She woke up to the smell of pine ash and cold embers.
The world was quiet—too quiet. The sort of quiet that was borrowed, stolen, from elsewhere, from some other world. Cassie opened her eyes across the gray of morning, her heart thudding hard as darkness around her hardened into twisted walls and a groaning ceiling. An old cabin. Rotten half-way through. Devoured by the woods.
Her first gasp was small. Her second hurt.
The air was cold. Her body was stiff. But above all, it was the realization that she was truly gone—left behind the bond, the vows, the two sides of the soul vowed to her and yet unfulfilled.
She slowly sat up, her fingers tracing the linen coverlet that had been hastily tossed over her. The hearth was lit with the coals of a dead fire, and in the back corner—
Kael.
H
