Penelope let out a terrified squawk, her feathers flattening against her body. I scooped my frantic hen into my arms, clutching her against my chest. I had to find shelter for us. Now.
It was too late. The wind hit me, driving the air from my lungs and making my knees buckle.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” I tried to tell Penelope, but the storm ripped the words away before I could properly form them. Penelope’s tiny heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic counterpoint to my own. I turned, shielding her with my body, and fought my way toward the relative safety of the cottage.
My boot caught on something. I looked down and saw it. The thread, pulled taut, was entangled around my ankle.
It was too late to prevent disaster, but as I pitched forward, my free hand shot out to break my fall. At the very least, I needed to keep Penelope from being crushed beneath me. This wasn’t the first time I’d taken a tumble because of my gift, nor would it be the last. The important thing was keeping my little hen safe.
My palm slammed into the ground, the impact jarring my teeth. Dirt and pine needles scraped my cheek. Yet the sensation of falling didn’t stop.
The earth vanished, replaced by an endless, terrifying drop into nothing. Penelope dissolved from my arms, her final, choked cry swallowed by a roar of wind that drowned out all sound. My yard, my body, my entire world were gone. Instead, I was hurtling through an endless, black sky toward a sprawling city I recognized with a fresh wave of horror.
Asphodelia.
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the impact, for the end.
It never came.
A band of iron strength locked around my waist, bringing the fall to a jarring halt. Heat pressed against my back, soaking through the thin fabric of the dress I now wore. The scent of storm-charged air and worn leather filled my nose, drowning out the terror of the drop.
Phonos. He had caught me.
“The first flight is always overwhelming,” he said, not unkindly. “Open your eyes when you’re ready.”
I forced my eyelids apart. The world had transformed into a terrifying tapestry of black glass and distant lights, spread thousands of feet below my dangling boots. Nausea rolled through me, but it felt distant, muffled by a foreign sense of wonder.
Phonos was still holding me, my protector of shadow and power. But there was something different about his expression, a tentative wall I didn’t know what to make of. “You feel alone even when surrounded by people who care about you.”
The syllables formed in my throat, but the voice belonged to a stranger. It sounded soft, melodic, and terrifyingly familiar. It sounded like Callista.
Understanding crashed into me, so shocking I barely dared to process it. I was wearing her skin. This memory didn’t belong to me. It belonged to them.
This had never happened to me before. Never had one of my visions displayed another person’s life so intimately. But maybe it made sense, if fate had deemed us entwined.
Phonos looked right through me, at her, and the raw vulnerability in his gaze flayed me open. “Yes. I thought you might understand that feeling.”
He wasn’t just comforting her. He was reaching out. He saw a kindred spirit in her brokenness, a mirror to his own isolation. He truly believed that he’d found the one creature in all the realms who could understand him.
“Maybe we could help each other find what we’re missing.”
Whatever intrigue I’d felt at the strange situation vanished as if it had never existed. Phonos’s words fractured something deep inside me. He was offering her the very foundation of the life he was building with me. He was offering her the “we.”
The distance between Phonos and Callista shrank. His hand came up to cup her cheek. His thumb brushed across her skin with a gentleness that made my own phantom flesh burn. The pull of him was magnetic, undeniable, demanding a surrender I’d already given him.
But the woman I inhabited recoiled.
“I’m sorry.” Callista pulled back, her cheeks burning with a shame I could feel but not name. “I can’t... not yet.”
I waited for his anger. I waited for her rejection to break him. But his arm only tightened around her waist, securing her against the drop.
“It’s all right.” Patience, profound and aching, colored his tone. “We have all the time in the world.”
He brushed a strand of golden hair back from the face I wore. “You’re worth waiting for, Callista. However long it takes.”
The promise echoed in the hollow space of my skull, a death knell for the certainty I had found in the Weavers’ Hall.
You’re worth waiting for.
