Chapter 3
Chapter Three
ELLIE
“Power divided against itself creates hunger that spans worlds.”
Writings of the Veinblood Masters
The world crashes back into existence around me. Cold bites through my clothes, wetness soaking through to my knees. The air is wrong, leaving a sharp, metallic, taste in my mouth. It’s thick with something acrid that makes my nose sting. Something familiar but … what is that smell?
The world tilts sideways. Bile burns up my throat. My palms slam against something rough and cold as I try to brace myself from the impact of falling.
One second, I was in Thornspire Keep, my hand locked with Sacha’s as our combined power surged toward Sereven’s crystal. Then blinding light exploded outward in waves, tearing through the chamber with violent force.
Now I'm kneeling on rough stone, the texture familiar beneath my palms. White flakes drift down around me.
“Miss? Miss, are you hurt?” The voice cuts through the roaring in my ears—human and concerned.
The words sound strange after … after …
My mind struggles to process what I’m hearing. The words sound wrong somehow. Where are the lilting cadences I’ve become used to?
I force my head up, vision blurring. An elderly man hovers above me, wearing a heavy coat and wire-rimmed glasses. Beyond him, I catch glimpses of … storefronts? Glass windows reflecting light. The smell hits me again, that acrid scent I should know.
“I—” The words stick in my throat.
Where is Sacha?
He was beside me only seconds ago. Now there’s only empty air where he should be standing. This doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense.
“Did you fall? Should I call someone?” The man leans closer, reaching toward me.
“No.” The word feels awkward on my tongue.
I push myself to my knees, then unsteadily to my feet, taking in the scene around me with mounting confusion. Buildings lined with glass windows. Signs I can read. People bundled in winter coats, their breath visible in the frigid air.
“Thank you. I’m fine.”
The lie burns my throat. Fine. As if anything about this is fine when I don’t know where Sacha is, whether he’s alive, or whether he’s facing Sereven’s rage alone. And I’m … here.
How am I here?
“Are you sure?” The question drags my attention back to the man beside me.
A slight frown wrinkles his brow as he takes in my clothing, and I follow his gaze down, seeing what he sees.
Fitted hand-stitched leather vest, travel-worn boots.
Meridian clothing, designed for a world of hardship and brutality, but absurdly out of place for where I am now.
“I’m sure.” What else can I say, really, without sounding like I’m insane?
He stares at me for a second or two longer, then backs away, clearly deciding I can be someone else’s problem. I don’t blame him. I must look deranged with my strange clothing, and the way I collapsed on the ground.
Shopping bags are scattered across the sidewalk around my feet, their contents spilling into the snow.
My mind moves sluggishly as I stare at them, recognition dawning with sickening certainty.
These are the same bags I was carrying when I was snatched from Earth and transported to Meridian's desert months ago.
My purse sits among them, the leather damp with snow.
I snatch it up, fingers clumsy with shock.
Inside are my keys, subway card, breath mints, a favorite lipstick and random receipts.
All items from an existence that belongs to someone I used to know, before I learned what it really meant to fight for survival.
It all belongs to the life of a woman who worried about sales and Christmas gifts, and measured her world in paychecks and weekend plans.
The world around me refuses to make sense.
Christmas decorations shine in store windows, garish after the subtle natural beauty of Meridian.
Holiday music drifts from open doors, cheerful and meaningless after the Veinwarden songs that spoke of freedom and loss.
Traffic crawls through thickening snow—actual cars—while in another world, Authority forces might be preparing to attack Stonehaven, and the people I’ve come to care about.
These streets … I know these streets. The spacing between street lights, the way buildings line up, the smell of the bakery on the corner mixing coffee and cinnamon into the winter air. My feet know where to go even while my mind struggles to accept it.
How can this ordinary scene exist in the same universe where I fought alongside Mira and Varam? Where magic flows through certain bloodlines. Where Sacha commands shadows with a thought.
Sacha.
His name sends a shock through me.
