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T he white that surrounded her was blinding, like the forest after a heavy snow, masking every tree, every blade of glass, turning the world shapeless. Formless. Panic crawled up her throat, seared every nerve. She tried to focus on the ground beneath her, to root her energy through the soles of her feet, but…there was no ground. No sense of purchase beneath her. It felt more like she was floating.

In nothingness.

Trapped.

Without shape.

She glanced down at her body, her hands, her feet and saw…

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing .

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” came a soft feminine voice. The white light dimmed, muted hues bleeding into it like watercolors on a canvas, painting the scene in earth tones. Of stone and wood and sunlight. The tower library took shape around her, but there was something hazy about it. Tenuous.

“This is where you are, isn’t it?” the voice asked. Cora looked around for the source, feeling another spike of anxiety when she saw no one.

“I’m here.”

Cora faced forward again, and this time she saw a figure standing before her. She was unfamiliar to her, a woman perhaps a year or two her senior. Her skin was deep brown, her hair falling in black curls that just reached her shoulders. Shoulders Cora now realized were bare, as the woman wore a silky gown that hung from her neck and fell in sweeping folds to her ankles. The dress was unlike anything she’d seen before and certainly wasn’t suited to this climate.

This climate , her mind echoed.

But what was this climate ? Her eyes slid from the woman to the room, and a feeling of wrongness struck her. The warmth of summer no longer touched her skin. Nothing touched her skin. Panic threatened to seize hold of her again, but the girl’s calming voice stole her attention.

“Don’t focus on anything but where you are.”

“But why am I in this room at all?” Cora startled at the sound of her own voice. It was hollow. Flat. “I…I can’t remember why I’m in the tower library.” She took a step toward the woman, but the stranger leaped back at the same time, palms facing Cora in warning.

“Be very careful not to touch me,” she said.

Cora froze. Despite her sudden inertia, a tingling sensation hummed all around her. Through her. Like she was no longer a solid being.

“Remember what you were doing just a moment ago. Start with what you were wearing.”

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 and feel .”

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. He couldn’t be 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. Now was all she had left.

Teryn looked down at her with the most tender concern. “Are you all right?”

Cora gave a shaky nod.

“Then will you lower the knife?”

She’d forgotten about the blade. Forgotten why she’d been driven to defend herself with it. Why was she so shaken up? Had Teryn simply startled her while she’d been concentrating on her work? But what had she been working on? Hadn’t she been holding something other than the knife…

“Highness,” came a voice from behind them. It belonged to Cora’s guard, and his tone was laced with the frantic impatience of someone who’d been repeating himself to no avail. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes,” Teryn called over his shoulder.

Cora drew back her knife and took a step away from Teryn, just in time to see the guard’s head ducked beneath the rosemary, his foot planted over her line of salt.

Solid sense eradicated the remainder of her disorientation. “You can’t be in here,” she shouted at the guard. Then her eyes slid to Teryn, going wide when the implications of where she was—where he was—began to dawn. “Damn it, Teryn, you can’t be in here either.”

Her pulse kicked up, propelling her to return her knife to her apron pocket and press both hands against Teryn’s chest. She blushed at the feel of his solid torso beneath her palms, but she blamed it on her fury. Forcing him around, she pushed him toward the doorway.

“Have you any idea how dangerous it is in here?” she said to his back as she shoved him by the shoulder blades. “How did the guard let you in?”

“I didn’t exactly give him a choice,” he said, voice low. “And…you weren’t moving. You were just standing frozen. Unresponsive. I was worried about you.”

She paused. I was frozen? For the life of her, she couldn’t recall what might have had her so transfixed. Never mind that. The thought of Teryn meeting Lurel’s same fate just to save her had her redoubling her efforts. Hands on his lower back, she pushed him the rest of the way out the door. Had he wanted to, he could have set his feet and laughed while she tried to move him without gain. They may have been well matched with weapons, but when it came to size and strength, Teryn was the indisputable winner. So it wasn’t lost on her that he let her push him, let her guide him out the door and into the stairwell.

Cheeks flushed, she stepped over the threshold and faced Teryn with her hands on her hips. With him standing on the top stair and she on the landing before the doorway, their bodies were noticeably close. She lifted her chin to meet his eyes and found that she didn’t have to lift them far. With him a step down from her, they were nearly eye to eye. Lips level. Chests close enough to collide?—

“What are you doing here?” she bit out, her voice laced with fury. Whether her ire was driven by lingering worry over him having crossed such a dangerous threshold or resentment over their last meeting, she knew not.

Teryn opened his mouth then snapped it shut, steely gaze moving to the guard that hovered on the stair beside him. He arched a brow. “Do you mind?”

The guard glanced from Teryn to Cora, then moved down a few steps.

Teryn returned his gaze to hers. His emotions slammed into her, buzzing with trepidation, timidity, and…something warmer. Softer.

Cora took a deep breath and fully raised her shields.

“I…I came to speak with you,” he finally said.

“About what?”

A flush crept into his cheeks.

Even with her shields now fully in place, she knew the answer. She’d been half expecting this, though she hadn’t let herself dwell on it. A marriage alliance still needed to be made to secure trust between her and her new allies. Teryn was here to forge that alliance. Between himself and her.

She startled at the happy trill that sang through her chest, but she smothered it down. I’m his only option , she told it. He was not here for a love match, just politics.

A heavy disappointment clawed at her heart.

Another thing she smothered down.

He lowered his voice. “Can we go somewhere private?”

Her stomach tightened. He wanted to go somewhere private to…to ask her to marry him. It was a fact. Logical. She felt in her deepest core that this was happening. Knew it needed to happen.

This is just a cold, calculated alliance .

Then why the Mother Goddess did it send her heart hammering?

Her throat constricted, forcing her voice higher than she intended. “Right now?”

“Yes, right now.”

She angled a thumb over her shoulder. “I…I have work to do?—”

“Then we’ll speak here if we must. I’m not willing to let this matter stretch on a second longer. I’ve gone to great lengths to ensure no one and nothing will come between us—between this matter at hand—until I’ve said what I’ve come to say. I’d prefer we speak before Verdian’s brothers return.”

Cora focused on the last part of his statement, not the parts that made her heart feel like it might take flight from her ribcage. “Where are Lord Kevan and Lord Ulrich?”

“Hunting with your brother and his council.”

She pulled her head back. “Hunting?”

“Yes, in the royal forest.”

That cured some of the fluttery madness writhing through her. Dimetreus had gone out hunting with the council…and he didn’t even tell her! What was he thinking? Should he even be going on such an excursion? What if something happened? What if he had another breakdown in front of those men?—

She closed her eyes and forced the thoughts from her mind. Her brother may not be in the most stable of states, but he was king. He’d proven that he could hold his own at the council meeting. Royal hunts were expected of a monarch. What was the worst that could happen?

Her stomach sank. Perhaps she shouldn’t let her mind go there. Plenty of things could go wrong, but?—

The blood drained from her face.

Valorre!

She cursed under her breath. Valorre was out there somewhere, well beyond the castle wall. She extended her senses to try and connect with him, but it seemed he’d yet to return to close range. If Kevan or Ulrich caught sight of him…

She remembered the clairsentient warning she’d felt at the council meeting; she knew some of the councilmen were eager to continue hunting unicorns.

“Are you all right?” Teryn whispered.

Her eyes snapped to his, and she was forced to recall just how close he stood to her.

“Yes,” she said in a rush, caught between worry for Valorre and anxiety over what Teryn had come to talk to her about. Perhaps she could handle both issues at once. She swallowed hard and gestured down the stairwell. “Very well, Teryn. Let’s go speak in private.”