Page 48 of A Cage of Crystal

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…

“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.

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