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Before they even met. Mikael Lee and Shironne Anjir were tangled together in their need to solve murders.

Mikael Lee, an aide to the king's brother, dreams his way into others' deaths, and then follows the clues within back to the killer. Shironne Anjir, a young girl so sensitive to the stimuli around her that she cannot shut it out, has been sharing those dreams with him, and when a death falls closer to her doorstep, she's the one who takes up the task of finding a killer... a path that might give her a direction for the rest of her life.

Table of Contents:

• "A Mention of Death", short story
• "Touching the Dead", novelette
• "Endings", novelette

Shironne Anjir's status as a sensitive is both a gift and a curse. Her augmented senses allow her to discover and feel things others can't, but her talents come with a price: a constant assault of emotions and sensations has left her blind. Determined to use her abilities as best she can, Shironne works tirelessly as an investigator for the Larossan army.

A member of the royal family's guard, Mikael Lee also possesses an overwhelming power--he dreams of the deaths of others, sometimes in vivid, shocking detail, and sometimes in cryptic fragments and half-remembered images.

But then a killer brings a reign of terror to the city, snuffing out his victims with an arcane and deadly blood magic. Only Shironne can sense and interpret Mikael's dim, dark dreams of the murders. And what they find together will lead them into a nightmare...

What does it mean to be bound? Mikael and Shironne have known for a month now that they are bound, but neither truly knows what their future holds.

When Shironne is kidnapped, Mikael uses the nascent tie between them to get her back, and to keep her safe, Shironne is placed among the Family in their underground Fortress. As long as she's within those walls, outsiders can't get to her. That leaves Mikael working to discover who would steal her away in the first place. Her ability to creep into others' thoughts, memories, and dreams is unprecedented, but who would be able to use that?

And Shironne must deal with a new and frustrating way of life, where contact with adults -- including Mikael -- is strictly curtailed and her time is constantly monitored. She also has to live among a yeargroup, and the Sixteens are not the calm, unemotional Family she's accustomed to seeing from a distance. They have their own problems and petty jealousies, not too different from her own sisters. Finding her place among them is going to be a challenge.

Fortunately, Shironne can access Mikael's thoughts to guide her in her new life... while for some reason, he can't access hers, leaving him without guidance at times when he could definitely use it.

Mikael Lee has dreamed of death for a decade now. He shares the last moments of murder victims, usually ones he's later fated to investigate. But one death has always eluded him: his father's murder.

Now he's dreaming his father's murder again, an old and powerful dream that can drag him to the brink of death. This time, though, he has a witness who can help him find the truth: Shironne Anjir. She's been dragged into Mikael's dreams for years. As much as Mikael does, she wants this dream put to bed, the deaths in Mikael's memories solved once and for all.

And more than that, Mikael wants his father's greatest secret - the identity of a half-brother Mikael has never met.