Page 3 of Acolyte (Tempris #2)

-From the personal notes of Azura Raine, High Lady of Time

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. The windows 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 woman claiming 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, one time , 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, and then 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.

Still, she thought, picking at the skirt of a nearby dress that looked as wide as a tent. It was a lot of fabric. Good quality too. Thickly woven.

Taly smiled as an idea began to form . The doors and windows were locked, but there had been a terrace. From what she could tell, she had been put in one of the palace towers. It was a long way down, but still… that was something she could work with.

Running her fingers along sleeves and ruffles of silk and lace, she picked up a pair of shears that she found tucked in a sewing basket along the way. Then, choosing a random gown, she began cutting the jeweled satin into strips.

When she’d reduced the dress to nothing but ribbons, she grabbed another, then another. She braided the delicate fabric, tied the woven cords end-to-end until she had the beginnings of a rope that she felt confident would hold her weight.

Never thought I’d be here , she thought as she ripped another dress off the rack.

Granted, she had read her fair share of stories about princesses trapped in tall towers.

Both fey and mortal alike had a strange fascination with locking their women up at high altitudes.

But she’d never expected to find herself stuck in an actual tower, imprisoned by an evil queen.

But then again, her life had taken a lot of strange twists lately, so she kept cutting and ripping and weaving until she was surrounded by the decimated remains of dresses that, though lovely, would go on to serve a far better purpose than accompanying some snobby fey noblewoman to some equally pretentious ball.

Inspecting her makeshift rope, Taly jerked her head.

“This’ll have to do,” she said, and stood, tugging off her nightdress as she set off in search of boots, pants, anything that didn’t have ruffles or lace.

There was a flicker to her right, and she jumped, fumbling for the shears, for any kind of weapon, only to… stop.

And for a moment, she forgot about escaping from towers and evil queens as she turned to face the woman standing only a scant few feet away.

“Shards…” Taly whispered, slightly dazed when the woman’s lips moved in time with hers. She had known she looked different, had seen her reflection at the river’s edge. But here, in the light of day, utterly naked with nothing to hide behind…

A stranger. She hadn’t been prepared to see a stranger staring back at her from beyond the glass.

Lifting a hand, Taly traced the unfamiliar arch of her ear, then pulled at the skin of her face, trying to find something, some piece of her old self, that had escaped the transformation unscathed.

The color of her hair, the shape of her chin—those were still the same. And, maybe… yes—her nose was still just a little too long, and there was a bump on the bridge from when she’d fallen down the stairs as a child.

But everything else…

Her skin had turned a few shades paler, and her body, though curved in all the ways that a woman’s body should be curved, looked thinner.

Prominent cheekbones, brows that arched in a way that was decidedly inhuman, and her eyes…

No longer a human gray, her eyes were the color of storm clouds and smoke, steel and steam.

In the dim light of the closet, they nearly glowed.

Taly took a breath—in and then out. Clothes , she reminded herself. She needed some real clothes, something a little sturdier than a nightdress or a ballgown.

Muttering a truly foul string of curses and feeling slightly better for it, she turned away from that beautiful, alien creature and began rifling through a large dresser set against the wall.

There were drawers of lacy underwear, nightgowns as delicate as cobwebs, and more jewels than she had ever seen in a single collection.

After several minutes of frenzied exploration, she opened a drawer and smiled. “Finally.” Simple, sturdy clothing—perfect for traveling.

She shimmied on a pair of leggings, shrugged on a shirt—both black—and then dug through the racks and racks of fine clothing until she found a lightweight, leather coat. Everything fit like it had been made for her, but she didn’t let herself think too hard on that fact.

Since she hadn’t found any weapons, she tucked the sewing shears into a pair of boots that were still too new to be comfortable and fastened her hair into a bun using jeweled pins that looked sharp enough to sting if it came down to a brawl.

Then, grabbing her makeshift rope, she made her way back to the terrace.