Both the soldiers looked up. And then she was the soldiers, seeing through their eyes. Hearing the dull drone of insect wings beating, thousands and thousands of them, as they caught sight of her body spread across the rafter, the skirts of her dress dangling down.

She slammed back into herself, with a suddenness that nearly knocked her over, and she jolted forward, gasping for air. It had been so much more intense than her previous visions—as though she weren’t merely watching, but actually there, occupying that new space outside her own body. She twisted to the side. Had the soldiers really spotted her? If she needed to run, if she was caught—

Both soldiers stared right at her. But they weren’t soldiers, not really. They were emptiness and shadow, their eyes and mouths hollow. Dark smoke wafted around them, seeping from their flesh.

Bile rose in her throat. They looked similar to the soldiers in Siegen who’d been consumed by shadow. But no, these men were in between that and normal men. Like the shadow had gotten its talons hooked in them, but they weren’t fully gone yet. Like their transformation had just begun.

And they were looking at her. Motionless.

Expectant.

Her tongue was woolly and thick. With a flicker of vision, she saw: from the soldiers’ eyes. From her own. From that dark and frightful place, far away, where all her visions led—the place of ink and shadows. When she experienced her visions, she’d always watched them as if from the other side of a dark mirror. A shadow world all her own.

Perhaps like Liam, she was bound to it, too; but unlike him, she’d never had a choice.

Rebeka stretched her fingers, cramped from her death grip on the wood beam. In her mind, she extended the soldiers’ fingers. And below her, they eased their grip on their rifle butts.

Her heart leapt in her throat. Controlling the shadow and its movements—this, too, was new.

They stared at her, and she stared back. Pulse hastening, she imagined them pulling the rifle straps up and over their heads, then setting them down on the wooden tower floor. They did so, no resistance, no complaints, no urgency—just a straightforward, careful execution of her command. Glittering onyx eyes looked back up at her. Still waiting.

Still under her command.

With trembling arms, she pulled herself upright on the rafter. Her body felt miles and miles away from here, as if it belonged to someone else entirely. She felt the possibilities now, the boundless potential like a simmering river, its current just waiting to be directed.

Was this what Liam felt? Was this the energy he tugged at and knitted into his own? She didn’t feel like an outsider twisting it around, subject to its corruption and hate. She was the current. She was that energy—