Cass jerked awake, disoriented and alone. Water splashed as she flailed.

She stood at the bottom of a deep crevasse. Water poured silently down the sides from above, pooling up to her knees, cold but clean. Above, a crack of white light ran along a ceiling of stars.

“Where am I?” Her voice floated through the dark, warping and distorting unnaturally lower as it moved away from her.

Something about this place was familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on how.

She took a hesitant step forward, disturbing the water’s glassy surface with a wave of ripples.

In front of her, a section of waterfall lit from behind. The white light refracted through the flowing sheet and reflected around the crevasse.

It grew brighter until Cass had to shield her eyes.

And then the world was gone.

***

Cass stood in the rafters of a wooden building, looking down on a kitchen. A fire burned in the hearth. The butler woman, Telis, stood at a table in the center of the room, an array of dried meats and fruits in front of her, a stack of tortilla-like bread and sliced cheese to her side, an open bag half filled with wax-paper packages on the other side. Alyx sat across from her.

“You understand why I have difficulty believing that story,” Telis said. She didn’t look up from her task, her hands expertly folding bread around dried fruits, meats, and cheeses into trail rations, folding those into waxed paper, and storing them in a bag for the road.

Where was she now? Why was she here?

Cass tried to move her head, but couldn’t. Her eyes remained fixed on Telis below her.

Alyx nodded. “I hardly believe it. But either she’s the most sheltered princess of some distant land, the most expert liar keeping up this charade for reasons I haven’t managed to divine, or telling the truth.”

“We would be wise to treat her as the second,” Telis said.

What was happening? Was she dreaming? Was this real?

She tried to open her mouth to scream, but her body didn’t so much as flinch.

“Sure. But what could she possibly want with me?” Alyx asked. “If she’d been hired to kill me, she could have just stepped back and let Levina do her work in the Valley.”

“Perhaps she has goals that require you alive.”

Fear coursed through her, but her heart beat remained steady in her chest, unnaturally calm and collected, even as her thoughts raced. She’d been in the bath a minute ago. Then she’d dreamed of a chasm of water. Was she still dreaming?

“Like what, Telis?” Alyx asked with a tired sigh. “I’m important, but not that important.”

It didn’t feel like a dream. She could smell the spices of the kitchen and the char of smoke rising from the hearth. Alyx and Telis conversation made too much sense to be a dream.

But how else did she end up in the rafters? Why would she be here? What was happening?

“You will be a Dragon Knight of Vaisom; that is plenty important.” Telis shoved a ration into the bag, though her words remained level.

Alyx nodded, the confidence in the motion not quite reaching her eyes. “But am I the candidate you would scheme to support?”

“There is no candidate Marco or I would rather support, my lady.”

Cass couldn’t control her breathing. It wasn’t ragged or shallow. Rather, it inhaled and exhaled at an easy pace. Calm despite the storm raging in her soul.

She would have done anything to take a deep breath.

“That wasn’t a test of your loyalty, Telis.” Alyx shook her head. “I know you take my mother’s last will very seriously.”

“Good.”

There had to be something she could do. She could see, after all. She could hear. Her senses still worked.

Alyx snorted. “I meant, for someone without ties to my mother, would they really bet on me over of my cousins or brothers?”

“Perhaps,” Telis said. “You are in a position that is easily exploited. No powerful backers, obvious powerful enemies, a time limit, yet with the potential to win it all anyway. Perhaps she set the entire thing up. Anyone can pretend to be the Warden and hire goons to kill you and then pretend to be your savior.”

So what other senses did she have? One of them had to have an answer.

She queried Atmospheric Sense first. Only to find it gone.

If her body would respond, her heart would have stopped. Where was Atmospheric Sense? Why couldn’t she feel the flow of air around her?

Alyx sighed. “All to have a Dragon Knight in her debt?”

Telis didn’t answer.

She pushed that aside, though the mounting panic was difficult to ignore.

What else did she have?

Mana Sense reported a glowing core of magic in the chests of both women below. Alyx’s was a bright amber while Telis’s was a soft white. A handful of other objects glowed faintly around the room, but nothing that explained how Cass was crouched in the rafters.

“Maybe,” Alyx said. “If her story was at all more grounded, I might believe you. But if that was her plan, shouldn’t she have created a more convincing backstory?”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Perhaps that is what she wants you to think.”

Was there anything else? That was it, wasn’t it?

No. Wait. She should be able to sense Salos through their bond. She threw her awareness out, looking for the telltale tug of his presence on her mind.

She didn’t feel him out there. He was gone.

Alyx rubbed her face. “You didn’t see her out there, Telis. She’s powerful, way more powerful than anyone at her level should be.”

Cass tried again. And again. Above. Below. As far out as she could push her senses.

“All the more reason not to believe this story of other realms.”

“Maybe. Maybe,” Alyx said slowly. “But you didn’t see her after that last fight in Uvana. The look in her eyes as she asked about the assassin. The tears that followed. Tears for a woman trying to kill us.”

But Salos wasn’t out there.

The only time she couldn’t sense him was when he was inside the necklace. But—

“That does not make any sense,” Telis said.

Cass froze. She didn’t feel the necklace around her neck.

But there was a familiar warmth.

