CHAPTER ONE

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Time stretched into infinity, a never-ending sea of white, comfort and contentment. I closed my eyes, sighing into the serenity and drifting in the peace. I floated in warmth, hung in a cocoon of semi-consciousness where nothing mattered. I neither worried about where I was nor concerned myself beyond the moment in which I existed.

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Voices punched through my tranquillity, insistent and urgent. They didn’t belong here. I didn’t want to hear them. I was happy here, in this place of non-existence. I wanted to stay where it was quiet. Where I could just be. Where nothing and nobody wanted me. Where nothing and nobody compelled me to do anything except drift.

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That’s all I wanted to do, except something niggled at the edge of my consciousness. A stubborn tickle that wouldn’t go away. I focussed on it and as I did, the concept of worry slid away, leaving me to float in the vast white sea of comfort and safety.

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The voices followed, a trumpet of harsh sounds that had no place disturbing me. They grew disruptive enough for me to distinguish two of them, their urgent arguing drawing unwanted attention. As I was sucked towards them, blurred edges cleared and sound became recognisable.

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“She’s not coming round, Keira,” the voice, male, said. The edge of worry made me drift closer, curious.

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“That’s highly unusual. It’s been days since she came here,” a soft female voice, I assumed Keira, said. “She’s not anchoring.”

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“That’s because she’s not from either dimension,” the male said. “She’s retained her physical body as well as her soul, and both are fighting for survival.”

“How can that even happen?” Keira whispered and in my semi-conscious state I heard her disbelief.

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“It should be impossible, but here she is,” the male said, sharing her tone.

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A long moment passed. Enough for me to drift away, content to forget their bafflement. Even though I was the subject, there was no desire to understand any more. I just wanted to cocoon myself and let myself flow wherever the white would take me.

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“If she doesn’t anchor, Ibn, her soul will disintegrate,” Keira said.

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At least I had a name for both the male and female now, Ibn and Keira. They weren’t familiar to me. At least I didn’t think they were.

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A flicker of worry brushed against a faraway corner inside my head. A shadow of a thought flickered. Unsustainable. An urge pressed down on me. There was something I had to do, something important. It niggled, then slid away, taking with it any momentary worry that might have come with the thought.

It was no longer important. The white blankness called me, tempting me to drift away from the voices. I could close my eyes and rest and just be.

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“It’s not only her soul that is in jeopardy. The power running through her is fracturing her,” Ibn said. My forehead tingled with the brush of cool fingertips. I jerked at the physical touch, unused to feeling anything.

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“She moved!” Keira said.

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“The band, Keira,” Ibn said. I wanted to drift away, to sink into the warm comfort. The whiteness beckoned, tempting me with its nothingness, but those fingertips never left my forehead, locking me in the physical.

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I tried to brush them away and sank into a heaviness that had no right intruding in my languid state. I grew heavy as I settled into my body. The pure white light grew darker, spotting with shadows that formed the silhouette of two faces hovering above me.

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Their blurred shapes cleared enough for me to see furrowed brows and concern in their eyes. Keira’s blue eyes grew wide, her mouth opening with a small, sharp inhale as she looked down at me.

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“Quickly, Keira. Bring it to me,” Ibn said. Sleek brows lowered across eyes so brown they were nearly black, set over a prominent nose and full lips. Something about the eyes made me pause to focus on them. Ibn was a young man, maybe in his early thirties, but those eyes held the knowledge of lifetimes. They were also filled with worry as they peered at me.

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Those weren’t the eyes that I wanted on me, though. These eyes were wrong. The wrong shape, wrong colour. Emerald eyes flashed at the forefront of my mind. Eyes that looked at me in a way that made me want to bask in their warmth. Familiar eyes. Eyes that caused a bittersweet blade to slide through my heart.

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They were important in a way that made the breath stick in my lungs, that propelled me with the urge to go somewhere. Do something. The urgent niggle started at the back of my head and exploded through my mind, shattering into shards of glass.

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Light flashed off gold, dazzling me as Keira handed Ibn a thin, u-shaped band. He set the band over my forehead. Cold iced through my head, scattering the splinters as though they’d never existed, leaving me with an endless black vacuum inside my skull. The band tightened, lacing across my forehead and around my skull. A blinding flash of heat slashed through the frost in my brain, leaving me gasping for air as though there wasn’t any oxygen left in my lungs.

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My vision wavered through tears as my mind and soul continued to fracture. The frantic voices of Keira and Ibn were white-noise behind the roar inside my head. My body flashed hot and cold as violent tremors shook my bones. My back arched, the back of my head drove into the soft surface beneath me and my body bowed around the agony ripping through me.

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Fragmented images spun through my mind. Visions of faces so beautiful they were spun from light, familiar faces that held me in the arms of belonging, things ‘other’ brought forth from my worst nightmare, betrayal coating them all with thick, black tar. The face with the green eyes flashed past my consciousness. I grasped for that face as though my life depended on him. Need. Want. Desperate love compressed into a hard knot of longing strong enough to cleave my heart in two.

