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Chapter Four

SACHA

“Power often arrives as a question, not an answer.”

The Nature of Veinblood Rebirth

She’s studying me from across the room, tension visible in every line of her body.

The wariness in her eyes is both amusing and useful.

Fear makes people predictable and easier to manipulate.

It narrows their focus, and limits their thinking, until they can only see the most immediate threat.

And right now, her fear is directing her attention exactly where I want it.

On escaping, and not questioning who I am or why I’m here.

I turn the page in my book, pretending to read while observing her.

She’s recovered somewhat from her ordeal in the desert.

Water and food have brought color back to her cheeks, although sunburn still marks her skin with angry red patches.

Her movements are less jerky and more controlled now, no longer as desperate.

She’s thinking rather than simply reacting.

That’s good. I need her mind functioning, but not questioning too deeply.

“You never told me your name.” I don’t look up from my book.

There’s a slight pause before she replies. “Ellie. Ellie Bennett. ”

Ellie Bennett .

I commit the name to memory, turning it over like a coin in my mind.

A simple name from a foreign world. Unremarkable, just like its owner.

And yet, she was drawn by my summoning spell when no one else was.

Not in the way I intended, certainly. I never expected to pull someone from another world entirely.

But the fact remains that she responded.

“And where are you from, Ellie Bennett ?” I close my book, setting it aside to give her my full attention. “Tell me about this … Chicago .” The word sits uncomfortably on my tongue.

“Why do you care?” Her suspicion is a tangible thing between us.

I offer her a half-smile, just enough to suggest openness without appearing eager for her answer. “Simple curiosity. It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken to anyone at all.” Twenty-seven years of silence makes even the most mundane conversation precious, though I’ll never admit that out loud.

She studies me, eyes narrowing slightly. I keep my expression neutral.

“Chicago is a city,” she says finally. “A big one. I think a couple of million people live there.”

I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere that has that many people in one place. It’s almost impossible to imagine.

“It sits on Lake Michigan.” She pauses, head tilting, waiting for me to react. I don’t. “It’s winter there. December.” Her voice turns wistful. “It’s Christmas Eve today.”

None of the words mean anything to me. Her world and mine must have very different geographies, different calendars, different customs. It’s interesting, but ultimately useless information that I can’t use.

“What were you doing before you arrived here?”

“Shopping.” A bitter laugh breaks free. “ Christmas shopping. I was crossing the street in the rain. Thinking about getting home and warm. Then suddenly … heat. Light. Sand.” She shakes her head. “One second I was there, the next I was here. No warning. No explanation.”

“Fascinating.” And it is, truly. As far as I’m aware, the spell shouldn’t have worked that way. It was designed to call someone with latent magical abilities. Someone who could end my imprisonment in the tower. Not someone from another world entirely.

Standing, I walk around the chamber, stretching legs that never seem to loosen no matter how much I move. The binding ensures that, a constant reminder of my situation.

She monitors my movements with the wariness of a prey tracking a predator, shrinking against the chair as I pass.

Her caution is understandable. She’s trapped in a strange place with an even stranger person.

One who, despite his captivity, still carries himself with the authority of command.

Old habits that decades of isolation have failed to erase.

“When you were in the desert …” I complete my circuit of the chamber, and stop beside my desk, fingers trailing over the worn wood. “What made you walk toward the tower?” The question seems casual, but her answer might give me the answers I’m seeking .

“I saw something shining in the distance. When you’re dying of thirst, you head toward anything that might mean shelter or water.”

I nod. Simple survival instinct, possibly combined with the magical pull of my spell. Not that I’m going to tell her about the latter.

She pushes to her feet. “Look, none of this matters. I need to find a way out of here and go home.”

“On that we agree. Though the method may be more complex than you imagine.”

She paces over to the archway, spins and walks the other way, restless energy radiating out from her. “You said the door will reappear eventually. When? How long do I have to wait?”

I consider how much to reveal. Too much would be dangerous, too little will make her distrustful. “This place follows its own patterns. I can’t predict when the door will next appear.”

