Chapter 8

My sleep is anything but peaceful.

Half awake, I toss and turn for hours, stuck in the delirium between dreams and reality. At one stage I think I hear footsteps next to my bed, but I can’t move, can’t open my eyes.

I feel the duvet gently lifted away, and cool lips touching the bruise on my chest. I slip deeper under the tides of sleep, and for a while I’m wandering in a cool green forest, with fir trees as tall as towers, and distant silver birds high up in the branches. They call down to me, and I will my arms to turn into wings so that I can fly up and join them.

Just as the first snowy white feathers break the surface of my skin, a whisper pulls me from my dreams.

“Wake up, Cupcake.”

I open my eyes to find Alastaire sitting on the end of my bed, his face illuminated by the pale light of the crescent flooding in through the window. I can see stars ou