There was sound. For the first age, it was only a howling, like wolves or wind, unrecognizable. Then I started to hear differences. Voices, though I did not remember their names. I hated them and longed for them at the same time. I gathered myself, attending to them. It was another age before I understood the voices belonged to people, and a third age before I understood they were screaming in the same agony I felt. I was not alone here, but it was no comfort. I almost recognized them, sometimes, but there was not enough of any of us left to know one another.
Then, there were other voices from farther away. Not screams, but words with meaning. I heard with little understanding.
“She did this to herself,” a woman said. “If you cannot save her, then it is no one’s fault but yours, and hers.”
“She is a child!” The man was angry. “A child, and you forced her to destroy herself!”
“She believed you would have done the same, you know,” said the woman. “That was what she told Valentin.”
Valentin. The name made me feel … something. A tangle of emotions, fear and anger and comfort twisted into a hard, hot knot. That knot reminded me that I was a thing, a unity that felt. But it distracted me from the voices. I lost them, and continued to fall.
And then—
A mind on mine. A will, examining me. Probing. A test. A predator sniffing around its prey. I knew it. It was the dark figure, the thing. Either it would eat me, or—
It would let me go.
The agony changed, like teeth withdrawing from a bite wound. I was released.
I began to know what was around me. The screams became distinct. I knew the voices. Mother. My mother. And another—Dominic.
No.
Then, abruptly, their voices were gone, replaced by weeping. Weeping as wild as the winds. I seized it. I held it. I pulled myself out.
“Must you chain her this way?” cried the weeping man. “Look at her wrists! Have you no pity?”
“Those chains are all that kept her alive,” said another man, one who was not weeping. “She does not feel them.”
But I did feel them, as soon as he said that. I felt a horrible burning, slicing feeling. Wrists. I had wrists.
“She is more peaceful now,” said the weeping man. “Weaker. She couldn’t do much harm. Please.”
There was a silence. Without the voices, I felt myself slipping. If only I could see them, then it wouldn’t matter if they ceased to speak. But how? How did one see?
The pain on my wrists changed. It flared, and my eyes flew open.
Too much. The light burned my pupils. They closed again, but the weeping man cried out, and I held on to the violence of the sound.
“She opened her eyes!”
“That means nothing,” said the other. “Her eyes were open the whole of the first week. It does not mean she is seeing anything.”
She … her … she. Yes. That was me. A she. A woman.
I opened my eyes again, this time blinking until I could bear the light.
Two men leaned over me. I knew them, but could not place them. There was a tall, thick one and a tall, weeping one. I hated them both. I jerked forward.
“I told you!” shouted the thick one. He pulled on the chain at my wrist and fastened it hard again. I looked about me and found I was spread across a bed, my wrists chained to opposite posts. My hatred deepened. Anyone could do anything to me while I was held like this.
“Thea!” cried the slender man. He wasn’t weeping any longer. “Are you there? Thea?” Excitement filled his voice. “I see her!”
I stared. Oh yes, I knew this man. He was more familiar than he should be.
“Father,” I said.
He cried out. The other, thick man made a sound of shock as well. I stared up at him.
“V—” It was a hard word. I tried again. “Valentin.”
His mouth dropped open. He looked very foolish.
“Release me,” I said. I pulled against my chains and winced. My wrists were rubbed raw.
“Thea, my child!” Vellacott started to weep again, tears leaking out of his red-rimmed eyes. “My child.”
Irritation twisted inside me. I shook my head. I tried to form a denial, but the words caught in my thick, dry mouth.
“Water?” I whispered.
Valentin was the quickest. The water coursed into my mouth, sloshing down my throat like a river. I choked on it.
“Es tut mir Leid,” muttered Valentin. “I’m sorry, sorry.”
I remembered now, enough that I needed to know.
“The Stone?” I asked. My father’s face fell. I looked to Valentin, who shifted on his feet.
“I tried to do as you said, after you went—” He stumbled and did not say where I went. I was glad. He did not know. “But the glass burst.”
“Burst.” My heart sank, almost back into the deep. But I held it. I kept my eyes open. I fixed them on my father.
“Why is he here?” I asked Valentin.
“He came back,” said Valentin. “Looking for you. And we thought, perhaps … we thought he could help. You had said he took your papers. Your mother’s papers.”
I remembered that. I glared at my father. “He did.”
My father had the decency to lower his eyes in shame.
“Your friend broke some of the code,” said Valentin. “But it changed, halfway through. We couldn’t decipher the rest.”
“So … so…” My broken mind struggled to function. I hated its slowness. But when I finally understood, I hated that even more.
“My friend? Will?”
“The other one,” said Valentin.
“Dominic,” said my father quietly.
The way he said the name sent a chill straight through me. I half remembered a scream in Dominic’s voice. I shook my head against the thought.
“Dominic? Where is he?” I demanded.
The men exchanged a guilty look.
“No,” I moaned. “You monsters. You shouldn’t have let him.”
“He wanted to do it, Thea,” said my father. “He wanted to do it to save you. He said he owed it to you. And
