That had to be what this was—these voices. There were three of them now. One that did indeed sound exactly like the Aurora from her memories, so much so that it caught her off guard every time she heard it. Nova’s heart broke a little every time she had to remind herself this probably was not real.

The other two voices were unfamiliar, the accents foreign too. She tried to match them to some other voice that she had heard once upon a time, wondering if her mind had pulled it from a memory. That had to be the only explanation for why she would be hearing voices from the solid stone wall of her cell.

It wasn’t as if she had never called out in the middle of the night, hoping that someone outside these four walls would call back. But this … this was too impossible, too good to ever be true.

But every time she convinced herself to block it out, Aurora’s voice would ring out again, telling her to hold on. It may have been impossible, but … she didn’t think she had imagined the shaking of the walls. It had showered dust and dirt on her already charred and ruined bed. Again and again, there were frenzied conversations she could not quite understand, followed up by a firm rumble of the wall.

Maybe it was an earthquake? Some other natural phenomenon, and her traumatized brain was simply weaving imaginary tales to keep her from falling apart. She had always been a girl divided. Her mind was too easily ensnared by worry and guilt and fear—so much so that it betrayed her too often for her to ever trust it. And since her magic had manifested when she was a girl, her body had become her enemy as well. Realistically, she had known those divisions would tear her down eventually. She supposed imprisonment was bound to speed that along.

“Nova? Nova! Can you hear me?”

She almost did not reply. It could not be real. It would hurt too much if she believed, and it wasn’t.

“Oh goddess, what if she’s unconscious? Nova?”

“I-I’m here,” she returned, already regretting it.

“Thank the skies,” the Aurora voice said back. “Listen, we can’t get through the wall.”

And there it was, Nova thought, the beginning of the delusion. This wasn’t a rescue, it was a siege. These voices would take up camp in her head, and she would lose what little control she still had left.

“But we’re coming underneath it, so you need to move back.”

Nova blinked, uncomprehending.

“Did you hear me? Move back from the wall.”

“I hear you,” Nova called back. She was already pressed against the far wall, since the bed had been burned beyond use during one of the prince’s questionings.