as a ghost. “Aindreas . . . where have you been? Aren’t you hurt?” Time was meaningless to the drugged princess. She had no idea what the pallid poltergeist had been up too these past few hours . . . days . . . weeks? “Your fur . . . it’s like feathers. Sticking up everywhere.” In her mindless brilliance Losa wobbled forward, crawling more than walking to get closer to the ivory knight, reaching out to try and smooth his haphazard wisps and cowlicks with her tongue.