And again, the meaning slid into me with ease. The language itself was foreign, something I was certain I had never heard in my life. But it settled into my ears like they were the words I grew up with.
It terrified me.
If I tried to answer her now, I knew without a doubt the same words would fall from my own mouth in that exact tongue, shaped by lips and lungs that had never spoken it before.
“I said I’ll handle it!” she screamed, slamming her fury into the wall.
As if on cue, the stone wall began to fracture, cracking and spreading in concentric circles, following the exact path she had drawn.
“Block her,” she commanded. For a moment I thought she meant me—until she added, “She must not find out about my ritual.”
My brow furrowed. Was she talking about her mother? Selvanyra?
Before I could process it, the cracked space in the wall erupted with light, white and blinding. I screamed, stumbling back as I covered my eyes. The brilliance seared my retinas, going straight to my brain with a ring. But she hadn’t flinched. Of course she hadn’t. She waslight.
I turned, backing the light and shielding my face.
But then reality started bleeding into me, tugging me out of the dream. I felt my real body heavy and turning on the ground.
Horror struck me.
No. No. Not now. Don’t wake up now, Sanora. Not like this.
I pleaded silently with myself, grinding my teeth, fighting the pull of waking—
Something plastic smacked the back of my head, jolting me fully awake. The cave, the light, her, him, all of it vanished like breath from a hand. A wince clawed my throat, swallowed by a louder, sharper grunt as awareness came crashing back, every nerve in my body screaming.
My body hurt—gods, it hurt. Every part of me ached, and the aches pulsed deep in my bones, flooding me all at once as I tried to regulate my breathing. My legs, my back, my stomach, my head—all of them throbbed with pain. My arms were tied behind me, and my left shoulder bore the brunt of my weight against the cold floor.
My shoulder was fucking numb. How long had they kept me like this, tied up and left to sleep on the floor?
A pair of legs in heels appeared in my blurred vision, followed by a voice that made my stomach twist. “Oh, look at that. She’s finally awake.” The heels clicked closer, and she crouched, dropping the bucket I assumed she had struck me with. “I told you you weren’t hitting her hard enough.”
“Or maybe you just gave her too much of the dose earlier,” a man’s voice responded from somewhere behind me.
Merton.
Amelia’s fingers brushed my forehead, pushing my hair aside. “I thought she wasn’t ordinary. You thought that too, brother.”
Her head tilted, lips curling into a smile—one that might have seemed warm days ago. But she had shown me who she really was. I glared at her with the little strength I had.
“I thought she might have some fascinating element in her blood,” her brother’s voice cut in from behind me. “But according to the sample I experimented on, she’s fully human. Boring.”
Excuse me?
They’d taken my blood? Sampled it? For what?
“You must be exhausted,” Amelia cooed. “I should lift you to sit.”
I wanted to resist, to keep her filthy, betraying hands away from me, but I couldn’t take the agony of leaning on one shoulder any longer. My body screamed for relief, and with my wrists bound behind me and my legs tied, I needed help.
She dragged me upright, scraping my body against the dirty floor until she had me leaning against a wall. “There you go,” she said proudly, adjusting my bound legs before stepping back. The smile stayed plastered across her face as if she’d just done me a favour. She looked neat in a pink dress, her dark hair tied back in a ponytail, her heels echoing in the hollow space with every movement.
Finally, I found the strength to croak out the question that had been burning through me since before I lost consciousness. “Why?” My voice was weak. For how long was I asleep?
We were in some kind of warehouse. The dim green light left everything hazy except for Amelia and her brother. A table was shoved against the wall beside me, crowded with scientific and medical equipment—probably what he’d used to test my blood, right here in this filthy place. Another table farther back was cluttered with shapes and objects I couldn’t quite make out.
“Why we only decided to kidnap you today?” Amelia asked, mock innocence dripping from her voice. “Look, baby, I told Merton we should’ve done this long ago, but fear kept him biding his time until today.” She glanced at her brother. “Well, yesterday. You slept through the whole evening, the night, and here we are at nine a.m. We were patient with you, weren’t we? You definitely had a lovely nap.”
