Nine
VIOLET
Time was a concept that didn’t seem to exist in the ever-changing landscape Violet wandered through. It was a place full of shadows and memories and the dark, fading edges of a vignette. It was a place of terrors, of pain. It was a place she might have lived in for a day or a year, or perhaps a hundred years. She couldn’t tell how many times she’d relived the nightmares.
The only thing she knew was that none of it was real.
She looked around at the distant echo of a cry. The others—the friends who’d tried to rescue her—were here somewhere, trapped in this world of waking nightmares. They came close sometimes. Close enough that she could almost touch them before they were yanked away.
Seeing no one, Violet turned and hurried in the opposite direction. She was in the Guild’s
