“Where are you?” she demanded. “Is Alys all right? Where’s Mother? And where are we now?” Pulling free, she turned in place on the bare stone flooring and stretched out her arms to brush the ends of her fingertips against both curving sides of the miniature room. Cold seeped through the rough stone walls and down her arms—not quite as solid as reality but far truer than any natural dream. “Is this where you’re being kept prisoner?”

He shook his head. “This room is a memory of mine from before you were born. The place I’m being kept this time is … different.” His voice tightened. “Alys was healed. I saw that much, but I haven’t seen her since. I don’t know where Mother is, either. She can’t touch her magic, so I can’t reach out to her. I was lucky they only had one collar prepared, so they couldn’t trap my magic the way they trapped hers—but I’ve only just gathered enough of my strength back to try reaching the three of you.”

He shook his head, looking infinitely weary. “I don’t know why I thought back to this room when I cast the vision to bring all of us together—it’s where I was kept long before you were born—but—”

“Wait.” She stared up at him. “You were kept a prisoner in this room before I was born? But you were only little then!” Her brows bunched together. “Does this have something to do with Grandmother?”

Connall gaped down at her, fingers loosening from her shoulders. “What do you know about our grandmother?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “If anyone had ever bothered to answer my questions—”

“Please,” her older brother whispered, “tell me you haven’t actually met her. Tell me she doesn’t have you three in her grasp now.”

Cordelia didn’t answer.

A sickly sweet fog was wrapped around her most recent memories. What had happened just before she’d come here? She’d been asleep, she knew that much. And she had been at Grandmother’s house before that. She remembered stepping inside that white-and-black cottage. She remembered sweet steam clouding everything, blurring her thoughts and turning into a thick fog of sleep.

Sweet steam, choking liquid, and Grandmother’s eyes, dark and predatory and triumphant …

“What’s wrong?” Connall asked sharply. “Why are you shaking?”

Shivers rippled convulsively through her body. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to hold them in. “There was something in the drink she gave all of us. It made us fall asleep. I tried not to drink any of it after I saw the others, but she—she—”