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The world ended today. By my own hand.

I shut down the gates.

I take full responsibility for every death, every lost colony, every life inexorably altered. I say a silent prayer for my friends who will have to live in the world that comes after, and now I go freely into my exile.

I deserve far worse than an eternity alone.

The door was locked.

And truthfully, Talya Caro wasn’t sure why she had expected anything different. Every door she had tried in this damned place was locked. Thewindows even had bars. Beautiful, filigreed bars made of gold-painted iron—but bars, nonetheless.

Taly took a step back. The door was a great, massive thing made of carved oak that swirled together in nonsense patterns. A subtle shimmer covered the surface like a veil. The handle was made of gold.

She reached out one more time, as if something might suddenly change—

And then immediately snatched her hand away, hissing, “Shit, shit, shit,” as well as other more colorful curses when her fingers continued to tingle.

The door wasn’t just locked. It was sealed with warding magic, and there were only two reasons to use warding magic.

The first was to keep things out. The second to keep things in.

In this case, she was more inclined to believe it was the latter, confirming her rising suspicion that she was now, indeed, a prisoner.

It wasn’t just the door that had led her to this conclusion, rather a collection of variables, all gathered within the handful of minutes since she’d awoken, tucked in with care in a massive bed piled with pillows and quilts. If the circumstances didn’t seem so dire, she might’ve been impressed by the list of problems she’d managed to acquire in so short a period.

The most problematic being that she didn’t know where she was. Or how she had gotten here. She was clean, her hair washed and braided, and someone had replaced her smoke- and bloodstained leathers with a gauzy nightdress—but she couldn’t say who. The last thing she remembered clearly was meeting a womanclaiming to be the Time Queen, and then… nothing. Just darkness.

A long line of windows spanned one wall of the apartment, curving in a way that reminded her of a tower. Just beyond, rolling green hills rose in the distance. It was summer, warm and sunny, lovely in the way that all Tempris summers were undeniably lovely.

That was also a problem.

It had still been spring when she’d left Ebondrift. Still cold and raining when she’d been dragged into that swirling portal, taken from a place that had been left to ruin and deposited at the gates of a palace that was too shining and new to exist anywhere on the ramshackle island she called home.

It was as if she had been plucked from one place, onetime, and transported somewhere else, and that was a very big problem.

“Breathe,” Taly murmured, squeezing her eyes shut. Yes, this place was impossible. That woman was… impossible. But she wasn’t dead (yet). And she hadn’t been recruited into some unknown, undead army (yet).

On the other hand, she was at the Time Queen’s palace, being held in a locked room by the most vilified woman in all fey history. A woman that had committed wide-scale genocide of every known species in the Fey Imperium, whose actions had precipitated a centuries-long hunt for anyone unlucky enough to be born a time mage.

Which Taly was now. A time mage.Fey.

Turning from the door, she let her eyes drift over the room. She had two choices: she could stay and wait, see what her captors wanted and hope they meant her no harm; or, she could escape, andthen figure out the solutions to all of her many problems from the relative safety of anywhere else.

She preferred option two.

Escape.

The word solidified in her mind as Taly strode further into the apartment. She was trapped and alone with no plan and no way out. Dread began to creep in, but she pushed it back, murmuring under her breath, “Just think about the next step.” That’s what Ivain had always said. “Don’t panic. Don’t get bogged down in the details. What’s the next step?”

That was easy. She needed shoes. And weapons. Real clothes would also be nice, and she already had an idea where to find them.

The rooms flowed from one to the other, separated only by thick velvet curtains draped across each open doorway. There was a parlor, a music room, even a small library with an attached study—and inside the bedroom, hidden behind a panel that swung open when pressed, Taly found a corridor that ran around the back perimeter of the apartment, leading to those rooms that were typically set aside for personal use.

The carpet was soft beneath her bare feet as she made her way down the hallway, each side lined with more doors, all of them locked save for two. The first led to a washroom that was as grand as everything else in the apartment, and the other… well, it wasn’t what she had expected to find, though Taly wasn’t sure why she bothered being surprised as she stood wide-eyed and gaping in what had to be the largest closet she’d ever seen.

There were rows upon rows of corsets, and ballgowns, and dresses of every style and color.Fashions she recognized, others she didn’t, and some she had no words to describe.

It was all entirely impractical, of course. Too heavy and restrictive to allow for fighting or running.