Magdalene awoke to the scent of ash and copper.
Pain laced her every limb—dull, ancient, as if her bones remembered a fall far greater than the one she'd just taken. She tried to rise, but her limbs were heavy, as though the earth itself refused to let her go.
She blinked.
She was no longer in the Crescent Quarter. No longer in the apothecary.
No longer in the world she knew.
The sky above her rippled like dark water, and the stars hung in odd configurations. Constellations twisted. The moon split into two, silver halves locked in eternal eclipse.
“Where—?”
“You’re in the Veil Between,” came a voice behind her. Low. Gentle. Female.
Magdalene turned sharply.
A woman stood at the edge of a pool that shimmered with black fire, cloaked in robes woven from shadow and star-thread. Her f