“That’s not helpful.” She stops abruptly to stare at me.

“But it’s the truth, all the same.”

Her frustration is evident when she resumes pacing. She reaches the archway again, and stops, a flicker of discomfort crossing her face.

“Is there a bathroom or something in this place?” Her cheeks turn red.

“A … bathroom?”

“You know … somewhere I can wash and … do other things.”

“Ahh, a latrine.” I gesture to a shadowed alcove on the far side of the chamber. “Through there.”

She walks over to it, and disappears inside.

While she’s occupied, I make use of her absence to think.

My spell drew her here, that much is clear, but I still don’t understand why it reached so far, or how it was her who responded.

What quality does she possess that allowed my magic to find her across the void between worlds?

Whatever the answer is, I need to discover it. If she can respond to my magic, perhaps she can assist with other things. Specifically, understanding what might weaken the binding that holds me here.

She emerges from the alcove looking more comfortable, though still wary.

“There are forces in this world that function differently than those in yours.” I choose my words carefully, gauging her reaction. “What you might call magic, though that term doesn’t quite capture their true nature.”

Her expression shifts to disbelief, jaw tensing as she processes my words. “ Magic? ” The word leaves her lips as though it’s a foreign concept.

“A crude approximation.” I wave a hand dismissively. “Your world may have forgotten such forces, or perhaps they never existed there at all. Here, they are … were ,” I correct myself. “They were as natural as air, once.”

“And you’re telling me that this tower …” She glances at the curved walls that seem to pulse with its own heartbeat “… it’s magical?”

“In a manner of speaking.” I lean forward slightly, watching how her pupils dilate, how her breathing quickens. Every reaction tells me something about her. “It exists between states, neither fully in this world, nor fully outside of it. A threshold between realities, if you will. ”

She shakes her head, fingers lifting to press against her temples. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Yet here you stand, transported from your world to mine without crossing the space between.” I spread my hands. “Does that make sense by your world’s rules?”

She has no response to that, her expression slowly changing from disbelief to the first flicker of acceptance.

Good .

The more I destabilize her understanding of how reality works here, the more she’ll be forced to accept my explanations, my guidance. Break the foundation, then rebuild it according to your design. It’s one of the first principles of control I mastered long before my imprisonment.

“Have you ever experienced anything unusual before?” I keep my tone casual. “Dreams that felt too real? Moments of knowing things you shouldn’t know?”

“No.” Her answer comes too quickly, her gaze dropping from mine. A lie, or at least not the complete truth.

“Are you sure?” I press gently. “No strange coincidences? No inexplicable feelings about things? Nothing that couldn’t be explained?”

She hesitates, fingers twisting in her lap. I wait, patient as a hunter in the shadows. And there it is, a slight shift in her posture that tells me I’ve found something.

“I … have dreams sometimes. Vivid ones.” She swallows, clearly uncomfortable with the admission. “But everyone does. It’s not unusual. ”

She’s not wrong. Everyone dreams. But not everyone wakes remembering names they never learned, or hears languages they were never taught. Not everyone arrives in a tower that should be unreachable.

“What kind of dreams?” The question sounds innocent enough, but my pulse quickens. This could be exactly what I need.

She shrugs, aiming for nonchalance, despite the fact she’s sitting ramrod stiff.

“Just dreams. Usually about people I’ve never met.

Their faces are so clear, but I don’t know them.

” Her voice drops. “They talk to me. There’s a woman who cries, but I don’t know what she’s saying.

The language isn’t … it doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard. ”

That catches my interest immediately. Dreams of strangers, of faces she’s never seen, yet they feel real enough to remember.

The language could be High Meridian, maybe.

Had my spell been attempting to reach her for a while before it finally pulled her through?

Was it showing her glimpses of this world, and the people in it?

“How long have you been having these dreams?” I ensure my tone remains steady, casual.

“I don’t know. Years, maybe?” She frowns, suspicion returning. “Why does it matter?”