I opened my eyes.
Sunlight was pouring through the white curtains. A small bird sang outside the window. The air smelled like fresh bread and spring flowers. I was lying in a soft bed with a blue blanket — the bed in my old room at Hallowell Manor.
For a moment, I felt only a , impossible warmth. Then fear came, cold and quick. A tremor ran through my whole body.
"This is a dream," I whispered. "Or this is what happens after you die."
"A dream?" said the voice again, closer now. "My lady, you must still be sleepy. Come, sit up."
A girl in a gray dress and a white apron stood beside my bed, holding a tray with tea. She had brown hair tied in a messy knot, freckles across her nose, and a big smile.
It was Nora.
Not the pale Nora of the prison. Not the Nora of my nightmares. Nora, alive and warm and laughing, with a small spot of flour on her cheek.
I did not think. I jumped out of bed and clasped her so tightly that the tea almost fell off the tray. It was a reunion I had never dared to dream of.
"My lady!" she cried. She looked bewildered. "What's wrong? You're shaking!"
"Nothing," I said. My voice broke. "Nothing is wrong. I'm just… so glad to see you."
A wave of washed over me. Her small, solid body gave me a strange . She was real. She was here.
Nora laughed and patted my back as if I were a small child. "You're acting strange this morning. Did you have a bad dream?"
"Yes," I said, wiping my face. "A very long one."
"Well, it's over now. It's your seventeenth birthday! Cook has been making your favorite honey cake since dawn, and Lord Duke has —" She stopped and covered her mouth. "Oh, I'm not supposed to tell you that part."
Seventeenth.
A peculiar feeling crept over me. I looked at my hands. They were small and smooth, the hands of a girl who had never known hardship. There were no marks from the rope. The memory of the ordeal felt like a dream that I could not shake. I ran to the mirror on the wall.
A girl looked back at me. She had long dark-brown hair, big gray eyes, and pale skin — and she was young. Much too young. There were no shadows under her eyes. Her cheeks were round. She did not look like someone who had spent three months in a cell.
I felt a sharp for a face I had once taken for granted. A pain seemed to pierce my chest.
I touched my cheek. The girl in the mirror touched hers.
After a long , I asked, "Nora, what year is it?"
She looked worried now. But she told me.
It was the year I turned seventeen. Seven years before my death.
My knees went weak. I held the edge of the table. This was not an . The sun was too warm, the tea smelled too real, and Nora's hands were too alive.
I had come back.
"Are you really all right?" Nora asked. "Should I call the doctor?"
"No!" I said too quickly. Then, more softly: "No doctors. I'm fine. I just need a moment to think."
"All right." She put the tray on the table. "Oh — I almost forgot. A letter came for you this morning. A very fancy one. From the palace."
She held out a cream-colored envelope with a gold seal: the royal crest of Aldermere, a crown above two crossed branches.
I knew that seal. In my first life, I had opened it with happy, shaking hands. I thought it was the best day of my life. Now the envelope looked ominous, like a closed door with something terrible behind it. My happiness already felt like glass.
It was the first step toward my death.