Panic slammed into her, forcing the air from her lungs. She dropped to the ground, hitting the hard surface without forgiveness. Nausea churned in her stomach; the air around her—cold but charged—refused to enter her lungs.
She placed her hands on her head, sucking in deep, wheezing breaths through her nose.
She couldn’t freak out. Not now. She had to find the solution to freeing herself from whatever had tethered to her DNA, and she couldn’t do it if she was a ball of sweat and tears on the floor of a deathly dark cave.
As if the chamber again understood her thoughts, points of violet light began to shimmer in the ground. One by one, they flickered like stars, forming a thin path ahead, just wide enough for a single person to walk.
Gemma froze, watching the lights come alive as they curved gently through the void, leading forward into the nothing.
She squeezed her eyes closed and repeated back the words Christian always offered when panic threatened to take over:Just breathe. She heard his voice in her head.You can do this. You’re stronger than you know.
Gemma pushed herself up onto shaky legs and released one last deep breath. “I can do this.”
She stepped forward into the dark.
With every stride, a new violet light ignited ahead of her along the path, as if the chamber itself was awakening to her presence, urging her to keep moving forward.
She pressed onward until a hum, just past the edge of hearing, broke the eerie silence. She paused, swiveling her head back and forth, trying to discern the location of the noise. But it didn’t seem to be coming from in front or behind, or even above. It was like—
It was inside her.
The hum pulsed in time with her heartbeat then began to diverge, tingling in her chest, like something inside her was waking up to its own rhythm.
Then the air shifted. Not warmer or colder, but like the rules of the universe had changed behind her back.
Her legs weakened; her hands shook. “I’m not afraid,” she whispered aloud, despite the terror rattling every molecule in her body. Sucking in a deep breath, she took another step forward. Then another.
The violet lights lining her way halted. Gemma’s heart lodged in her throat.Why did they stop?
A circular platform rose from the smooth floor near where she stood, the air above the platform shimmering faintly, like a heat mirage or a veil of static. Gemma flinched, a startled cry catching in her throat.What in the blazes . . . ?When it ceased moving, she wiped her clammy hands on her trousers.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this.” She whimpered before stepping onto the platform.
Her senses tilted. Color collapsed. Light stretched then snapped. For a heartbeat, Gemma felt herself unravel—skin, breath, thought, self—then everything stitched together again.
Crimson sand swept in graceful arcs across a vast plain beneath a turquoise sky. Twin moons shimmered low on the horizon, and violet clouds rippled like banners through the atmosphere.
Reva.
Though, not as it was. Not as she remembered it.ThisReva breathed with power, with memory. It pressed at the edges of her senses, quiet and vast. Like something ancient was watching, listening, waiting to be known.
Gemma took one cautious step forward, off the platform. The sand hissed underfoot. A figure waited in the distance, upright and unmoving, neither cloaked nor armed. Familiar yet impossible. She approached warily, her pulse thumping in her ears.
The figure turned—and Gemma’s breath fled.
It was her, but not. A version of the self she saw in her nightmares, yet entirely different. This version stood taller, straighter. Regal. Less shrouded in possibilities and secrets; more like she’d chosen her place.
Underneath a silky, violet gown, this Other-Gemma’s skin shimmered faintly with iridescence, like her cells had been threaded with starlight. Her dark brown hair floated behind her as if gravity itself had lost its constraints. And her eyes weren’t just violet but shimmered with every shade of purple in the galaxies—nebulae caught in motion.
A pulse of knowing hit Gemma square in the chest. This was her. A future her. What she could become.
“I’ve been waiting,” Other-Gemma said, her voice neither hostile nor warm. “You crossed the threshold and opened the tomb, proving yourself worthy of the gift we bestowed. So now you see.”
Gemma stared through watery eyes. “See what?” She feared she knew the answer.
Other-Gemma titled her head. “What you are.”
Her hands shook. “I’m not sure I understand.”
