Cassie was seated in a rocking chair. Toe to heel, she moved it back and forth. The dark stone walls, cavernous ceiling, and gothic entryway felt familiar to her.

She knew exactly where she was. Pyxis. The Aerial Palace. It would never let her go. . . .

The lavender linens and stuffed toys, at the very least, made this particular room seem less bleak than what she was accustomed to and the patchwork quilt across her lap took away some of the damp chill.

Cassie leaned into the pillow behind her head and her eyes drifted toward a cradle. Stretching for a better look, the sleeping baby inside of it captured her eyes and heart. She instantly fell in love with her, having never seen anything more beautiful. It was her daughter, she knew without question, even though they had never "met" before in either real life or the dream realm. She had seen a boy with golden curls, but not his sister. . . .

She wanted to hold the fairy child, to play with the baby's soft brown locks, or slip a finger inside one of the little fists resting by her head, though she never intended to act on those urges. She even stopped rocking in her chair. Cassie didn't want anything to disturb her daughter's peaceful slumber.

Cassie closed her eyes so that she, too, might rest.

As soon as she had given in to the exhaustion, the heavy door to the nursery let out a loud creak. Cassie's eyes opened to curious slits. When the door slammed shut, Cassie lurched to protect her child.

It was too dim to make out a face, not at the height she was expecting to see one. But it was clear someone had come inside. A loud scamper invaded the room, like that of an older child running at top speed. The disruption was bolstered by its echo.

Wing tips and then the face of a black-haired fairy boy appeared over the side of the cradle.

Cassie's expelled the fear from her lungs. With her next breath, irritation took its place. "Procyon, where's your mother?"

The boy gave her a blank look. Rather than answer, he took a hold of the side of the cradle and began rocking it, not dangerously hard, but with enough vigorous motion to wake the baby.

Her daughter's curly eyelashes opened up like tiny flowers blooming in the morning light. Her big brown eyes sought the closest face—her cousin's. She started cooing and moving her hands and feet erratically up and down. Her eyes and smile brightened.

Procyon rocked her cradle and hummed to her a tuneless song.

Cassie smiled apprehensively. Procyon was a good boy. Still, she looked toward the nursery door, doubt in the process of boring a hole through her heart.

Lyra was sure to join her son. She was always soon to follow. And yet she did not come.

Instead, a hooded figure, cloaked in black garb and a gray haze, hovered into the room, slowly . . . forebodingly. . .

The quilt suddenly tightened over Cassie's body. She squirmed and shifted until the stubborn quilt fell to the floor. Looking down, there were arm and leg shackles connecting her limbs to the rocking chair.

The phantom presence took a place beside Procyon. The boy didn't seem to notice until she spoke: "Isn't she lovely, Procyon?"

Cassie would have recognized that hoarse whisper anywhere, even after a thousand years in the grave.

She tried to drag the chair forward. It wouldn't move. She tried to yell. Her voice was mute.

"It's almost hard to believe she's a Modifier, in her father's likeness. Lowborn and impure. . ."

The boy peered up at the shadow beside him, an attempt to absorb the meaning of Modifier—a word he did not yet understand. But, with a shrill zap of magic, his education was complete. When his gaze returned to the baby, it was filled with contempt and disgust. The perfect child, made with love and free of all evil, was a monster to him.

Cassie was now pulling against her own flesh. But she wasn't strong enough to tear free of her constraints.

"Her father killed your father. Doesn't that make you angry?"

Procyon nodded, possessed, a blind fury now smoldering in his eyes—the eyes he inherited from his father.

"Kill her," the voice rasped.

Procyon lifted a bejeweled dagger in the air. But the blade slumped in his grip—a moment of conscience—and he turned his head to peer into the face of the true monster.

"Do it!"

His maniacal gaze yielded to the command. The fire in his eyes was quick to relocate its fuel.

The dagger lifted and fell. Once. Twice. It pierced the infant's flesh over and over again.

The sight of blood paralyzed all body functions and drowned out all of Cassie's other senses, except for the sound of the child's shriek, a wail that was soon squelched to a wet gurgle. The noise and then the deafening silence . . . would both echo through the Aerial Palace—and Cassie's tortured mind—for all of eternity.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Chris surfaced from his light sleep with a gasp and a jolt.

Cassie was beside him, screeching and flailing as if something was trying to kill her. Her fit was so bad, he believed there was a chance it would succeed.

His first impulse was to wake her, but she swatted and kicked herself free of his grip with all her might. Chris didn't want to hurt her or the unborn child she was possibly—probably?—nurturing. But he had to climb on top of her body to restrain her. It was the lesser of two evils.

While his lower body pinned her below the waist, he fumbled for her hands. They were a threat to anything they encountered—their faces, his arms and chest.

Once he succeeded, her movement began to taper off. It was a result of force, at first, and soon she stopped resisting. Her muscles relaxed. At last, her eyes opened.

She struggled to catch her breath.

Chris struggled to catch his. "Can I let go?"

At her lucid nod, he eased his weight off her and collapsed on the bed beside her.

It wasn't long before he heard wings and footsteps. He bounded to his feet, hurried to the door, and cracked it open before his children beat him to it.

"What happened?" Ryan asked. "We heard screaming."

"Everything's fine," Chris told his son even though he could hardly believe his own words. It felt like a lie. "Cassie had a nightmare. That's all."

Ryan's gaze moved to Chris's chest and Chris's eyes dropped to the same location. He had scratch marks all over his upper body, some of which had fresh blood oozing out.

Chris's forced grin somehow convinced Ryan that everything was under control. Ryan returned to his room without asking any addition questions. And that was a good thing. Chris didn't have any answers.