Salos?

“No, it doesn’t!” Alyx threw her hands up. “But that wasn’t faked. She had next to no Focus. There is no chance she had the mental facilities to pretend to be anything. And, even if she did, why pretend to be that?”

Her head jerked back and forth without her willing it to. Her body stiffened.

Cass? Salos’s voice replied over their bond. Where are you?

He sounded close.

“She is sounding more like a burden than a potential ally,” Telis warned.

Alyx shook her head. “I see it, but you’re wrong. Cass is powerful.”

I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening. I can’t move. I’m in the rafters somewhere, Cass told him. Relief was already settling over her.

She could reach Salos. Things would be okay. It didn’t matter that none of this made sense.

“Power is useless if she does not have the mentality to fight,” Telis said. “There is no shame in being one who needs protection if one can provide something else of value. However, I question if she can and if we have the strength to take another such a person under our banner.”

A wave of surprise flowed across their bond. Rafters?

“I owe her, Telis,” Alyx said.

Over a kitchen? Cass said.

“Be that as it may…”

What else do you see? Salos asked slowly.

“I owe her,” Alyx repeated, more forcefully. “My life. My victory in Uvana. I owe her. A scheme or not. I owe her.”

Telis’s face was stone, but she nodded. “As you say, my lady. But could you not simply pay her off and be done with this? Need we take her to Velillia now?”

Alyx and Telis, Cass said.

“How much is my life worth? Do you have the funds to pay her back? She could have joined the assassin in the Valley. Do I pay her double that? Triple? Any amount I can think of screams of insult to all she’s done for me.”

“You say this, but you do not have the resources to protect her in Velillia. How will you focus on the task before you while also protecting her?”

That should not be… Salos muttered to himself. Cass’s head flicked back and forth between the women below and the kitchen door.

Alyx’s hands clenched at her sides.

Salos?

“Or do you expect to pay off your debt while making her protect herself?” Telis asked. “Powerful for her level she might be, but she is still only level 19. Hardly an apprentice, but far from an established combatant. And, if her story is true, she lacks experience. Especially experience against people. And she looks it. She will be an obvious weakness if you take her with us.”

Salos, what’s happening?

“She’s not that bad,” Alyx said. “She survived Uvana.”

He didn’t answer. Her head turned to the door again. Her body moved toward it.

“She looks like a rich merchant’s daughter. The Vaisom elites will eat her alive.”

I’m moving now, Cass reported. Her fear was rising again. Why wasn’t Salos answering? What was happening?

Alyx stared across the table. “I can’t just leave her here.”

Her body sprinted along the rafter’s beam, completely outside her control. She could feel the rough wood under her feet. There was a grace to her body, unmatched even by all the Dexterity she’d amassed since her arrival in this world.

Telis placed the last ration in the bag and pulled its closure tight. “She will attract attention.”

“Like I don’t,” Alyx said as Cass leapt silently through the open kitchen door to the hall’s wood floor. She landed with her viewpoint less than a foot off the ground. The house’s walls stretched up impossibly high over her head.

Cass couldn’t stop. Couldn’t direct a single step or even the angle of her eyes.

It couldn’t be a compulsion, her Trait Contrary Soul all but guaranteed she couldn’t be mind controlled. Yet, she could not resist as her body bound down the empty hallway.

Telis’s answer was lost as Cass’s body rounded the corner and raced deeper into the house.

Raced into the bathroom.

The tub towered over her, but she leapt up the side with ease, perching on the lip.

“Cass!” her mouth shouted. But it was Salos’s voice that she heard.

Her head looked down into the tub.

There she was. Or her body, at least. Dark hair floated loose in the still water. Her eyes were closed. Her chest still.

There was a wrenching in her chest. A swirling disorientation. The world went dark.

Cass shot up with a deep gasp, water splashing around her.

She blinked in the tub, naked, fully in control of her body again.

Salos stood perched on the tub’s lip, terror softening into relief on his face.

“Oh, thank the gods,” he muttered.

Cass looked around the room, her confusion only heightened. The bath was cold. A small tub and a neat stack of clean clothes sat by the door. It looked like she’d fallen asleep and quite a bit of time had passed.

“What happened?” Cass asked.

“I think,” Salos hesitated, “I think you were a passenger in my body.”

I was spying on your new friends, Salos added, switching to mental communication. That’s what you saw, wasn’t it?

You were in the rafters, Cass asked, though she already knew the answer. She already knew that the body she’d been in, the one she hadn’t been able to control, hadn’t been human.

Humans didn’t run on all fours. They weren’t that short. They weren’t covered in hair. None of that had felt notable at the time, yet it was blatantly obvious now.

Salos nodded.

“How did that happen?” Cass asked.

He shook his head. I do not know. It should not be possible. I can do that with you because my soul is a shard and most of my soul fits in the necklace. I’m bound to you, not the other way around.

But it happened, Cass said.

I don’t know everything about demons. He hopped down from the tub’s lip, stalking back to the door. Perhaps it is just a part of Separate Form.

He spoke with his usual confidence, a tone completely at odds with the distress blatantly spiraling off him. She didn’t call him out on it. She didn’t need their bond to see he didn’t want to talk about it further.