Miinhart Forest, Desmond, 10416 P.C.

The scent of burning wood drew Annabella from the recesses of unconsciousness with a jolt and a gasp, eyes flying open, expecting fiery flames. Instead, she found herself staring at a simple wooden roof. Animal pelts hung from the rafters. It was warm. There was a thick blanket covering her, and the stink of sweat stung her nose as she shifted beneath it. Her head swam and her limbs quaked lethargically when she moved them. Slick with sweat, she felt suffocated and was quick to yank the blanket off of her as she sat up. She nearly fell right off of the bed as gravity seemed to shift the world around her. She managed to catch herself on the edge of the bed with a trembling hand. Her throat was scraped raw as if she had been screaming for hours. Her head protested the sudden movement with various stabs of pain as she struggled to focus on her surroundings. What was this place? A cabin? A hunter's cabin, by the looks of it. The animal skins everywhere gave it away. She found the fireplace on the other side of the room, roaring with a huge, crackling fire. Her first impulse was to douse it. The heat was smothering, and she could barely breathe.

"Good, you're awake."

She turned her head so fast that it spun and ached. It took her a moment to focus on the owner of the voice, a man who sat on one of the couches on the other side of the room. Blond hair, blue eyes, muscular build, familiar face. "Luke?" she asked, incredulous. Her voice was hoarse, and she coughed.

He got up from the couch, setting aside the book he had been reading and retrieving her a glass of water. She gulped it down, hands still trembling. Luke sat down beside her as she caught her breath, elbows on his knees and hands clasped in front of him. He was calm, which, for some reason, unsettled her.

"What happened?" she asked, looking around the room. It was a small, one-room cabin. The bed they sat on was tucked in the corner under two windows letting in lots of natural light, and the couches were positioned around a small table near the fireplace. A desk sat in another corner. A front and back door were placed on opposite sides of the room. She duly noted the escape routes.

She knew Luke; therefore, she did not trust him.

"Luke," she said, sharpening her tone when he didn't respond. "What happened? Why are you here? Why am I here?" The questions began to come in a torrent. "Where is here? Where is Stephanie?"

"Whoa, whoa," Luke finally interrupted, putting up a hand. "Stop. I'll explain."

"Then explain." Remembering Stephanie sent a spurt of panic through her. She made a move to stand, but Luke put out his arm and knocked her back onto her seat. He was surprisingly strong, and she was painfully lethargic. There was no argument. She sat still, letting the world swim before her eyes, wincing at the stabs of pain in her skull.

The Gartirih... Stephanie...

"You got attacked by a Gartirih," Luke began. "It bit you. The poisoning took over pretty fast. You're lucky it's an easy cure."

"You? You found me and brought me here?" There were so many pieces missing in the story he seemed reluctant to tell her. "How'd you find me? How long have we been here?"

"Yes, I found you and brought you here, and we've been here for about twenty-four hours, I'd say."

"A whole day?" The heat in Annabella's face had nothing to do with the fire. "Luke, where is Stephanie?"

He bit his lips. "I don't know. She ran off before I found you. By the time I got you under control she was long gone."

"And you didn't even try to find her?"

"She's a soldier, she can take care of herself."

"She's never been out of Zusia before!" Then it dawned on her. "No, wait, let's go back a second. How did you find me, and how do you know about Stephanie?"

He didn't respond. The answer was obvious.

"You've been following me?" Annabella asked in disbelief.

"Yes and no," he replied, almost defensively. "Only ever since you left Asural."

"How did you know I was in Asural?"

"Lucky guess."

"Luke." He was skirting around the truth. "What have you been doing?" Another question came to mind. "How much do you know?"

"How much of what?"

"Everything."

He was calm. Too calm. "Probably more than you'd like me to."

"Stop avoiding my questions. What have you been doing?"

He sighed deeply, never once looking at her as he watched the fireplace, then his hands, then the set of antlers on the wall above the fireplace. Finally, he spoke. "When you left... after you left, I mean, I just.. I couldn't stop thinking about what you said. All that... about making a difference. About actually doing something. Because... I mean, you're right. You're always right." He took a deep breath. "Desmond is really a mess, isn't it? Our people, they're persecuted, and no one is doing anything about it. No one but you. I want to help."

Annabella took a deep breath herself. "Okay. Alright. Nice sentiment. Now, tell me the truth."

His eyes flitted to her for a second before they found his hands again. "That is the truth."

"You'd be a fool not to know how much I actually know you, Luke Reiter, and I know when you are lying to me."

