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Teryn was torn between fear and irritation. A nagging notion—too hazy to decipher—continued to plague him, trying to remind him…
He closed his eyes, and a vision played through his mind. First he saw himself holding the crystal in his room, saw the light catch on its facets. Then there was nothing but white. He’d heard a woman’s voice. Emylia’s voice, he realized now. Then dark tendrils like black smoke took shape before him, forging legs, hands, a torso. Then a face. One he recognized. The shadowed figure was colorless, revealing neither Duke Morkai’s dark hair nor his silver-blue eyes. But Teryn knew it was him. Emylia had shouted not to let Morkai touch him, but the voice had been too far away, too lost in the tumult of Teryn’s fear and confusion. The figure reached out, grasped Teryn. Pain had surged through him, searing his skull as if it were being cleaved in two, and then…
Then nothing.
Teryn stumbled back, swiping a hand over his face. But when his palm made contact with his skin, it lacked the pressure he was used to. Instead, it simply…buzzed. Thickened the air. He drew his hand back and examined it. It was still his hand, but the closer he looked, the more he realized its edges were slightly blurred, its shape in a constant flux of swirling particles.
His breaths grew sharp and shallow. Breaths that didn’t feel like true breaths.
“You need to stay calm,” Emylia said, but her words only reminded him of the wrongness of their voices. They still lacked resonance. Still struck hollow in the space around them.
“You expect me to stay calm? What the seven devils is happening? Where am I—really?”
Her expression sank with pity. “You’re inside the object you know as Morkai’s crystal.”
Teryn glanced around the room, no longer trusting his surroundings. They seemed as tenuous as his form, something real but not real. This was wrong. All of this was wrong. He could only hope this was a nightmare and that he’d wake from it at any moment. But if this wasn’t a dream and Emylia was telling the truth…
He was inside Morkai’s crystal.
Not his body, though. He knew enough to comprehend that whatever he was now, it wasn’t a being of flesh and blood.
A question formed on his lips, one he wasn’t sure he was ready to hear the answer to. “Am I dead?”
“No, Teryn,” she said with a gentle smile. “You’re alive.”
He swallowed hard. “Then what am I?”
She clasped her hands at her waist. “The part of you that exists inside this crystal is your ethera. You might call it your spirit. What you see now is the outer layer of your ethera, the part that most resembles your physical form.”
“And you? What are you?”
She gestured at her body. “This too is the outer layer of my ethera. But unlike you, I died many years ago. I don’t have a body to return to.”
“Does that mean I can go back? I can get out of the crystal and…return to my body?” Referring to himself as something separate from his body ignited a fresh wave of panic.
“Yes, but you need to keep your breathing steady, Highness. It’s your best defense against him.”
Him.
The shadowed form of Duke Morkai.
“Was that…thingI saw…was that the sorcerer’s ethera?”
She nodded. “He tethered it to the crystal as a way to fully evade death.”
“But you said you’re considered dead because your body is gone. So is his. He has nothing to return to.”
Emylia wrung her hands before forcing them to still. “Returning to hisformerbody isn’t his goal.”
The way she emphasizedformersent a chill through him. She must have been implying that Morkai intended to forge some new body. What did that have to do with Teryn? Why was his spirit stuck inside a crystal—
Truth dawned like a dagger to his heart. “He wants to use my body.”
Her nod of confirmation sent his head spinning. Or whatever part of this so-called ethera that felt like his head.
“He…already has,” she said. “Somewhat.”
“What the seven devils is that supposed to mean? Is his spirit in my body right now?” What were these words leaving his mouth? These kinds of things weren’t possible. They weren’t real. Months ago, he hadn’t believed in magic. Magic had been a thing that existed only in faerytales. Then he’d met Cora, caught his first glimpse of a unicorn. Magic then shifted into a beautiful truth, one that gave Cora the ability to sense emotion and even go so far as to hide them from sight. But when Morkai came along, his view of magic changed yet again, and he’d learned of its dark side. One of wraiths and blood sorcery. Somehow, Teryn was now entangled in that malevolent kind of magic.
