The stake quivers in my hand. The outer rims of my vision redden as my whole body quakes with unshed sobs.

He’s gone; Nox is gone; Nox is gone.

I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t…

I stare into the eyes that aren’t Nox’s, and maybe it’s the fact that I would do anything for those eyes, maybe it’s that I can’t bear to detest anything that resembles the man I love, but I find my hate for Farin is not hate at all.

Because there’s nothing but raw honesty in the pale blue specks lining his eyes.

My hand shakes, and though I press the tip of the stake into his torso, I can’t bring myself to break skin.

When Farin speaks, his voice is dry, raw. “You and I—we’re the same, you know.”

My eyes sting, and I let out the tiniest of sobs. I push on the stake hard enough that Farin sucks in a gasp. “We are not the same.”

“When I was a child,” he says through gritted teeth as I push the stake further into his skin, “I thought Imagination was a spirit, a living being—a Fate, if you will. I spoke to it and about it as if it were a friend. I was born into a world of famine and parched land and creatures of bloodshed, to a father who flayed my back until I learned never to cry out. Never to scream.”

I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to hear Farin’s sob story, anything to make me pity him, so I exhale and drive the stake deeper. His body lurches, and it’s Nox’s body lurching, and I feel his pain as if it’s my own, exploding in my side until my head is pounding.

“I was the only child in the village. My father made sure of that. I was completely and utterly alone.”

A drip coming from the attic ceiling. A pile of letters clutched to my chest. A knot on the wall that sometimes looks like a dog, at other times a dragon.

“So I pretended. I called my Imagination by name, and I walked worlds, realms. Worlds where grass sprouted through the dry gaps in the ground, worlds where animals played with humans, and other children were allowed to live.”

I’m sobbing now, and the stake is shaking, and with each upward movement, Farin has to suck in a breath because of the pain.

“And then one day, I’d pretended so long it became real. I walked into a world where fruit tasted sweet and I could sing without being hunted for it.”

“You can’t just pretend your desires into existence,” I say through choked breaths, through a lump scouring my throat.

“Perhaps not. But aren’t dreams so much sweeter than reality?”

My fingers combing a braid into Rose’s long hair, Theo’s little hand tucked into mine as we walk, Evander adopting my baby, my baby’s beautiful scream, Nox…

Nox.

“You and I—it’s not in the Fates for our dreams to come true…” There’s nothing treacherous in his voice, nothing unkind, and I know then that he believes his words, and the genuineness of it pierces me through.

Silly servant girl, only princesses get happy endings.

“This isn’t real…” I breathe, but even my words don’t sound convinced.

“Does it have to be?”

When I gaze up into his eyes, those beautiful pale eyes so full of love and longing, I know my answer.

“Blaise…”

The desperation in his voice as he says my name sets my entire being on fire. I gasp, wrenching the stake from his chest. It clatters when it hits the ground, and I let out a sob of relief.

I’m so sorry, Nox. I’m so sorry, but I couldn’t do it.

Not with the scent of cedar and parchment wafting over me, not as hands so familiar run through my hair, not when I want so, so badly to pretend.

When he cups the back of my neck with his palm and brings my lips to his, I don’t fight him.

When an aching desire comes crashing over me, threatening to drown me, I don’t resist it.

When I lean into his kiss, Farin shudders, but I tell myself it’s not Farin, it’s Nox.

I tell myself he found a way back to me, and when he trails his kisses beneath my jaw and to my ear, and whispers that he loves me, the lie is much too easy to believe.

It’s Nox who wraps his arms around the backs of my thighs and pulls me into his chest. Nox who picks me up and carries me to the rickety bed, kissing me with fervor as he lays me atop the sheets.

The soft, plush sheets that graze the backs of my arms. The ones that have replaced the ones that used to scratch him. The ones Nox kept to remind him this is not his home.

The ones Farin replaced.

I let out a pained gasp, and Farin’s white eyes go wide with concern. For the first time, their color reminds me of bone, and something about that thought tugs at the edges of a memory. Tears pour from my eyelids, and he wipes them with his thumb. “What do you need?” he asks.

What do you need to pretend this is real?

I realize then that he’s pretending too. Pretending to be the male I love. Pretending that I’m not using him, using Nox’s body, to fill the gaping hole in me left by Nox’s absence.

It’s wrong, and I know it’s wrong, but I can’t bring myself to stop.

“Not in here,” I gasp, and he nods in understanding as he sweeps me up in his strong arms and carries me out of the room and across the hall.

My back hits splintered wood as he braces me there and fumbles with the latch. Soon enough, it clicks, and the door creaks open behind me.

Though the residue of heavy incense still lingers, the room is dark, unlit by any candle, and the monster in me is glad for it.

There’s something about the darkness that lends its hand to pretending.

He kicks the door closed behind him with his foot before drawing me into him again. His kiss is fire and ice and centuries’ worth of pent-up passion, and because everything in this world I’ve ever cared for has been taken away from me, I let myself drown in it.

If I cannot have happiness, I will grasp at its shadow.

I tell myself this is what Nox would want for me, that somewhere out there in the oblivion, he understands.

That Nox wants nothing more than for me to be happy.

When he sets me down, his arms still wrapped around my torso, I let myself burn.

Rose, Theo, Evander, Father.

I’ve lost all of them.