Her heart echoed with a heavy beat.
She lowered the crystal, forcing her eyes away. But when she blinked into the light of the room, her vision was blanketed in white.
23
The white that surrounded her was blinding, like the forest after a heavy snow, masking every tree, every blade of glass, turning the world shapeless. Formless. Panic crawled up her throat, seared every nerve. She tried to focus on the ground beneath her, to root her energy through the soles of her feet, but…there was no ground. No sense of purchase beneath her. It felt more like she was floating.
In nothingness.
Trapped.
Without shape.
She glanced down at her body, her hands, her feet and saw…
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” came a soft feminine voice. The white light dimmed, muted hues bleeding into it like watercolors on a canvas, painting the scene in earth tones. Of stone and wood and sunlight. The tower library took shape around her, but there was something hazy about it. Tenuous.
“This is where you are, isn’t it?” the voice asked. Cora looked around for the source, feeling another spike of anxiety when she saw no one.
“I’m here.”
Cora faced forward again, and this time she saw a figure standing before her. She was unfamiliar to her, a woman perhaps a year or two her senior. Her skin was deep brown, her hair falling in black curls that just reached her shoulders. Shoulders Cora now realized were bare, as the woman wore a silky gown that hung from her neck and fell in sweeping folds to her ankles. The dress was unlike anything she’d seen before and certainly wasn’t suited to this climate.
This climate, her mind echoed.
But what wasthis climate? Her eyes slid from the woman to the room, and a feeling of wrongness struck her. The warmth of summer no longer touched her skin.Nothingtouched her skin. Panic threatened to seize hold of her again, but the girl’s calming voice stole her attention.
“Don’t focus on anything but where you are.”
“But why am I in this room at all?” Cora startled at the sound of her own voice. It was hollow. Flat. “I…I can’t remember why I’m in the tower library.” She took a step toward the woman, but the stranger leaped back at the same time, palms facing Cora in warning.
“Be very careful not to touch me,” she said.
Cora froze. Despite her sudden inertia, a tingling sensation hummed all around her. Through her. Like she was no longer a solid being.
“Remember what you were doing just a moment ago. Start with what you were wearing.”
She glanced down at her body and saw that she wore a gray wool dress covered in a linen apron. In one hand, she held a paring knife. Her mind flickered between sharp memories and hazy confusion. She chased the former, trying to recall why she was in the tower library. What had she been doing with the knife? She glanced at her other hand but found it empty. Hadn’t she been holding something?
“The knife,” the woman said. “Focus on the knife.”
She did as told, but as she studied it, the color of the hilt flickered from black to brown and back again.
“Don’t focus on what it looks like. Focus on how it feels in your hand. Close your eyes andfeel.”
Cora didn’t want to close her eyes. She wanted to understand what the hell was happening. “Who are you? Where did you come from?” Again, the hollow sound of her voice struck her as wrong. Why didn’t it echo even the slightest?
“You cannot focus on me,” she said, a note of panic in her tone. “Focus on you. Focus on your body, your surroundings, your breath. Focus on?—”
The woman’s eyes darted to the side, and a flash of fear crossed her face. Cora shifted to follow the stranger’s line of sight, but she barked, “Don’t look.”
Cora halted, but this time she couldn’t stop the panic from tightening her chest, her lungs. Her eyes remained on the woman, but she could sense something behind her. Something dark, murky…