Chris closed the door and returned to bed. Cassie flinched when he sat down beside her. He put a hand upon her back and tried to guide her closer to him, but she remained sitting in a ball, her head buried beneath her arms and tucked between her knees.

"C'mon," Chris said, now tugging her around her shoulders. "You don't have to go through this alone. Not anymore."

He let go and waited, and reclined while he did. After a few more surges of sobbing and trembling, she released her grip on herself and slipped beneath his open arm and rested upon his chest.

While he was combing through her silky straight hair with his fingers, she was the first to break the silence: "You're bleeding. I'm so sorry." She traced the area around the bloody scratches.

He rubbed his thumb next to the broken-skinned scratch on her cheek. "I'm not worried about me right now. . ." He gave that a chance to sink in. "Can you tell me what that was all about?"

After a deep, shaky breath, she began explaining and didn't stop for a long while. She described the hellish scene with such startling and non-dreamlike detail. Chris wondered if it really was a dream . . . and not something more.

"So, you have a nephew. Why is this the first time I'm hearing about it?"

Chris thought he might live to see the end of Andromeda, and with her death, danger might pass. With another "heir," currently only four years old and fatherless by Chris's own hand, this child would have grounds to hate them too. The hunt would continue, no respite in sight. Morgan . . . Ryan . . . their unborn child, and perhaps even their children, and their children's children. There might never be an end!

"I'm sorry," she cried out. "I should have told you earlier. Please don't be angry with me."

"I'm not . . . it's just. . ."

Drop it, he told himself. One crisis at a time. . .
"Chris," Cassie said hesitantly, "I believe my nephew's mother is dead. This wasn't the first nightmare that suggested such a tragedy. Lyra would have done everything in her power to keep her son from sharing his father's fate. And he wasn't a bad child. But that may have been her influence, and if she's gone. . ."

"Lyra," Chris repeated. He recognized the name and wasn't sure why.

"You may remember her. She once told me that she met you in the North Tower."

"Oh yeah. I do remember her. No wonder she despised the sight of me. If she had a thing with your brother and I killed him . . . something I wish I could take back, by the way."

"I know, Chris. I think Lyra understood that too. You did what you had to do to survive. Canis was too far beyond reason, too seduced by power. I tried my best, and yet. . ." Cassie shook her head. "I wish I could have saved him by helping him save himself. I owed him that. We were never close, but there were moments of unity. Genuine affinity in a few childhood circumstances. Plus, he assumed the risk and saved my life on more than one occasion."

"When you were sixteen and escaped from your first wedding?"

"That's right. And then again when. . ." She paused and bit her lip.

"When what?"

She traced the scar on her chest with her finger. "I know you at least have an idea of what happened."

Chris would never forget the mutilation she had endured. The worst gashes were along the center of her chest and on the outside of her left thigh. "I know enough to wish I didn't miss when I threw that knife at Crux's throat."

"You didn't miss. You severed his fingers and we escaped because of it. His career is over. Andromeda will see to that. She doesn't give second chances."

"I'm not sure that will help me make peace with the situation." Chris paused. He could barely say more without self-destructing, but he still had a masochistic need to possess the whole truth. "What did. . . ? Did he. . . ?"

"No!" she replied, almost defensively or just horrified that Chris would automatically jump to the worst-case scenario. "I didn't lie when I said you were my first. But I will not defend him. Some say there's demon blood in his line, and I believe it. He would have acted upon his foulest whims and was thoroughly committed to ridding me of every innocence. At the time, though, he was second in command and actually followed the order to stop."

Chris rolled to his side so that they were face to face. Her eyes fluttered remorsefully wide, eyes that were eerily similar to her half-brother's. They filled in the corners with fresh tears. In that way, they were different. She was capable of feeling such grief and regret, true love and a deep fear of losing it.

When her eyes closed, her tears fell, and Chris stroked her cheek to rub them away. "I wish I could have been the one to save you."

"You did. I was thinking only of you. I didn't feel a thing."

"You're letting me off the hook too easily. The whole thing was my fault! If I wasn't acting like such a coward about us, I would have never—"

He was so angry at himself and had to cut himself off.

It wasn't safe. His father had even warned him not to go. But on that day, one of the worst of his life, he had led the journey back toward human civilization to retrieve the twins, who were with Simona and in no immediate danger. It was his idea. His insistence. And it was simply an excuse to leave. He had fallen for Cassie, and Joe had despised him for it, and Chris needed a way out. Sad to say, he never got one, despite the feeble attempt. Joe and Cassie had joined him. It was Scott's suggestion that they go as a group and Cassie and Joe had made their decision. They'd suffer through it together, not fathoming how much suffering it would actually entail.

Chris rolled onto his back and stared at the hut's thatched ceiling.

Cassie pursued him, shifting over his body. With a gentle hand to his face, she directed his eyes toward hers. "Don't take the blame. Please? Yes, you may have suggested we travel on that particular day. But what if we had waited a day or two. Or more? They were patient and prepared. They may have found a way into the zone, and then where would we be? Dead, most likely. I'm the one who should have known better. I had a strong sense we were being hunted the first night we arrived in the rainforest."

"You shouldn't take the blame, either. But . . . your dream . . . these horrific experiences . . . they're urging me to go back to Pyxis and . . . finish things. So we can sleep at night."

"You can't," she replied simply, resting her head on his chest again.

"Why not?"

"You promised you would never leave me, the night we consummated our love for the first time? So, unless you're taking me with you. . ." she trailed off through a yawn.

Her breathing became slow, smooth, and deep. Somehow, she had found the inner peace she needed to go back to sleep.

Chris, however, continued to stare at the twigs overhead, cursing himself for making a promise he couldn't keep.