He muttered a curse, straightening to his feet and crossing the room to stoke the fire. Annabella stayed on the bed, hesitant to rise for fear that her feet wouldn't hold her. She hated feeling weak, hated showing it. She was nauseous, and she tried swallowing it away, determined to hide how shaky she still was. She focused on Luke and his body language. She knew she was right: he was lying to her. It was creating a horrible, icy feeling in her chest.

"You do know me," he said quietly after stoking the fire for a few long moments. "I also know you." He paused. "I know your favourite colour is green. Not like the lush kind, but like aspen green. I still remember the way your eyes lit up when my mom gave you that aspen green coat when we were younger. You wore it threadbare."

Annabella hated it when he got like this, all sentimental and deep and musing. She hated it, especially now. "I don't have time for this."

"Make time," he snapped at her. "You can't walk away on me this time."

"Yes, I can."

He rose to his feet and turned around to her. "Uh-huh. Try."

She glared daggers at him. He knew she was still weak and lethargic from the poison. She must have had a raging fever earlier, maybe even delirium. There was no other explanation for her current symptoms. She knew she wouldn't be able to get away from him if he tried using force against her. She couldn't beat him now, even with her sword.

Which she did not have, she realized with a jolt. She quickly scanned the room but couldn't find any sign of it. There were too many places he could have hidden it. In her current state, she was trapped. "Talk, Luke," she ordered. "What do you want?"

"I'd rather show you." He strode across the room, pulling something from his pocket. He sat down beside her and opened his hand, revealing a glass ball. It looked like a crystal, see-through and eerily beautiful. However, the ball was not simply a glass ball; a sort of purple haze floated in its centre, flickering with little bolts of purple electricity.

Except it wasn't electricity. She knew what it was. She felt it: the cold, dark force of Athrii against her skin, the chill raising the hairs on her arms. It silenced the fog in her mind, replacing it with clarity and panicked trepidation.

"Where did you get that?" she whispered, her heart pounding.

Luke didn't respond. He gripped the ball tighter in his hand as if he fully expected her attempt to knock it away. He was somehow faster than her, batting her hand away and slamming her down against the bed with his arm. Before she could fight, he pressed the ball to her forehead.

Everything flickered to black. She gasped, stumbling away from Luke in the great expanse of darkness they had suddenly appeared in. She hit the ground, looking over in breathless panic as that ground became a wooden floor and echoes of familiar voices filled her ears. Like a fog, forms appeared out of the darkness, a small girl wrapped in a cloak, rushed forward by a woman with a tangle of blonde curls. Mrs. Reiter. Annabella gasped as the woman and girl ran right through her, their forms nothing but smoke and fog. She whipped her head around to follow them; the girl was suddenly in a room with a boy, and they were watching each other in suspicion.

Annabella staggered to her feet, whirling back on Luke who was watching the scene in stillness. "Luke, stop!" she demanded, shivering and suddenly wishing for the suffocating heat of the cabin. Anything but the terrible chill that was frosting over her body. "Athrii is a cursed magic! How dare—?"

The ground flipped her through the air, sent her tumbling down, down, down. She hit concrete hard, the breath knocked out of her. Luke was right beside her this time, made of fog and smoke, walking into a room that was all too familiar. Her own foggy form lay on the couch in the corner, wrapped tightly in a blanket.

"Nightmares again?" Luke's voice echoed around her as he sat down on the edge of the couch.

"Yeah..."

Annabella shook her head hard, trying to find the real Luke in the fog and darkness. He was standing just behind her, watching the scene. She gritted her teeth, rolling over to try and trip him with her leg. She had never experienced Athrii in this form, but she knew how corrupting and powerful it was. The longer they were exposed to its effects...

Luke stepped away from her attempts. "Don't you see it, Bella?" he asked, motioning to the foggy scene, the shared memory the Athrii was replaying before their eyes.

She did see it. She didn't want to. She managed to get to her feet only to be spun around to face another scene. The only memory she had tried her best to erase from her mind.

Their first kiss. It was a haunting memory, one that filled her with both regret but also a powerful longing. She had been fifteen, him seventeen. He had done it without warning, on the couch in the hidden room beneath his mother's house. Never before had she experienced such a terrifying amount of emotions all at once. The pleasure and the guilt, the longing and the fire, resistance melting into a passion she had never known to have existed. His touch had been fire on her skin, the taste of his lips something she had never forgotten. She felt it all now, the electricity pouring through her, the shudders, the haunting memories begging for her resistance.

