I stared out at an endless, black void.

There was no light. No shade. No shapes emerging from the inky tendrils creeping across the world like a hungry mist. But I could still see.

A vast darkness.

The faint outline of my own limbs.

The shivering surface beneath my feet that was both solid and . . .  not.

And, in the distance, at the very edge of the shimmering haze, a sinister veil that glowed with a black light and fluttered in a non-existent breeze.

Chills raced up my spine, and I staggered back.

The thing in my chest writhed. Ropes made of shadow pulled.

My heart raced. Howled. Shrank. Then thundered through my skull in furious, frightful beats that sent me to my knees.

Stop it, I cried, but there was no sound in the void.

Only this.

Only the deafening booms.

Faster and faster.

Harder and harder.

Rough and wild and angry.

So very angry.

I clapped my hands over my ears, but my flesh was intangible. I tried to slow my heart, but it didn’t beat.

It didn’t beat.

The thunder grew. Evolved. Found a rhythm I instantly recognized.

Not a heartbeat, but drums.

Drums of war.

Shaking, trembling, shivering, I climbed to my feet. Tried to spear through the darkness and find the source of that wild, wild rhythm.

“She’s my daughter,” someone snarled.

It echoed through the void.

“She knows that,” someone else replied, and hot grief punched me in the chest with the same force as it had the day I’d learned of his death. “But she’s still so young. If you do this, if you disappear—”

The drums crashed to a halt then beat in a rhythm so furious, so deafening, it drowned out everything else.

No!

My throat closed, but while I desperately tried to find the source of that warm, familiar voice I’d give almost anything to hear again, the void dissolved.

I dissolved.

And the world turned to mist.

Trees. So many trees.

A forest as wild and untamed as the world had once been.

Gnarled oaks stood next to proud firs and blooming cherry blossoms. Tall. So tall, they had to have grown for at least a thousand years—and still they stretched toward the sweeping pink sky where twin suns hovered at the very brink of sleep.

A woman in a beautiful white dress emerged from the forest. Her feet made no sound, left no imprint, disturbed no grass, tripped over no roots.

She glided into a clearing of wildflowers, shape flickering. Her fur was as white as her dress. Her paws as silent as her feet. And when she stopped, two figures rested on their knees before her.

The man looked up first. Skin dusted by moonlight. Ears elegantly pointed. Long, dark hair braided down his back in intricate patterns.

“Mother,” he said.

She put a hand on his head then stroked the other down the red wolf at his side.

“Balance,” she said. Her voice was babbling brooks and birds trilling and wind rustling grass. “First and foremost, balance.”

The world blurred, then shredded.

I stood on a field of battle—

No!

While my chest splintered beneath a pain so great I couldn’t breathe—would never breathe again—I stumbled back. Shied away. Dug my fingers into the ground until the earth ripped with the same force as I was ripping.

Mo chridhe . . .

I clawed at my chest. At the burning agony writhing and thrashing and eating through all that I was, all that I’d ever be.

I would rather . . .  I would rather . . .

I would rather be back there!

The ground broke beneath my feet and I fell.

My back smacked into cold metal, flickering fluorescent lights glaring down at me from a cement ceiling soiled with streaks of bright crimson and flecks of drying, dull red.

One flaked off, drifting down onto the tip of my nose.

It smelled like death.

Dank, desperate death.

My breath grew shallow, my lungs shrank, but my body was too heavy to move.

Footsteps. Footsteps so familiar that they filled my heart with black ice.

A lock clicked.

Metal hinges screeched, groaned, screeched again, then cut off with a deafening thud.

Wild, wrenching fear clawed at my skin; convulsed like screaming, writhing boulders that filled my stomach until its panicked ache tried to split me open.

I tried to scream, but my voice was gone. I tried to twist off the table, but my arms were yanked to the sides, my legs forced into a V while unforgiving straps bit into my skin.

Ankles.

Thighs.

Wrists.

Elbows.

Stomach.

Chest.

Someone leaned above me.

A mop of curly blond hair. Thick, wire-rimmed glasses framed blue eyes gleaming with a flushed eagerness that that turned my bones brittle with fear.

“I can’t believe you’re back!” he said, pushing his glasses back up a narrow nose, smiling a boyish smile when they fell back down. “Now that we’ve seen what you are . . . ” He pulled out a clipboard that had a moan twist through my stomach, scribbled a note that had panic claw at my throat, hummed a tone that wrung me inside out and offered up all my vulnerable organs to his dissecting gaze. “Let’s have some fun.”

He flicked on a camera. Picked up a bonesaw. And started cutting.