Prologue
Her only memory of before was of falling.
She remembered the wind and the earth beneath her touch. The way the grass tangled beneath her hands and legs, driven into the soil under her weight. The way the trees wound around themselves, thrusting out of the earth like desperate fingers reaching for the skies, branches unfurled and straining up, up. Far above her hung a rounded cut-out of sky, crowned by a circle of canopy tops.
Nightfall settled on her shoulders like a worn cloak. She drew it close to her, closer, then closer still, as if taking refuge from the cold.
She liked to think that she was not afraid, even when a foreign presence decided to make itself known, melting out of the darkness to take on flesh and form. Fingers longer than hers landed on her shoulders, curling around her flesh. The sensation gave her pause, made her skin crawl.
Not afraid.
"You're here to take me away, aren't you? Because she's the principal initiate. And I hurt her."
He did not reply.
She kept her eyes resolutely on the night sky. Clear skies, cloudless, thick with clusters of stars that winked down at her. A full moon, pristine and undisturbed.
"I didn't know. I didn't know it was her. If I had known —"
A sharp pain at the nape of her neck. The ground rushing up to meet her face. The quiet sense of something lost.
Darkness overtook her, and she knew no more.