She resisted. Lifting her hand, she grasped his wrist and yanked it away from her head as hard as she could.

The scene disappeared. She was on the bed, pinned beneath Luke's warm, heavy form. He was inches away, and she was breathless. The taste of him was still strong, turning bitter when she realized what he had done. She couldn't move, trapped in his gaze, her hand still clutching his wrist, the ball pulsing dangerously close to her head. She didn't even realize she was crying until he gently wiped the trail of the tear off her temple.

"You remember," he whispered.

"Stop." It was a plea.

"You stop," he replied. "Stop fighting this. Stop fighting us."

He knew her weaknesses. He knew her grief, her longing, her desperation for a different life, a normal one, a life she had once had long, long ago, the life that had been destroyed and torn away from her. A life he thought he could resurrect once more and provide for her, one of peace and love.

He only cared about one thing: her.

"Listen to me, Bella," he whispered in their shared breath. "It can happen. It is happening. I—" He faltered, just slightly. "I made a deal."

The truth was like an icy slap across her face. She reacted on instinct, tightening her grip on his wrist before smashing the glass ball against the side of his head. It stunned him long enough for her to throw him off of her with her fear-induced strength; he tumbled to the floor and she sprang to her feet, barely acknowledging the stab of pain in her head from the sudden, blood-rushing movement.

"You did what?" she yelled as he rolled to his feet, still clutching the ball in his hand. "What deal? With who?"

"Just listen!"

"Just answer my blasted question!" The cabin felt like a prison. The chilled feeling the Athrii ball gave off terrified her. "Luke, what did you do?"

He stood still in the middle of the room, staring at her. He seemed subdued, overly calm in an unnatural way. "I went to Zusia," he said, "and I made a deal with the Veiled Lady,"

"You made a deal with the Veiled Lady," Annabella echoed tremulously. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Luke, her ex-lover, had betrayed her. She was shaking from much more than fear.

"I told her everything."

"What do you mean everything?"

"All I wanted was to keep you safe, Bella." His hand holding the ball was twitching. "She... she promised that you and I could have a life together. She said you were in danger and that she was willing to grant you pardon and a peaceful life if you surrendered. She said that if I brought you to her, you and I could... be together..." He was faltering, stuttering like a glitch in a screen. The ball in his hand pulsed with magic.

Annabella curled her hands into fists, keeping an eye on the Athrii-ball. It was full of powerful magic — was it controlling him? She knew very little about Athrii's influences on a person's mind. Only that it was very, very dangerous. "What did you tell her, Luke?"

"Everything," he repeated. "Every place I knew of that you could be and have been. The Hinterlands. Sarum. Brittgard. Asrual."

Horror flooded her like an ocean's crashing wave, knocking the breath from her chest. "You told her about Asrual," she whispered, barely believing the words as she spoke them. "You told her about Benjamin."

Oh Creator. Todd.

Luke took a step toward her. "I had to. To save you."

"You just condemned several hundred innocent children to be slaughtered!" Annabella yelled, the rage exploding out of her as she rushed him. She didn't know what she intended to do, and she never had a chance to find out what she might have done. The next moment she was on the floor, pain in her jaw momentarily blinding her as she struggled to find her bearings. Luke hadn't moved, though he looked shocked, still clutching that ball. Annabella lunged at it, desperate to smash it.

She was yanked backwards, thrown across the room into the desk. She hit the floor hard, choking on the pain that consumed her, her back aching from the hard edge of the desk she had slammed into. She searched wildly for her unseen enemy. The room was empty save for her and Luke, but she was no fool.

"Show yourself!" she coughed out, grabbing the desk to pull herself to her feet. She leaned on it heavily, scanning the room again.

"Bella..." Luke was shaking, but he still had not moved.

"How could you?" she lashed out at him, trembling with rage and pain, wary of the other being she knew was with them in the room — where was it?

Tears brimmed his eyes. "I love you."

Against her will, she began to cry. Hot tears tumbled down her cheeks, tears of helplessness and pain and grief and fury. Asrual was compromised. Todd was in danger — if he wasn't already dead. Stephanie was gone, and Luke had betrayed her and still dared to claim to have done it in the name of love.

"No, no," she said, the tears blurring her vision. "You don't! This can't be love."

"Love is sacrifice."

"Not theirs!" she yelled, pointing outside. "Not their sacrifice! You have just killed hundreds of your own people! That is not love, that is betrayal!" She reached for the nearest thing on the desk — a paperweight — and threw it at him with as much force as she could muster.

A ghost-white hand caught it in mid-air.