“Focus on yourself, Highness,” the woman said, but the terror in her voice was palpable. “Please. You must remember where you are. Focus on the knife. Focus on your breath.”
Cora tried to do as the woman suggested, but the dark energy building behind her grew too strong to ignore. Against her better judgment, she cast a glance over her shoulder. At the center of the room, the air vibrated, shuddered, like an enormous fist was slamming against an invisible door.
The woman rounded Cora until she stood between her and the strange phenomenon warping the center of the room. She angled her head until Cora was forced to look at her. “I can’t keep us locked here for much longer. You must focus on yourself. Close your eyes.”
Just then, a sound like breaking glass pierced the hollow silence around them. Where the air had shuddered, there now was a crack. A crack in what, Cora didn’t know. It splintered the center of the tower room as if her surroundings weren’t real but something reflected behind a mirror.
Another thud. Another crack. Then wisps of black smoke oozed through the cracks.
On instinct, Cora lifted her blade…
But her hand was empty.
“No,” the woman said, reaching for Cora without touching her. “The knife. Remember the knife! Feel it!”
Cora opened her palm. Closed it. Felt nothing. Nothing.
The tower room began to drip and bleed, returning to the blinding white. The woman was nowhere to be seen, only the darkness that continued to spill through cracks that were now invisible. It took shape before her, swirling from the ground up to form legs, hips, a torso, a pair of shoulders?—
Cora opened her mouth to scream.
With an intake of breath,sound and color ruptured around her, bringing with it the heavy awareness of her body, her limbs, her hands, things she’d been disconnected from a moment ago. Another body pressed close to hers, touching her, shaking her. She curled her palm around her paring knife, and this time she felt its hilt, a comforting weight in her hand. In a flash of movement, she flicked the blade up and pressed it to her assailant’s throat.
She blinked several times, clearing them of the haze lingering in the wake of the change of light, until a familiar face took shape before her.
Dark hair flecked with gold. Chiseled cheekbones. Green eyes the color of moss.
She had the strangest sensation that this wasn’t whom she’d been expecting.
But whom had she been expecting?
What had she been doing?
Why was she holding a paring knife…to Teryn’s throat?
His hands went still on her shoulders, throat bobbing as his lips curled into a hesitant smirk.
“This brings back memories,” he muttered.
Cora’s chest heaved with sharp breaths, her knife hand trembling. Her emotions shifted between terror and relief. Confusion and shock. Part of her wanted to scream while the other wanted to collapse into Teryn’s arms and sob with relief. Then she recalled he had no reason to be there. Hecouldn’tbe there. He was supposed to be at Dermaine Palace. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t reconcile this moment with the one that came before it. Both were equally impossible, but one was slipping from her mind with every beat of her heart until…it was gone.Nowwas all she had left.
Teryn looked down at her with the most tender concern. “Are you all right?”
Cora gave a shaky nod.
“Then will you lower the knife?”
She’d forgotten about the blade. Forgotten why she’d been driven to defend herself with it. Why was she so shaken up? Had Teryn simply startled her while she’d been concentrating on her work? But what had she been working on? Hadn’t she been holding something other than the knife…
“Highness,” came a voice from behind them. It belonged to Cora’s guard, and his tone was laced with the frantic impatience of someone who’d been repeating himself to no avail. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” Teryn called over his shoulder.
Cora drew back her knife and took a step away from Teryn, just in time to see the guard’s head ducked beneath the rosemary, his foot planted over her line of salt.
Solid sense eradicated the remainder of her disorientation. “You can’t be in here,” she shouted at the guard. Then her eyes slid to Teryn, going wide when the implications of where she was—wherehewas—began to dawn. “Damn it, Teryn, you can’t be in here either.”
Her pulse kicked up, propelling her to return her knife to her apron pocket and press both hands against Teryn’s chest. She blushed at the feel of his solid torso beneath her palms, but she blamed it on her fury. Forcing him around, she pushed him toward the doorway.
