Page 107 of No Place in Time

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CECILY

1239

She was back in the solar at Veyron Hall.

The chair was by the window. She had not touched the embroidery frame for days. The light coming in at an angle meant it was afternoon, though she could not remember the morning.

She was being poisoned.

The thought arrived with a clarity she hadn’t felt for days, cutting through the slow, muffled heaviness that had made everything feel slightly wrong and slightly far away. She had to get up, get out of this room, get away before someone came to poison her again. She pushed herself upright in the chair. Her legs wouldn’t hold her properly. They moved, but without strength, without certainty, as if the connection between her will and her body had come partly loose. She got as far as standing and stopped there, swaying, her hands braced against the chair back.

The window. If she could reach the window. There was something outside. Someone outside. Waiting. She could feel it.

She began to move. Each step sapped her strength, costing her something. The floor seemed to rock slightly beneath her feet, as if she was standing on a boat’s deck. She kept one hand trailing along the wall for balance. The cold wall was the only thing that felt solid. She crossed the room one slow step at a time, breathing through the effort, until her hands found the windowsill and she could lean against it and look down.

The courtyard lay below in afternoon light. A figure stood at the far edge of the yard, near the gate. Tall. Dark-haired. The set of his shoulders unmistakable even at that distance.

Finn.

She opened her mouth. His name gathered in her throat and stopped there, as though the air between her and the sound had thickened into something she couldn’t push through. She tried harder, pressing forward against the sill, her mouth open, putting everything she had into it.

What came out was a thin, reedy pull of air, so meager it faded into nothingness immediately.

He was still there. He hadn’t moved yet. She tried again, straining to make a sound, and this time felt something—a pressure, a stirring—but still no voice. Not even a whisper.

Then he turned back toward the gate.

No!

She tried to make a noise, to call his name, with everything left in her, and what came out was not a sound at all. A scraping, a rasp. The ghost of a word that dissolved before it reached the air.

Finn walked through the gate and was gone.

She stood at the window. Her hands were shaking. She kept trying to call his name again, but the courtyard was empty now and there was no one to hear the small, broken sounds she was making.

She was alone.

The room had grown darker. The light that had marked the afternoon was now something closer to dusk, gray and still. She was cold in a way that had nothing to do with the air, cold that lived in her bones, that no fire could reach. She tried to push herself back from the window, and her legs gave out entirely. She went down hard, clutching the sill on the way, ending up on the floor with her palms flat against the floor and her cheek pressed against it.

She could not get up.

She lay there and tried to move but couldn’t. She was so tired. She had been so tired for so long.

Then came a knock at the door.

She lifted her head.

The knock again. Firm.

She opened her mouth. The words formed clearly in her mind:

Don’t come in, go away, I don’t want you here.

But they came out as nothing at all, not even a whisper. She watched the door. She could not look away. She could not move. She could only wait.

The door opened.