A cool cloth on his burning brow. The damp feeling of sweat in his night clothes as he lay under heavy sheets. Even as he hovered in an ambiguous state, halfway between waking and dreaming, Zephyrin almost smiled to himself; there was certainly room for confusion, here. Almost he could have thought himself back in Elysia, bedridden once more, subject to the machinations of his captors.

But a part of him remained cogent; somehow, he had a dim recollection of his circumstances; he had received a mysterious blessing from the patroness of Lutesse; used it to save a child, then been injured; now, doubtless, he was in his dormitory once more—or perhaps in the infirmary, being treated next to Roger…

More time passed.

Zephyrin had once read that in the South, there are warriors who train themselves to shake off all traces of sleep upon their first waking moment, so as to be instantly ready to do battle. Whether this was true or not, Zephyrin thought he would have been able to perform the feat today, as he had, seemingly from one moment to the next, snapped from the deepest of slumbers to alert wakefulness. His head throbbed dully, but the pain was bearable; moreover, Zephyrin wished to discover what had happened after his loss of consciousness.

He opened his eyes… but almost as quickly perceived that something was amiss.

Zephyrin frowned. The ceiling was not that of his dorm; it was high and ivory white rather than beige, and strangely elaborate.

… Are those… gold brocade borderings? Am I seeing things?

Zephyrin sat up…

…and in the next terrible, heart-stopping moment, as all the blood in his veins turned to ice, his hope for the future died within him like a fallen flame. His mouth opened, but the cry died in his throat; he could do nothing but stare wildly, uncomprehendingly about himself.

For, what Zephyrin saw reproduced around him in chilling, uncompromising detail, was a near replica of the room that he had called his own in the Crystalline Palace. From the sumptuous rococo decor to the varnished oak-wood flooring, from the gloomy black and gold-gilt furniture to the bed’s red velvet, gold-embroidered canopy hangings, it was the same—he had returned to the dual prisons of his gilded cage and diseased-riddled body, to his final, ignominious end—

Drawing a deep, gasping breaths, Zephyrin raised a pale, trembling hand…

And then abruptly relaxed, as all the air and tension rushed out of his body.

His hand… was a childish hand, and as for his surroundings, the impression had been illusory. The yellow wall to his right—it had been transmuted to gold from its native white by the shafts of sunlight filtering through the thin, gauzy green curtains—that was all. As for the ebony furniture—gilded low-end tables, commodes, and assorted furnishings, all of distinctively Gaulyrian make, once he looked more closely—were made of mahogany, seeming darker only because the room’s far corners were still swathed in shadow.

Zephyrin sagged back into the bed’s silk-tasseled goose-feather pillows. Throwing his arm over his eyes, he drew several long, drawn out breaths, waiting for the pounding in his chest to subside as he did so.

This isn’t a dream.

He wasn’t back in Elysia, wasn’t an invalid once more. This second life wasn’t a delusion his feverish, addled mind had conjured up as he lay in his death throes. He hadn’t imagined all this, and the Goddess hadn’t broken her promise. Letting his hand fall, Zephyrin opened his eyes once more.

He was able to look round the sumptuous living quarters with much more composure, and after gingerly sitting up in bed, found that the aching in his head was manageable to the extent that he could rise to his feet, albeit somewhat unsteadily. Looking down, he saw that unseen caretakers had changed him into a patient’s plain white robe, such as he had often worn in Elysia. His hand flew to his chest, where he was relieved to find that the asterite was still hanging in its chain around his neck.

Zephyrin then padded his way across the room, shivering slightly when his bare soles left the thick, flower-wreathed rugs to make contact with the cold wood. Reaching the magnificent gold and white door, he stopped for a moment, wondering at it and the craftsmanship of its similarly ornate lion-headed doorknob. He thought back to the carriage, and the noblewoman he had seen prior to losing consciousness, and had an uneasy presentiment of the events that had unfolded afterward.

Still, he wanted confirmation. Zephyrin put his hand on the doorknob, and turned it. The door swung open soundlessly, revealing a sight that left him speechless.