“Kit!” Rowan exclaims.
I sit straight and exhale out a sharp breath. “Go ahead.”
“I’m going to slip this over your head, all right?”
Terrified, I grip the hard wooden arms of the chair and nod.
“NO,” Rowan cries. He flies up, trying to knock the chain out of Ansel’s hands, but Ryder catches him mid-air, wrapping the squalling owl in his rain jacket to contain him. “Would you calm down? Kit knows what she’s agreed to.”
And the elf is right—I do know.
Ansel waits, making sure I’m ready.
“Do it,” I say, terrified I’ll change my mind if we wait any longer.
I clench my eyes shut as he lowers the chain over my head. Gently, he moves my hair aside, so the metal rests against my neck.
“Pull the collar of your shirt out just a little,” he instructs. “I need to slip the pendant under it so that it makes contact with your skin.”
“What’s it going to feel like?” I ask, my voice full of nerves.
Ansel meets my eyes again. “You’re going to feel desolate for a few minutes while the pendant is filling. It’s temporary, and it’s not physically painful.”
“So, like…sad?”
He nods.
Preparing myself, I pull out my shirt collar just enough Ansel can slip the pendant inside.
When the cool glass meets my skin, I gasp. It glows white-hot through my shirt, but it’scold.
And suddenly…everything is wrong.
I cry out, startled by the depth of my sorrow. It hits like a cold wave back home, drowning me, pulling me into its deep, dark depths.
Vaguely, I hear Rowan yelling. Ryder fights with him, trying to keep him still.
Thunder crashes, and a gust of wind hits the shop with the force of a gale. The sky goes dark, and the rain starts again, violent this time.
The storm shakes the building and screams at the windows. But I’m numb to it all, drowning in icy darkness. I’m sinking, losing consciousness, unable to fight my way to the surface.
Ansel yells something, and then Ryder.
“You have to break the pendant!” Rowan cries.
Why?I think, my thoughts distant.What’s wrong with the pendant?
I’m slipping. It’s chaos around me, but the voices sound far away.
The chair is gone. The workshop is gone.
There’s darkness and sadness, and nightmares dancing just beyond the shadows.
“It’s not stable by itself,” I hear Ansel cry. Then he says something I don’t understand. Something about the magic. “Ryder,now!”
An explosion nearly shakes me awake, a brief flash of fire in the darkness. It’s followed by more yelling.
“I’m not sure this will work!” Ansel cries. “It might?—”
