T he vision was a crack of lightning that split my world in two. One moment, I was in my chambers, practicing my magic—and the next, the

sensations buried me in an onslaught.

I saw iron bars and steel blades.

A night sky over an emerald forest.

A horrible face, half decomposed, covered with stringy red hair. The flood of magic. The scorch of fire.

And pain pain pain.

I couldn’t catch my breath. I had fallen to the ground. I pressed my palms to the cold tile of the floor until I felt it steady beneath me.

The connection still burned in my chest, unmistakable. The particular strain of magic we shared, the kind that reached deeper than the soul, pulled me like a thread tied around my throat. Just as it had when I showed it to Caduan.

Tisaanah and Maxantarius were far from where they had been before. And they were together. Together.

I forced myself to my feet and stumbled out of my room. I didn’t stop running until I had reached Caduan’s chamber. I snarled something wordless at the guards and threw open his door. “We need to go,” I panted.

Caduan had been sitting at his desk. He sat up, blinking at me blearily, looking exhausted. “Go…where?”

Words. Such infuriatingly clumsy tools to communicate such important things.

“We need to go. Now.” When Caduan stood and approached, I grabbed his arms hard enough to leave marks in his skin. “I feel them. Now. Right

now.”

All remnants of Caduan’s weariness disappeared. He threw his jacket on and didn’t bother buttoning it.

“Stay calm,” he said, sharply. “Maintain the connection.”

Holding onto that thread required increasingly more concentration; it grew thinner and more slippery by the second.

He stood behind me and put his hand over mine. Our fingers intertwined. His skin felt so hot. I leaned into the sensation of his warmth.

Life. Heartbeat.

“What we’re about to do is dangerous. We’re traveling fast, and I am going to ask you to steer where we go. We could lose control—”

“Go!” I choked out. We didn’t have time to waste on Caduan’s explanations. Already, I could feel the thread leading me to Tisaanah and Maxantarius beginning to wane, threatening to snap.

Caduan’s mouth closed. Without another word, he pulled me close, one arm locked tight around my waist, the other reaching around me to cradle my hand. “Let it pull you,” he murmured in my ear. “Just feel the direction we need to go, and I will do the rest.”

That wasn’t difficult. I was so focused on it that I barely felt the world dissolve around us.

CADUAN’S BEDCHAMBER BECAME A FOREST. We were waist-deep in water. Caduan’s body was still braced around mine.

The thread of connection felt tighter, stronger.

Closer.

A broken image flashed through my mind—fear, as a horrifying face leaned over me.

“Again!” I commanded, and Caduan obeyed.

With every landing, every clumsy arrival in another nowhere, the presence crept closer.

The familiarity was intoxicating. I had been dropped into an unfamiliar world and an unfamiliar body, but in this moment, in this single shred of connection, my fingertips brushed the soul-deep bond we had once shared.

I had not realized how much I craved it until now.

“Again!” I would gasp with every arrival, and Caduan would take us away again. I lost track of how many times we had leapt when my knees came crashing down on a riverbank.

Perhaps I should have been concerned that this time, Caduan had arrived several feet away from me, wrenched away in transit—but I was not.

“This is getting dangerous, Aefe,” he said, as he crawled back to me.

“Dangerous?” I laughed, a strange, high-pitched noise. How dangerous could it be to go home? Especially now, when I felt so connected to everything—myself, and them. Euphoria devoured any twinges of discomfort. I was Aefe, I was powerful, I had control of my own magic and breath and heartbeat, and I felt all their souls right there, so close I could taste them.

“No. We are close.” I grabbed Caduan’s hand, forced his arm around me again.

Perhaps I should have been concerned by labor in his breath— but I was not.

“I can get her. I can bring her to you.” I had never been so certain of anything. This was what it was to have purpose.

Perhaps I should have been concerned that Caduan hesitated—but I was not.

I clung to the thread of connection and let it catapult us through the earth.

We landed.

The world was cold and dark.

Everything that had not concerned me collided at once as I sank into the water, Caduan nowhere to be found.