Where is he? What happened when our powers touched the crystal? Is he still in Thornspire facing Sereven alone?
The thought makes my stomach twist.
He’s not dead. I know that. I’d feel that absence like a wound. But where is he?
Light flickers beneath the skin of my wrist, and I jerk my sleeve down, heart racing, looking around to see if anyone noticed. The power followed me back. Proof that Meridian wasn’t a dream or a hallucination.
Someone brushes past me, muttering an apology without stopping. The contact forces my mind to focus on the immediate problem. I need to get somewhere safe. Somewhere private. I gather my shopping bags before I attract more unwanted attention.
No. This can’t be right.
But my feet carry me forward anyway, turning corners without conscious thought. Three blocks. The number rises in my mind. My apartment is three blocks from here.
My apartment. How is that even possible?
Three blocks to privacy where I can process what happened. Where I can break down, or rage, or plan without pretending everything is normal in a world that can’t be real.
Each step sends wrong signals through my nervous system. My body seems heavier, the air thicker. The sounds of traffic and Christmas shoppers create a volume of noise that my senses are struggling to filter.
In Meridian, I learned to hear the whisper of wind through stone, the distant cry of hawks, the subtle shift in breathing that meant danger. Here, car horns and shouting voices and music from storefronts assault my ears without meaning.
How did I deal with this every day? How did it not bother me?
A digital display in a bank window flashes the date and time. December 23, 5:47 P.M. Barely minutes after I disappeared. It’s as though no time has passed at all here while I spent months in Meridian learning to fight, learning to survive, learning to love.
It makes no sense.
This has to be some kind of illusion. Maybe a trick of Sereven's, designed to break my spirit.
But my building comes into view anyway, bringing both relief and despair. The familiar red brick facade, the chipped paint on the entrance door I’ve walked through a thousand times.
This can’t be real. It can’t be real.
I ride the elevator to my floor in a daze, watching the numbers climb while my heart hammers against my ribs.
My key slides into the lock after three attempts, hands trembling too badly to get it right the first time.
The deadbolt clicks, and I push the door open to step into the unsettling view of a life I thought I’d left behind forever.
Dishes sit in the rack where I left them a lifetime ago.
A book lies open and facedown on the coffee table, marking the page from when my biggest concern was finishing the story and finding out whether the characters could get past their differences and find love.
Christmas tree lights blink in slow patterns, casting red and green shadows across the walls like some cheerful mockery of the power that now flows through my veins.
Everything is undisturbed. Everything belongs to a woman who no longer exists.
I move through the apartment on autopilot, trailing my fingers along the furniture. The couch where I’d curl up with wine and a streaming service. The kitchen where I made elaborate Sunday breakfasts for one. The bedroom that I never shared with anyone.
That woman never suspected she'd been born in another world. Never imagined she had power sleeping in her blood, waiting for the right moment to wake. Never dreamed she'd find her other half in a man who commanded shadows and suffered through torture that would have broken lesser souls.
In the bathroom, a stranger with my face stares back through the mirror.
My cheekbones and jawline are more defined now, shaped by months of better nutrition than processed food and stress eating.
My eyes are no longer simple brown. They shine with silver flecks that are clearly visible under the fluorescent light.
My hair is longer, more silver than brown, and pulled back into an intricate braid that Mira taught me.
All physical evidence of the power that awakened in me. Changes that I’ll never be able to explain to friends and neighbors I never thought I’d see again.
Pressing my palm against the mirror, I watch the silver light ripple along the back of my hand and down my fingers. When I focus, drawing on the control Telren taught, and Sacha helped me forge, the light brightens slightly then fades.
Stripping out of my clothes slowly, I fold each item, and place them on the countertop, then step naked into the shower.
I turn the water as hot as I can stand. The scalding spray burns my skin, but I welcome the pain.
It's something real, something that cuts through the numbness threatening to swallow me whole. Water streams down my face, mixing with tears I didn’t realize were falling.
Sacha.