“Just breathe, slow and steady,” the woman named Emylia said. A woman he’d still yet to see.
He glanced up from his hands and nearly leaped out of his skin at the sight of the unfamiliar woman. If he had to guess, she was around his age, perhaps a year older. Her skin was a rich brown while her curly hair was the color of the midnight sky outside his room. A beautiful woman. And one who was only half dressed. The shift she wore was of a flowing, floor-length silk in a color he couldn’t distinguish in the unlit room, but the way it bared her shoulders told him it had to be a nightgown at best.
Suspicion darkened in his mind. Averting his gaze, he set his jaw and said, “Miss…Emylia, who are you and what are you doing in my room?”
It was all he could do not to order her out at once. The last thing his relationship with Cora needed was a scandal. A nagging thought pulsed through him, telling him this was the least of his worries. But…why? Something had happened after his conversation with Cora…
Something that would explain the terror lurking in the back of his mind…
“I told you. I’m here to help you.”
“With what?” He allowed his gaze to return to her and saw she now wore a capelet over her shoulders in the same flowing silk as her gown. It struck him as odd that her ensemble would change so suddenly, but he was more concerned with getting her out of his room. There was no way he was letting this stranger ruin what he had with Cora. “Never mind. You shouldn’t be here. Please leave at once.”
When she made no move to obey, he reached forward to assist her, determined to drag her out if he must.
“Don’t touch me,” she barked, leaping away from his touch.
Teryn froze.
The woman made a placating gesture, and her tone turned gentle again. “It’s…it’s probably fine, but we can’t risk it.”
“I don’t want to touch you,” Teryn said through his teeth, trying to ignore that his teeth felt…well, there was something wrong with them. Something wrong withhim. Everything about his body felt…too light. Too fuzzy. Was he dreaming? It felt like a dream. But not even in his dreams did he fancy having a strange woman in his private quarters when he could have been dreaming about someone else. “I just want you out of my room before someone gets the wrong idea.”
Her shoulders sank, eyes turning down at the corners. “Highness, we aren’t in your room.”
“What do you?—”
“Do you remember anything about what you were doing before?”
“Before what?”
“What’s the last thing you recall? Stay calm but try to remember. It’s better if you remember on your own.”
Teryn was torn between fear and irritation. A nagging notion—too hazy to decipher—continued to plague him, trying to remind him…
He closed his eyes, and a vision played through his mind. First he saw himself holding the crystal in his room, saw the light catch on its facets. Then there was nothing but white. He’d heard a woman’s voice. Emylia’s voice, he realized now. Then dark tendrils like black smoke took shape before him, forging legs, hands, a torso. Then a face. One he recognized. The shadowed figure was colorless, revealing neither Duke Morkai’s dark hair nor his silver-blue eyes. But Teryn knew it was him. Emylia had shouted not to let Morkai touch him, but the voice had been too far away, too lost in the tumult of Teryn’s fear and confusion. The figure reached out, grasped Teryn. Pain had surged through him, searing his skull as if it were being cleaved in two, and then…
Then nothing.
Teryn stumbled back, swiping a hand over his face. But when his palm made contact with his skin, it lacked the pressure he was used to. Instead, it simply…buzzed. Thickened the air. He drew his hand back and examined it. It was still his hand, but the closer he looked, the more he realized its edges were slightly blurred, its shape in a constant flux of swirling particles.
His breaths grew sharp and shallow. Breaths that didn’t feel like true breaths.
“You need to stay calm,” Emylia said, but her words only reminded him of the wrongness of their voices. They still lacked resonance. Still struck hollow in the space around them.
“You expect me to stay calm? What the seven devils is happening? Where am I—really?”
Her expression sank with pity. “You’re inside the object you know as Morkai’s crystal.”
Teryn glanced around the room, no longer trusting his surroundings. They seemed as tenuous as his form, something real but not real. This was wrong. All of this was wrong. He could only hope this was a nightmare and that he’d wake from it at any moment. But if this wasn’t a dream and Emylia was telling the truth…
He was inside Morkai’s crystal.
Not his body, though. He knew enough to comprehend that whatever he was now, it wasn’t a being of flesh and blood.
A question formed on his lips, one he wasn’t sure he was ready to hear the answer to. “Am I dead?”
“No, Teryn,” she said with a gentle smile. “You’re alive.”
