Kieran’s POV

Sleep has never been kind to me.

Tonight, it is cruel.

I sink into it the way a man sinks into deep water—slow at first, then all at once, pressure closing in from every side. The bed beneath me disappears. The walls of my room dissolve. The warmth of the packhouse fades until there is only cold and shadow and the steady, maddening pull of something waiting.

The curse wakes before I do.

It always does.

It crawls along my spine like a living thing, whispering in a language ...