Page 66 of Awakened Ash and Alchemy

“You are not a prisoner, Angela.” The door closed behind him.

She pressed her fingers to her lips, hating the bothersome thought that part of her had wanted him to stay. Guessing this wouldn’t be the last time he’d show up with a meal tray.

What’s worse, she hoped it wouldn’t be.

Ugh, she was lousy as a hostile prisoner.

But then the room became bigger while she felt so small, trapped in a world that wasn’t her own. She grabbed the fire poker, locked her door and faced an empty room.

How soon before she could go home?

TWENTY-SIX

It was day two, and Angela had learned it was useless for her to panic or behave like a child. It didn’t fix anything, except stress her out. Zarek tried to help her, even though he’d treat her like he’d just inherited a unicorn and wasn’t sure it if kicked, bit, or gored.

Even under their treaty, which sounded civilized and mutually negotiated, nothing erased the fact that she had been stolen from her world, like a sack tossed over his shoulder, and told afterward that it was for her own protection.

Angela did not just disappear. Not when she was well trained to leave messages if she was going somewhere. Afterall, she was a person who paid bills, met deadlines, and created goals as a functioning adult in the real world. She had a job back home. A routine. And an aunt who’d notice her absence.

But in this new world…

Zarek had assured her that time moved differently here. One minute in the mortal realm could stretch into one week in Paradox, give or take a day or ten.

If her flailing calculations were correct, given that math was never her strong suit, she had been gone less than a minute.

But if this time-thing failed, her aunt would have called hospitals, started search parties, and demanded the police put out a missing persons alert.

Angela would have done the same if her aunt went longer than 24 hours without reaching out after one of her many dates. Although she’d be more worried her aunt had gotten married again without Angela forcing Claudine’s future husband to sign a prenuptial agreement. It happened so often that Angela kept blank copies in the bookshop’s safe for such emergencies.

Most of all, an enemy existed. And Zarek, the incredibly disciplined, battle-tested warrior, absolutely believed that Angela was not only in danger from the Black Cloaks, but also that what she carried was worth protecting. And they wanted to find out what that was.

It still didn’t explain how she could feel his emotions to know he wasn’t lying, like he could tell when she was about to suffer a panic attack, or when she was suffering a nightmare—like she had last night, when he’d showed up making her room’s strange magical lights to flicker on. It was a struggle to settle down when she didn’t know this place, and she still couldn’t recall the nightmare that plagued her nights, leaving her too scared to sleep.

So, she needed to focus on a goal instead.

If she could find and understand what her supposed magick was—or lack of it—she could use it to defend her case, allowing her to return home sooner to a world that still ran on electricity and predictable working hours.

Learning was leverage.

Leverage created options.

And options led to home.

She could not control time, but she could control how she used the time she had inside this castle known as the Vanguards Keep.

So far, most of her morning had been spent pacing inside her chamber. It was narrower than Zarek’s, where her bed stood against the wall in a room with two doors, one to the outer hall and one directly to Zarek’s room.

The door to the hallway she could lock, and she did.

But the door between their chambers remained unlocked, because it had no lock.

She had tested that as well.

At least her bathroom was private. But it missed the one feature she liked in Zarek’s quarters—a deep stone bath large enough to disappear into. And his room carried thicker furs, rugs, and comfier chairs, but it also held an assortment of weaponry, armor, and boots. Although, having access to all those weapons contradicted the idea of her being a prisoner.

She did get tall windows that opened, only to tease her with a drop too far to consider any escape. But it allowed her to take in the view that stretched endlessly across Paradox, with its rich valleys saturated in green, pillowy slopes, thick dark forests, and a horizon that seemed too vast for a single realm. This morning, she stood there simply to breathe in the sunrise, and to remind herself that her world existed beyond these walls, even if she had yet to step outside.

One night trapped inside the Keep, when the moon was a visitor at her window, she’d stared at that blanket of trees and called it the Forest of No Hope. Occasionally, she’d see small lights flicker and get lost among the trees as she tried to imagine its secrets, or that feeling of freedom she used to have, before she got dragged into this realm.