I follow it, feeling the ache in my head build with every step, until I realize it isn’t a light at all. It’s a woman, the silver circlet on her shaved head flickering against the darkness with sheer defiance.

She’s speaking to someone I can’t see. When she moves, I hear the shift of her gown and the tap of heels against a stone floor that’s invisible to me. She waves a hand like she’s dismissing someone and takes a seat. It’s as if she’s floating, perched on a throne of air. A phantom princess, dressed in indigo robes that burst from her shoulders like orchid petals.

No, not a princess. A queen.

She looks to her left, still talking in that faraway voice. An inaudible tremor. And while everything about her is crisp and in focus, her surroundings fade into nothingness.

I have to be imagining this. It can’t be real. Because that would mean I’m looking at…

The skin on my wrist burns.

Terror hisses through me, making my body recoil. I step away from the woman—away from this image that I’ve somehow conjured. My foot presses against the imaginary water, sending ripples of shadows into the void around me.

Her neck snaps like an insect, and her gaze lands near me. Through me.

I’m too afraid to breathe.

She tilts her head to the side, black eyes commanding the world to answer. And when she speaks, her voice pulses through me like a snake making its way into my bloodstream.

“I know you’re there,” Ophelia says with the voice I once knew. The voice I once spoke to as a friend. And then a whisper. “I can feel you.”

Get out! my mind screams. Get out now!

I turn to run and the world takes hold of me, ignoring my thrashing as it sends me rushing back toward the starlit flames. I’m flying, until I’m not. Darkness finds me again, its tendrils sinking deep into my mind, but this time it’s quiet. Peaceful. I force my eyes open with a gasp.

I’m back in my room, legs tucked to my chest like I never left at all.

I scramble to my feet, reaching for the bed, the walls, the table—anything I can grab to steady myself because the world feels like it’s been turned upside down.

I don’t understand what just happened. I don’t understand what I did.

Was it even real?

I’m afraid to look at my wrist, but I feel the brush of phantom fingertips over my skin. A caress. A reminder.

Ophelia’s black eyes flash in my head, but I shut them out, unable to meet even the memory of them. I might be imagining them now, but before? In that black, empty space? That was her.