Page 1 of Kronos’ Consort

Prologue

Kristina Malmon

Falling.

With her eyes closed. That was how it felt. With cold air rushing past her face, and with her arms and fingers splayed wide, Kristina could have sworn she was plummeting through the abyss to an unknown fate. Rather than perturb or terrify, though—emotions that the plight should have inspired—her fear was replaced by a swell of unexpected serenity.

It was the end.

Of that she was certain. Although the end of what, she couldn’t have said. Tumbling through the ether, she recognized that the answer didn’t matter, and she accepted the strange wave of calm the thought invoked as it washed over her.

Something had ended. A chapter of her life, perhaps, or maybe it was her entire life that was over. Whatever the case, in its place was the sweet liberation of the fall; a freedom she’d never known before. Like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole before her, Kris sensed she was on the verge of something new, her next adventure, and there was little terror at the prospect.

The thud as her body landed echoed in her eardrums, and she tensed, waiting for her brain to process the pain that came with the sudden impact. She held her breath at the delay. Anticipating the agony cascading through her nerves, it was with some surprise that her eyelids finally flickered open to acknowledge that there was no hurt at all.

Am I dead?

She tried to force the words from her lips, but for some reason, she couldn’t push them out, as though the airway was impeded; encased with something larger that had swallowed the diction. She frowned at the idea, irritated rather than concerned. She couldn’t have said she feared death, but the fact that she couldn’t remember how it had swept her up in its icy fold was unnerving.

Blinking, she attempted to make sense of what she could see, but the gray blanket that had fallen over her gave nothing away.

Gray to replace the never-ending white.

Her brow furrowed deeper at the disconcerting idea. She hadn’t consciously chosen the thought, yet seeing the endless steely gloom had somehow provoked the response.

Why?

Again, she intended to speak the question, but once more, the language was lost. Something had swept the words from her lips, consuming them before they’d been vocalized, and for the first time since her brain had acknowledged her freefall, a flicker of fear furled inside her. The dread shifted, unfolding like a snake as the panic bloomed, and suddenly, the cool air that had once been so freeing froze her into numbed paralysis.

Why couldn’t she speak?

The query bounced around her head, reminding her fleetingly of the child who’d once chosen to be mute. When her father had walked out of her life, abandoning both her and her mother, refusing to speak had been one of the only ways the immature Kristina had been able to grasp for control in a life that appeared to be unraveling in front of her young eyes. The intensity of the emotion that had hit her then, and that she’d worked so damn hard to bury, flooded her nervous system, threatening to drown her.

No, no, no!

She blinked away the impending tears, refuting their existence and forcing her mind to focus on the current crisis. Her father had left her many years before. He wasn’t there to help her out-maneuver the latest catastrophe.

He had never been there.

Think.

Her jaw tensed as she searched her racing thoughts for what had happened. Was she immobilized in some way, or worse, actually paralyzed? The idea caught in the back of her throat, collecting where her words should have been. Immobilized, the concept of being incapacitated and unable to communicate seemed far scarier than death itself.

The end of life meant oblivion; an end to the mortal concerns that had occupied her time, whereas debilitation signaled something far graver. The demise of her every hope and dream, and an existence that relied on others for even her most basic needs. She didn’t need to be a scientist to know how dreadful that outcome would have been.

Help.

The word flitted in her mind, as though she was trying it for size, or perhaps she was only too afraid to try and speak again. Hearing it reverberate around her brain, though, cemented the requirement. Something was definitely wrong, and she did need help. If she was dead, she wouldn’t still be experiencing such conscious brain activity. She was far too smart to believe in any of the ‘life after death’ nonsense, so lying there, wherever ‘there’ was, the best she could conclude was that she’d been involved in a hideous accident that had disabled her.

Maybe I hurtled from a high building, and the thud I heard was really me colliding with the concrete.

She concentrated, trying to rationalize the result.

But I would be dead then, or at least have sensed the considerable pain of that collision.

Staring into the relentless gray, there was no answer. She tried to turn her head and look around, but despite the order resounding from her brain, there was no movement, as though the connection between both had been severed. All she sensed as she stared as far as her peripheral vision allowed was that the leaden color surrounding her was shrinking, encroaching on her personal space until there was nowhere left for her to hide.

Not only couldn’t she speak, but the air that had once sprinted past her hair and filled her with such satisfaction seemed to thin, as if there was less of it to go around.