Page 5 of Steel Heart Iron Claws

My final glimpse at Basten in the sun-kissed glen, breathless and confused, vanishes. I hurtle myself at his fading image, fingernails clawing at the air.

“No!”

But it’s too late. The glen is gone.Bastenis gone.

Now, I’m staring at a different forest. This one is filled with sky-high evergreens that cloak the world in shadows. Strangely colored light comes from the forest’s dark recesses. In a way, it’s beautiful. But it’s a dangerous, intimidating kind of beauty. There’s something eerie about this place. It’s too dark. Too cold. The chilling mist brushes like ghostly fingersaround my ankles.

I touch Basten’s twine ring on my fourth finger, working it anxiously.

This cold place is my ancestral home?

Iyre releases me without warning, and I tumble forward toward where the portal was, but my hands swipe through empty air now.

I crash to my hands and knees, ripping my wine-red gown with the golden chain straps. A rock slices through the fabric into my left knee. Blood spills out, but I only stare at it in a daze.

I should feel the pain, but I’m numb.

The real pain is in my side, a phantom ache that feels like Iyre tore out one of my organs when she cut me off from Basten.

Basten is my other half. Since the day we met, I’ve been connected to him on a cosmic level. He hurts, I hurt. He suffers, I do, too. How can I function without being whole? Scholars say an invisible pull binds the Earth and moon, and that if that bind were ever severed, the moon would freefall into the black void of night.

That’s exactly how I feel.Freefall.

I thrust my fingers into the soil to root myself in the here and now, letting the loamy, cool earth bring me back from the edge of panic.

“He didn’t know who I was,” I spit between clenched teeth. “You stole his memories of me—give them back!”

“They’re gone,” Iyre says flatly, slipping a small, round yellow bottle into her gown’s pocket.

With a cry, I fling a fistful of soil at her face. In a second, I’m on my feet in my tattered gown, lunging with claws bared, ready to shred her pale fae skin down to the bone. “You lie! I’ve read the Tale of Iyre’s Memory Bottles athousand times. I know you keep your stolen memories bottled up—are those his? In that yellow bottle?”

I lunge for her pocket, but Iyre moves a step to the right with preternatural speed, causing me to crash down to the ground again.

A branch scratches my arm.

I cry as I push to my feet again to attack from behind. Iyre’s face remains passive as I rush at her. The only emotion she shows is a slight flicker of annoyance as she again steps to the side, evading me, and this time catches me by the upper arm.

She tugs me close.

“Do you wish me to take your memories, too?” she threatens, pointed incisors flashing, as she digs her fingers against my temple. “I can make you forget all about that man in the same way. I can make you forgeteverything.”

My temple tingles under her fingertips. My breath huffs out of my lungs in tight bursts.

I go perfectly still. A caught rabbit. I’ve already lost Basten—I can’t lose my memories of him, too.

“That’s a good little human.” With one hand coiled in my hair, she shoves me to my knees in front of her. She hikes up her skirt to show the tip of her white leather boots. “Now, make a sacrifice to your goddess to prove your obedience.” She wiggles the tip of her boot. “A kiss will do.”

My body bristles under her hold as a wave of revulsion leaves me shaking from fingertips to toes.

This is too familiar. I’ve done this before.

A memory rushes back to me out of the deepest recess of my mind:

I am ten years old. Standing outside the imposing wooden gate to the Convent of Immortal Iyre. My white dress is freshly pressed. My long hair in an immortal crown that took my maid all morning to braid.

My little heart beats fast. More hopeful than anything—because this could be a fresh start.

The gates creak open.

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