Chapter Forty Eight — The Mirror Room (Part 1)
Emerald's Point of View
The second entry was different from the first.
Not in the mechanics — the preparation was the same, the breath and the grounding and the full expansion of the gift, the press of palms against Rafe's chest, the current of the conduit snapping around me and the tent dissolving into the between-place and the fortress arriving with its bone walls and its blue-white torches and its breathing that was not quite breathing.
The difference was in what I carried going in.
The first entry had been reconnaissance — move fast, gather what the window allows, get out before he knows you're there. The urgency of it had functioned as a kind of insulation, the forward momentum preventing the full weight of the place from settling on
