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“Then what’s the point? Why are we bothering?”

“Because everything we try tells us something. Even failure defines the shape of what doesn’t work.”

She shakes her head. “We might as well go back. There’s nothing here.”

As much as I would like to stay here, she’s right. There’s nothing to see, so I allow her to draw me back to the staircase.

“How long have you been here?” Her voice hardens with determination. “And don’t give me some non-answer.”

I glance at her out of the corner of my eye, debating whether this particular truth serves my purpose. The intensity in her gaze suggests evasion will only damage the tentative trust forming between us.

“All right.” I concede the information like a gift. “Twenty-seven years.”

She stops abruptly, her hand almost slipping free. I brace myselffor the impact of being thrown back, but she manages to catch herself, fingers tightening around my arm.

“Twenty-sevenyears?” Disbelief colors her voice. “How is that possible? Were you imprisoned when you were a child?”

“No.” Bitterness twists in my chest at the memory of that day. The betrayal, the trap, the moment I realized I’d lost everything. “I was twenty-nine when they took me.”

“Then why don’t you look?—”

“Older? An unintended consequence of how the binding was crafted. The magic preserves what it contains.”

Time has frozen for me while the world continues without me. The thought carries a weight I rarely allow myself to acknowledge. How many people I know have aged? Have died? How much has the world beyond the tower changed?

Her eyes move over my face, studying me with new interest, looking for signs of aging she won’t find. I hold still under her scrutiny, allowing this unexpected intimacy.

“You’ve been trapped inone roomfor twenty-seven years?” The horror in her voice is genuine.

“Yes.” I keep the word simple, free of any sign that hints toward what such isolation does to a mind, to a soul.

She doesn’t move, her expression moving through emotions too complex to name. I’m certain she's trying to process what such a lengthy confinement would be like. Twenty-seven years alone with no one to speak to. No one to touch. No change except what occurred within my own thoughts.

Twenty-seven years alone would break most minds. The fact that mine didn’t is something I prefer not to examine too closely.

She opens her mouth to speak, then shakes her head, and sets off up the stairs again. When we reach the room at the top, I hesitate before stepping through the doorway. She waits until I’m beside my desk before releasing my arm. The binding reasserts itself immediately, not restricting my movements inside the chamber, but I can feel the vibration of it returning to my skin.

She drops onto the chair beside the table. “This isn’t going to be easy, is it? Finding a way out.”

“No, but we’ve already made progress. Before your arrival, I had no hope of ever leaving this chamber. Now, at the very least, I can cross the threshold with your assistance.”

“It’s a start, I guess.” She doesn’t sound confident. “Do you think if we can weaken it enough, the tower door will respond?”

“Maybe. Magic often follows patterns. One change may lead to others.”

I sit down, pick up my pen, and begin recording the day’s results. She watches me.

“Do you think there’s a reason I ended up here? In this tower, with you? Or do you think it was just a coincidence?”

The question is more insightful than she realizes. “What makes you ask that?”

“I don’t know. Of all the places I could have appeared in this world, I end up in a tower with a prisoner who’s been waiting for someone to help him escape. That feels … deliberate, somehow.”

“Maybe.”

“Why me? Whynow?”

I consider what I should reveal. Too much could make her decide not to help me, too little will fail to satisfy her growing curiosity.