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“You’re sure?” My voice was scratchy, my throat too dry. I need something to drink. I swallowed to alleviate the worst of it.

God, my head hurt.

“It reminds me of the dresses we got to see when we toured Williamsburg in April.” There was a long pause where I tried to remember how to see, willed my eyes to focus. Just as the room came back into clarity, Sloane said, “The ones worn by the slaves, not the pretty ones worn by the rich. These are simple like those ones were.”

That cut through the throbbing pain of my headache.

Why were we in dresses that reminded my sister of lower-class clothing in a room with no electricity? What happened to the paramedic that had picked me up off the shoreline?

Tentatively, terrified I might mess up stitches or something, I touched the spot where I knew I’d hit against the rocks. There was a puffy line that was sensitive to the touch—like a weeks-old healing wound—but it didn’t directly hurt. When I held my fingers in the poor lighting, they were clean.

“What happened?” I asked, my confusion in my voice.

“I don’t know.” My sister’s voice broke.

On instinct, I grabbed her hand, ignoring the awful feelings weighing down my body.

“One minute we were grabbing that mirror to clean up the shoreline, and then the next, we were in the middle of a… a rainforest. There were huge trees and a river cutting through them. We were on the bank of it, these large flat stones stretching out from it like it flooded often. It looked a lot like that documentary you watched about orangutans last month.” She bit her lip and ran her thumb over the hem of the dress. “Your head was a bloody mess. I think you hit your head on the rocks.”

“I remember hitting it.”

She bit her lower lip, resting her cheek on her knee. “I was too scared to try and move you. I don’t know how long we were there. It was cloudy, and the light didn’t really change. A while, though, I think. I fell asleep. And then there were… soldiers surrounding us. Pretty sure they were soldiers, at least. They had swords and armor straight out of Game of Thrones. One of them picked you up after looking at your head for a bit. We walked long enough my legs hurt and came to this place.”

She gestured to the room around us.

“A woman took me away to a bathing room. It had a standing tub and a fireplace. She washed my hair and then put me in this dress before bringing me here.” Her eyes gleamed with tears. “You were already here, asleep, and in the same dress. Your head was cleaned up. A man—one of the soldiers, I think—tried to tell me something, but I couldn’t understand him.”

My mouth was still dry, my tongue heavy like my worst hangover multiplied by ten.

“That was last night.”

My hand spasmed in hers. It had been an entire day?

“Someone kept looking in here, and a woman brought food on a tray that didn’t taste all that bad, but I couldn’t understand any of them. They didn’t touch you at all.” Her lips trembled. “I was scared you weren’t going to wake up.”

“Never,” I said, reaching for her hand despite my own trembling.

I’d never let Sloane feel helpless if I could help it. I’d been protecting her since we were in kindergarten. A tear tracked down her cheek, and I carefully brushed it away.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’re trembling.”

“I’ll be fine,” I answered. I held her hand again. “I’ll always wake up. No way would I ever abandon you.”

She swallowed heavily and wiped at her eyes. I pulled her into me. She collapsed like a balloon deflating, falling heavily into my side as she wrapped her arms around my waist. I grimaced but didn’t dare make a sound as another pulse of nausea burned my throat.

I’d always been the older sister—if literally only by a few minutes. The one taking the blows so Sloane would be safe. No way was I going to let her down now.

I eyed the small window. How had we managed to get from Maine to the rainforest?

Sloane calmed after a bit. I messed with her hair, braiding portions of it before letting it fall back straight. Heavy footsteps preceded a deep voice. Sloane froze. I dropped my arm back to her shoulders, but she pushed away from me. She wiped the last bit of tears from her face as she focused on something behind me. The deep voice said something again, but I couldn’t understand it, the short, hard cadence not something I’d ever heard before. Sloane paled.

Forgetting my sensitivity to movement, I spun around. And then promptly froze as my vision blacked out entirely for several long, thundering heartbeats. When I could finally see again, my gaze caught on the now open door.

A man in black pants and matching tunic stood just outside the threshold, his arms behind his back. His eyes were a bright blue—inhumanly blue, truly glowing in the low light. He stared at me before looking at Sloane.

He said something in that staccato language. I didn’t dare move for fear it would be assumed for an answer. From the corner of my eye, I could see that Sloane was doing the same, lightly tracing the hem of her skirt again. The man’s eyebrow raised at our silence, a look of irritation tightening his features. Then he turned and called for something over his shoulder.

A second man, dressed similarly—though with two large swords strapped to his waist—joined him. His lips were pulled into a thin line, and not a single bit of emotion crossed his face as he followed the smaller man into the room. His eyes were a mundane brown, the color of a good brownie. My stomach rumbled at just the thought.