Page 35 of Queen of Stars and Shadows

When the pleasure finally subsides, we sink to the ground and lie back on the grass. Stars peek through the trees above, and wind whispers across our skin. Zyren is still nearly fully clothed, so I turn toward him and slide my hand under his tunic, resting it over his pounding heart. I rest my head in the crook of his shoulder.

“How much do you remember?” I ask, my voice shimmering with hope.

“Not much,” he says after a moment’s pause. “Just that my body knows yours… and my magic knows yours…and the beast that lives inside me.”

My joy deflates only a little. It’s a start. It’s something.

But then he says, “This doesn’t mean I trust you, or that we’re allies now.” He turns his head so his gaze meets mine. “All I know is that I can’t stay away from you. And I can’t let harm befall you.”

I tense, disbelief spinning through my head. “Butsurelyyou know now that Avonia is the enemy.”

His eyes roil with emotion. “But my brother…”

“You know I’m right. She’s controlling him.”

“If what you say is true…” his jaw flexes and he turns away from me.

“It’s painful to admit. I know, and I’m so sorry.”

He sits upright abruptly, leaving me in the grass, then climbs to his feet.

“Where are you going?” I ask, getting to my feet, too.

“I don’t know,” he growls. “I don’t know who to trust. Or what to do next.” He claps his hands to his head. “If I could just remember…”

I reach out and place a hand over his heart. “Please, Zyren. Trust this. Trustus.”

He lowers his hands and looks down at me, and his gaze softens slightly. “Sarielle…even your name feels like home. Like I know it better than my own.”

Tears form in the corners of my eyes. “We will find a way through this. I—”

At that moment, there’s a blinding explosion of light, the forest around us vanishes, and we’re sucked into another place entirely.

Chapter Twenty

Zyren

There’s a roaringlike a great wind. One moment we’re standing in the forest, night pressing in around us, and the next we’re standing on a sand dune, a gray sky overhead, the skeleton of a huge beast a dozen paces away.

It looks like some sort of hellscape.

I spin to Sarielle. “What did you do?” I growl.

Her eyes widen. “Me? I didn’t do this!”

I throw an arm up, gesturing to our surroundings. “Then how do you explain this?”

She opens and closes her mouth several times, her head pivoting to take in the new landscape. There’s nothing but endless sand in every direction, huge rolling dunes, dotted hereand there with a dead tree or the remains of something massive and monstrous.

A place where nightmares come to die. Either that, or something here killed them.

“It has to be the demon,” she whispers.

“Thewhat?”

Her gaze locks on mine. “You knew this, before… I told you, before you lost your memories. We were forced to seek refuge in a cursed forest on the way to the Court of Memory. I had to make a deal with a demon in order to save us.”

My chest tightens. “What kind of deal?”

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