Chapter 7

After the banquet, he stopped avoiding me.

Instead, we began having an implausible number of accidental meetings. When I came downstairs for water, he happened to be working in the dining room. When I walked through the garden, he happened to be inspecting a tree he had never noticed before.

He also developed a secret with Milo.

Whenever I approached, I caught fragments.

“She likes... ears...”

“Furry...”

“The outfit...”

Then both of them would spot me and start discussing arithmetic with the strained enthusiasm of spies under interrogation.

I assumed Adrian planned to hire a new valet. Why the secrecy irritated me so much, I refused to examine.

Before I could confront him, Adrian announced that he had to travel overnight for business.

“I'll be back tomorrow evening,” he said with suspicious emphasis.

I watched him leave, then took out my frustration by rubbing Milo's pointed ear tufts.

That night, Milo slept in lynx form with his head on my shoulder.

I woke to the smell of smoke.

The system screamed in my head.

[Wake up! Fire!]

I sat upright.

The villa had smoke detectors and sprinklers. Yet no alarm sounded.

I shook Milo awake, wrapped him in a blanket, and opened the bedroom door.

Heat struck my face. Smoke rolled along the ceiling, and half the staircase was already burning.

I dropped low and held Milo against my chest.

“Cover your mouth.”

He shifted into a boy because human hands could grip the wet cloth I gave him. Ash streaked his cheeks.

“Mom, I can turn back and carry you,” he said. “If there's fire we can't cross, you can step on me.”

“No.”

“But—”

“You don't save me by making yourself disposable. Remember?”

His eyes flooded.

The hall behind us filled with flame. Retreat was no longer possible.

We crawled toward the stairs. The banister cracked and collapsed. Fire climbed the walls with a roar.

The scene struck something buried inside me.

Fire.

Animals crying.

Smoke in my lungs.

I had been here before.

The memory came in flashes too bright to hold. I kept my body over Milo and dragged us forward until heat pressed from every direction.

There was no clear path out.

Milo coughed against my chest.

I tightened my arms around him.

A tiger's roar shook the house.

Glass exploded inward from the third-floor landing.

A massive Siberian tiger came through the broken window, landed amid sparks, and charged toward us.

For one delirious second, I thought: Wonderful. We escaped being burned alive so a tiger could eat us roasted.

I covered Milo with my body and closed my eyes.

The tiger lowered himself beside us.

“Dad!” Milo cried. “Dad came back!”

Adrian.

Adrian was a tiger.

There was no time to process the information. Milo climbed onto his back. I followed, clutching thick orange fur. Adrian bounded through smoke, leaped from the damaged landing, and landed hard on the lawn below.

The impact jarred every bone in my body.

Then the world went black.