“How are you here?” She drew back, closer to the window, although he had made no overt threat to her safety—though death was perhaps the last thing she feared just then. Through her window, she could see the fortified walls that ringed the Tower, and she knew her rooms were watched night and day by the guards. They were out there even now, they had to be. “Why did they let you in?”

What she really wanted to ask was why he made her tingle so, but she was afraid to articulate the question aloud. Unaccountably, one of the few contrived charges that had not been leveled against her was witchcraft, and she lived in perpetual fear of performing some unaccountable feat in front of witnesses—such as making candle flames dance, or perhaps floating in her sleep, as she’d done twice this week already.

No, for many reasons, death was not what she feared the most.

“My name is Erasmus Kramer, Your Highness.” He sank lower into his bow. “And they let me in for the simple reason that they had no other choice.” At last he looked up, meeting her eye. “I am a mystic and fortune-teller of some renown—and many other things, too—but the reason I am here is to explain what you are.”

She meant to step back … but instead, her feet drew her closer. Too many nights had passed with strange and terrible dreams that defied understanding, and too many minds had opened up their secrets to her curiosity like flowers blooming at her touch. The glint in his eye bespoke a knowledge that she craved. “What, exactly, do you mean by that?”

“You are, quite possibly, the doorway to the future,” he answered, a smile turning up his mouth. “Within you is the remedy to a terminal sickness that infects the Earth, and I believe you have the strength to manifest that cure. But more time is needed.”

“Time, Herr Kramer,” she said dryly, “is a luxury the condemned are not permitted. Not even ones of my station.”

“I could give you that time, though.” His smile spread, teeth stacking up in the sharpened corners of his grin. “With the same ease that I came in, I could take you out.”

She stilled, only a foot away from him. “To what purpose? What is this sickness you speak of—and who are you, anyway?” When he did not immediately reply, she decided to seek the answer for herself and pushed her way into his thoughts. What she saw there was impossible and shocking; things that should not be. Pulling away, she stumbled back, her fingers trembling. “You’re a revenant.”

“And many other things, too,” he replied simply.