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That man. I needed him as much as he needed me. As though the cusp of life trembled between us. When I reached for him, he wasn’t there, but a stab of pain pierced my eyeballs and obliterated his face, leaving empty darkness.

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“Who is Elliot?” Keira’s voice floated at the edges of my consciousness.

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“I don’t know. I can’t see any of her connections. They’re too disrupted,” Ibn’s muffled voice replied.

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Elliot. The name was familiar, but when I tried to form an image in my mind of who that could be, agony sliced through my brain, obliterating the name as well as my ability to speak.

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A gentle hand curved over my forehead and warmth imbued through skin and bone, easing my muscles. I sank back to the mattress, my muscles easing with a sigh. The warmth stilled my mind, and I wallowed in the darkness behind closed lids, swimming in the absence of pain.

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“Is she asleep?” Keira asked.

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I cracked open eyelids that were too damn heavy. I wanted to tell them to leave me alone so I could be asleep. Twin faces wavered above me. Keira’s gaze darted from Ibn to me, or more appropriately, to the centre of my forehead. Her blonde, wavy hair fluffed as she moved away from me. Ibn’s shoulders sagged, and his face lost some of the tense lines that had bracketed his eyes and mouth.

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Ibn’s palm slipped from my forehead, leaving a lingering warmth. My vision cleared, yet the hollow in my head remained. Now I could think a little more clearly, I found myself lying in a comfortable bed, a soft blanket over me to my shoulders.

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A warm, gentle breeze ruffled a transparent curtain, the air bringing with it the sweetness of fresh roses. Sunlight diffused into the room, making it light-filled, warm and comfortable. There was something innately safe about this room. The same feeling ‘home’ brought, if home could be described as a blank slate. The room was nothing more than white walls, undisturbed by paintings or adornments. A white bedside table was next to my head.

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Keira poured a glass of water from a tumbler on a white buffet cabinet on the wall adjacent to where I lay and brought it over. I wriggled to my elbows, Ibn helping me to recline on the pillows.

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“How are you feeling now?” Ibn asked.

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I sipped the water, letting the sweet, cool liquid slide down my throat. I peered at both Keira and Ibn. Ibn’s forehead scrunched as he peered over delicate, gold-rimmed glasses perched on his beak-like nose.

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“I…” I didn’t know how to answer that. The agony that ripped through me had simmered down to a thrumming deep within me. Just a reminder that it hadn’t gone away entirely. I looked down at my body tucked under a neat white blanket. “Why is everything white?”

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“We find the lack of visual stimulation helps souls adjust,” Ibn said.

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Breeze wafted through the open window, making the curtains billow. The air was warm without being muggy. It looked to be the perfect day outside. I peered into Ibn’s chocolate eyes, his words catching up with me. “Why would souls need to adjust?”

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“You’ve stepped through the veil. Can you recall the name you were known by in your previous life?” Keira asked. She smiled and little lines fanned from the corner of her eyes. She patted the front of the apron she wore over a long skirt that reached the ground. As was the room, her clothing was all white as well.

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“I’m…” My name. I tried to remember my name, but the black hole inside my head swallowed anything I reached for. The horrible urgency that pressed down on me from before reared up. “I…”

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Ibn put his hand over my fist that clutched the sheets and gave me a reassuring squeeze. His hand was warm. His lips cursed in a smile. “Don’t worry. Your memory will come back. We find it can take some time for those souls who suffered at the end.”

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My forehead tightened as my gaze ran across his clothing. He wore a tan vest over a white tunic that covered his legs and feet. His vest and glasses were the only colour in the room.

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“Suffered?” Why was he talking to me about souls and suffering and time? I slipped my hand from beneath his to scrunch the blanket and hold it to my chest. “What are you talking about?”

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Ibn shared a quick glance at Keira. “There’s nothing to worry about. You just need to rest some more. Then everything will be clear.”

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He was pacifying me. If he thought that would calm me, he had another thing coming. I wasn’t a person who liked to be kept in the dark. I liked to know. To understand. That way, I could work my way through problems. My heart leapt behind the hand at my chest and kept galloping behind my ribs. “You need to tell me what’s going on now. I’ll worry more if you don’t tell me. I don’t need to rest.”

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Adrenaline poured through my limbs, as though I was in the middle of a fight and I’d been punched to the ground. The fight was still going on and I needed to move. I couldn’t rest in bed and wait for answers to come. There was no time. I had to…needed to…had to…

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I gripped the blanket and pushed it off my legs, throwing them over the edge of the bed. Keira and Ibn reached for me as I went to stand. I shoved their hands away, urgency to get somewhere, to do something strangling me. Only I didn’t know where I needed to go or what I had to do. The darkness inside my head erupted, swallowing me whole. I cried out, gripping my head, my palms splayed over the hard metal band about my forehead as pain swallowed me whole.

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Ibn placed his palm on mine. White light washed over me, sinking through me until I was surrounded in the warm whiteness where nothing mattered.

Thankfully. Mercifully, I sank to the bottom of the white depths with open arms.

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