Warmth held Corvin in a crushing grip.

Unsteady as trembling hands, rough like rocks buried in sand, the heat swaddled him, keeping him captive in a way that dripped unparalleled heaviness into his bones. He couldn't have moved if he'd had the willpower to try. He simply drifted, surrounded by the bubbling froth of a brook, swayed by every ripple.

Against his ear, a steady beat thrummed. A pulse, strong and flightily firm in the way it strung the seconds together, until his own heart hastened to follow its rhythm.

Lips softly brushed his cheek. A tuft of hair tickled his flushed skin in their wake. "Comfortable, doe?"

The only answer Corvin could find was a hum of contentment, gliding up his throat like molten amber. Warm arms wrapped his body. His head rested on a warm chest, and warm breath skimmed his face, kissing his nose and ruffling his bangs. Safety formed the raft he floated upon in these dizzying, distant waters. Pressing himself more tightly against his companion's chest, he shifted, determined to burrow deeper into that perfect warmth.

A snorted laugh blew more hot air across his face, and he felt the scruffed chin he'd tucked himself under roll to the side. Fingers tapped his right antler in a playful rhythm. "Careful with those, you big squirmer. You almost took my eye out."

A sputter of apologies snaked up Corvin's throat yet sat too heavy on his tongue, disintegrating before they could lift into sound. His eyes wouldn't open, either. Even so, he remained as still as he could, breathing steadily, sinking into the sound of their twin heartbeats. A tingle zipped down his spine at every little touch.

He wanted to stay in this moment forever.

Fine hairs danced over his face again as his companion nestled up against his head. Those lips walked down his forehead on a path to his ear, where they halted, just barely touching its tip as words dropped into the nonexistent gap. Barely a whisper, they sauntered around his heart like a smooth, stringing vine.

"We're going to change the world."

The vine grew thorns. Corvin didn't have time to gasp before everything flipped.

Pain gushed in, shattering safety's veil. It blistered and snarled, a shock that flooded his chest with writhing panic even before its source registered. Burning lines dragged across his back. An inferno tore through his flesh, but his screams choked themselves, reduced to ash and smoke that built up horribly in his lungs. If he'd been drifting gently downstream before, he was drowning now. There were no longer sturdy arms to scoop him up; the hands that held him now were rough, and they doused him in hissing, excruciating flames.

Claws bit into his arms. They were icily hard, sharp, vicious blades that drilled far too deep, and the clash of hot and cold had a grating sting. When that familiar whisper drifted back into earshot, it rang in the same twisted way.

Most of the words blurred amongst the haze of agony and sound of ripping flesh, but one snagged his heart.

"Nothing," it leered. You're nothing to me.

Corvin's throat bubbled when he tried to whimper. Metallic bitterness slid under his tongue and stained his teeth. Warmth flowed over him again, but now it was sticky and thick, and the greater its pools became, the harder it was to breathe. His core grew cold.

Blindly, he felt for the space before him, searching for what he'd had before the shift, but sensed only emptiness. His heart, thrashing under the weight of dizzying, copious fear, beat alone.

Why?

His body tipped. He was falling.

He didn't want to fall. Where was there to go alone? He kicked and battled harder to breathe, desperate, reaching.

All at once, the fire hardened and shattered like glass, and his eyes shot open.

As if it were a living creature, the pain skittered backward, a dull pulse at the back of his skull that sketched a criss-cross pattern over his back and his thighs and chewed in patches at his arms. His eyes stung. Bright, unnatural light converged in a shining film that blurred his view of wherever he was. Squinting through the muddle of pastel colours, he fought to ground himself, steadily unpicking his ties to the drifting state the aching part of him begged to return to.

The ground beneath him bowed under his weight. It was lumpy and soft, cradling his wounds with care. Too soft. Nothing felt right. Distrust squirmed and snaked loops around his gut, eking tension into his heavy limbs.

His dream's grasp on him was slippery now, but it refused to fade, and it made it difficult to have faith that anything would remain gentle. Something within his core coiled inward, braced for the return of those stinging claws.

Instead, the rough stone of reality rubbed away at their details and trickled in more dewdrops of light and sensation. The blanketed yellow light retreated into a pale flame hung above his head, casting long, weak, flickering forks from within its cage of glass. Rays of genuine sunlight trickled thinly from somewhere behind him to tangle in a webbed glow. Through the fibrous, bouncing beams the duo cast, he made out a ceiling of sandbrick, excessively decorated with a myriad of hanging trinkets that hurt his tired eyes to look at. Midnight formed their theme; azure ribbons and deep purple jewels merged to form a glittery indigo sky, like it was littered with the shards of a thousand exploded stars.

Heated trails splashed his skin in reflection of the thought. They were underlaid with a sticky chill, resulting in a clammy, throbbing mix. His vision was part-obscured by the striped pattern of his own damp white bangs. Sweat clung to the splayed, uneven folds of his robe and pulled the sheets laid over the top into the same unpleasant embrace. It made him feel trapped.

In the corner of his eye, something moved.

Panic's pressure encircled Corvin's throat until he was sure it would strangle all the air from his lungs. He didn't know where he was, but the idea of waking up in a foreign place, head pounding and weakness clinging to him like a second skin, filled him with an unhindered tide of dread. Struggling to swallow past the weight of his dry, leaden tongue, he reached to sweep the hair from his face as he twisted, as soundlessly as possible, to the side.

His hand wouldn't budge more than a sliver of distance. Scratchy material cut into his wrist, and his alarm spiked in a second, splintering wave.

His head, however, didn't refuse his attempt to move it and rolled to the left, granting him the view his curiosity pleaded for. A dish sat level with his eyeline, off-white, glistening and surrounded by a ring of smooth, dark wood. That same material hugged two thirds of the wall's length, wedged beneath nailed-in planks that displayed an array of bubbling colours encased in glass. It was all so polished, clogged with the sharp, artificial fragrance that wrapped everything made by human hands, and that alone made him itch all over. Yet the sight that truly sank his stomach was the human herself.

Glass container snug in her grip above the flat wood, she swirled it, her side-on features creased by deep concentration. Cerulean fluid splashed and steamed within. Similar colours, though richer and deeper in shade, danced a scattered reflection in her eyes. Like the drenched flames visible in slivered windows between her dark fingers, her presence burned; Corvin snatched a hiss between his teeth before it could emerge, heart flapping his nerves, squirming with the desire to wriggle out from his own stinging skin. With all his slippery strength, he yanked on his other wrist, but it was bound in rope just like the first. His feet kicked uselessly at the heavy sheets.

Escape never occurred, but the creak and rustle of his movement caught the human's attention. The glass she held slipped her fingers, tipping its smouldering contents over the wood, and the bitter cleanliness in the air was washed out by the scent of charcoal. Blue froth ate into the material and left behind a network of blackened marks. She didn't seem to notice or care.

Her gaze whirled to meet his, and their fear clashed.

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