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The kind of need that overrides common sense.

She moves, staggering slightly. I don’t stop her, curious to see what she does. Not that I could if I wanted to. The binding holds me back, half the room already cut off from me. So I stay where I am and watch her cross into the space I won’t be able to reach until morning.

She makes it to the table and braces herself against the edge with both hands. For a moment, she sways, as if just standing upright might undo her. Then she grabs the pitcher. Ignoring the cup beside it, she lifts it to her lips like the world might end before she drinks.

Water spills down her chin, soaking into the already sweat-drenched fabric of her clothes. She gulps it down without stopping, without breathing, without even looking up to see if I’ve moved. The sounds she makes—low, guttural gasps between swallows—don’t belong to someone thinking clearly. They belong to someone who came close to dying.

I watch her drink likemylife depends on it.

Not because I fear what she might do next. I have no concerns over that. But I need her alive. Because if the tower let her in, if I’m right and my summoning really did bring her here, then her presence here isn’t an accident.

And she might be my way out of here.

The pitcher is half-empty by the time she begins to slow. Her hands are still shaking. Her mouth opens like she’s thinking about taking another gulp, but she doesn’t. She lowers the pitcher clumsily, her grip unsteady. The base knocks unevenly against the table as she sets it down.

Then she turns toward me. Her gaze lifts first, unsure and searching. It takes longer for her body to follow. She straightens slowly, like every movement costs her something, and her eyes meet mine again.

There’s clarity in them now. The haze of heat and thirst hasn’tleft her entirely, but it’s thinned. Just enough for the panic to start pushing through.

Her lips part.

“What …”

One word, and it changes the air around me. I don’t move, but everything contracts at the sound. It’s the pitch, the texture. Thedifferenceit makes to the silence of the room.

I haven’t heard another voice in so long, my body doesn’t know what to do with it. Every sense sharpens—hearing, sight, touch, breath—from the simple fact that someone else is speaking in my presence.

She speaks again. I hear the words, but it takes effort to separate them from the sound of her voice.

“What is this place? Who are you?”

Questions. She’s asking me questions. But I don’t answer. I’m still watching her. Still processing the sounds. Still trying to work out how she got here.

“Why are you staring at me?”

The demand snaps my focus back into place. She’s waiting for an answer.

“My name is … Sacha.” The sound of it sits strangely in my mouth. Heavier than I remember.

I watch her closely as it leaves my lips, searching for any sign of recognition. There is none. No reaction, and no fear. Either my name means nothing to her, or she’s hiding it well.

Itshouldmean something. Once, it meant a great deal. Once, it was a nameto be feared.

I take a step toward her, and the binding pushes back—slow, invisible, absolute. I stop. I let her appearance here distract me. I stopped tracking the boundary’s movement across the room.

She doesn’t seem to notice. Her attention is scattered, pulled in too many directions at once.

“You’re safe here.” The words come out easier now. But it’s a half-truth at best. “The desert can’t reach inside these walls.” That, however, is absolutely true.

Her eyes shift again, sweeping slowly across the room. She takes in the shelves, the food on the table, the tapestries draped across the walls to mute the mirrored sheen. Each detail adds a new thread of confusion to her face.

None of this makes sense to her, and it shows. She doesn’t know what this chamber is, who I am—whatI am—or what any of it means. But she’s trying to work it out. I can almost feel the effort it’s taking for her to piece things together.

“How did I … I was in Chicago …”

Chicago.

The name means nothing to me, but I guess from her phrasing it’s a place. I know of no city in Meridian that bears it. If one exists now, it didn’t when I was last free.