Page 2 of The Fallen Kingdom

Remember, I tell myself. I desperately search my mind, but the few memories there are too tenuous, delicate.

“I can’t.” I can barely say the words.I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

Try harder.

I begin to walk the burned tree path, tearing through string after string of fleeting memories. They disappear as if they were grains of sand falling through my fingertips.Focus. I try to redirect my thoughts to something simple. How I came to be here. Where I am.

My name.

My name. I don’t know my name.

A hot rush of panic hits me hard. That’s not possible. Who forgets her own bloody name?

It feels like it should come easily. It’sright there, within my reach: the letters, the sound of it, the way my lips form the syllables. But when I push for the memory, it won’t come.

Fear makes me walk faster. My bare feet pad across the ash-covered ground at a speed that makes my legs burn with the effort, but I’m too upset to care. Up ahead, at the far end of the forest, a sliver of sunlight peeks through the clouds and reflects across the surface of a loch.

I pause as an image of that loch flutters across my mind, swift as bird wings. I was flying—no, I rode a horse over the landscape so quickly, itfeltas if I were flying. I was racing after a dark-haired man and a woman who were also on horseback. We were headed into a battle, defending people I cared about. But where are they?Whowere they?

Maybe my reflection will help me remember.

I break into a run, tearing through the line of dead trees, ignoring the sharp pain when my feet are cut by twigs. I burst through the forest and sprint down the rocky beach, heading for the remains of a dock. The wood looks just sturdy enough to walk on.

My name is on my lips; I’m trying to form the sounds. It’s something several syllables long—but there’s another one, shorter. A single rough note that’s concise, direct.

It comes with the memory of the man who rode into battle with me. God, my chest aches at the thought of him. He whispered that shortened name like he loved the sound of it. Like he was telling me a secret. As if it meantI love youandI want you. As if it were a promise on his lips, a declaration. A vow.

My feet hit the dock. The whole structure groans beneath my weight. I take those last steps tentatively, so the wood doesn’t collapse. Then I lie down on my stomach, peer over the edge, and look into the still water.

Those aren’t my eyes.

It’s the first thing I notice. They should be different—hazel, I think. A mixture of brown and deep, deep green. Now they’re the light amber of raw honey. The color is rich and vibrant and unsettling.

Those aren’t my eyes. They can’t be.

I study my features for anything else that stands out. My face stares back at me, and it looks familiar. Beneath the fine layer of dirt and soot, ginger freckles are scattered across the bridge of my nose, along my cheekbones and the tops of my shoulders where the dress has left them bare. My curly, copper-colored hair dips closer to the water, a single ringlet barely touching the surface. I know my face, just as I’d know my name if I heard it.

The rest of me is ordinary, normal. Human features in a human face. My attention returns to my eyes. Notmine. Not human. A chill goes through me when I see a glimmer beneath the irises, like a shadow crossing water.

Compelled, I reach out to touch my reflection. The moment I make contact with the water, it tugs at the power inside me. God, it hurts. The pain eases only when I free it again from its prison in my chest.

Ice forms around my fingertips—but it doesn’t stop there. It spreads quickly across the surface of the water, fanning out in tendrils of frost. The sleek, smooth surface is as clear as a mirror. It’s so beautiful that I can’t help but admire it.

Until I realize the ice isn’t stopping. I try to draw it back, but it’s too late. I can’t. My powers won’t be caged now, they won’t be contained or slowed. The frost keeps spreading across the loch, reaching the rocks along the far shore.

Slow down. Slow down—

Thunder claps in the distance and I start. Overhead, the shaft of sunlight that lit up the silver waters of the loch disappears behind dark storm clouds that weren’t there a moment ago. A sudden icy wind slices through the delicate fabric of my dress.

“Stop it,” I tell my power in a choked whisper, struggling to pull it back into that too-small space in my chest. “Stop stopstop.”

My power snaps back so fast and painfully that I cry out. I scramble to my feet, pulse quickening. The loch and the beach are covered in a thick layer of ice.

What did I just do?The power is like my eyes—it doesn’t feel right. It’s not mine. How can it be? I can’t control it.

Accept. You must accept now.

A skeletal hand wrapping around mine in a hard, bruising grip. A withered body embracing me, and a sudden agonizing, searing pain.