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felt her airways bared, and her voice silenced as she screamed. The world went dark.

    * * * *
Cilia jerked upright, disoriented and amazed to be alive at all. Fiach knelt at the foot of her bed with his hands folded in what looked like prayer. A white band of gauze circled his neck and wrists. Red seeped through in bright patches. Her hand rose to her throat impulsively and found the same padding. When she withdrew her fingers, they were tinted with blood.
    “Fiach.” The sound was little more than a hoarse whisper. His head jerked up, and she saw mercurial tears slip down his cheeks. He pushed from the floor and moved to the foot of the bed. The doors to his bedchamber remained open; a thin Sidhe woman hovered in the doorway and watched them.
    “Cilia,” her named was little more than a reverent murmur over his lips.
    Her neck burned. “I’m alright. No harm done.” She swallowed a little to test her throat.
    Fiach’s eyes burned with fury. “I can’t allow them to torment you like this.”
    She pointed to his bandages. “And, you as well.”
    He waved a hand in dismissal. “We can still marry as humans do. This binding isn’t necessary to prove our devotion to one another.”
    Cilia wished deep down that she could throw herself into his arms and beg to be spirited away, but she recalled the flush of pure joy on his face when she had agreed to the Noce . Whatever else lay in store, the reward had to be great for Fiach to be in awe at the prospect.
    “No. We started this, and we will finish it. Something is niggling at my mind.” She frowned as the thought passed her by. “I know this is the right thing to do.” She rubbed her temples. “I hate not being able to remember things, always feeling like something important is on the tip of my tongue only to have it slip away.”
    He reached out a hand, and she took it. The tingle of their bond danced up her arms and down to her core. The dark look in her mate’s eyes was mirrored in her own, she was certain.
    “I want you,” Fiach whispered. His voice rang coarse with hunger. Sweat beaded his brow. His skin felt fevered, and his hand shook in her grasp. The drug still raged in his system, but she was powerless to help him.
    “I want you, too.” She squeezed his hand quickly. “And, I love you.”
    He looked around and gestured his hand to encompass the room. “After I’ve put you through all this, can you believe I love you, too?”
    “I know you do.” One side of her mouth hitched up in a half smile. “I don’t suppose you can tell me what comes next?”
    He shook his head. “No, I can’t. The rules are changing.” His stare fixated on the bloody gauze at her neck. “I don’t remember anyone’s life being endangered before. I don’t know what it means.”
    A throat cleared from his doorway. “The Lady said you could have ten minutes and not a minute more. I must ask you to come with me, my Lord.”
    Fiach’s eyes pinched closed. “I’m coming.”
    “It’s all right. Whatever comes next, we’ll be ready.”
    He pushed from the bed and stalked back to his room. The woman guarding him peeked around the corner once he had passed.
    “I’m worried, Mistress Cilia.” Her voice was almost inaudible. “The next phase begins. Be aware.”

Chapter Five
    Fiach lowered himself into the first chair he found. Rois, his chaperone, stood with her back pressed to the door that divided his room from Cilia’s. She was his mother’s favored companion, meek and mild, and given to displays of emotion.
    Whispers around the court asserted that Rois’s emotional temperament was the product of raising a changeling, a human child swapped for her own at birth. Since Rois was esteemed so highly, few dared to comment on her unusually bright disposition or her open affection for her son, Cayden.
    She risked a curt assurance. “You chose well, Fiach. She will survive this.”
    “Thank you Rois.” Then they were quiet.
    On the other side, Cilia’s trial had