Prologue

Prologue

Clouds touched the ceiling of her room.

No, not clouds exactly. A kind of relentless, indissoluble, dark fog. It moved above her resting body with no hurry, unfolding itself over and over again until there was no ceiling, only shadows. They hovered there for a moment, the space between them and the girl crackling with tension. It was silent, electric, the quiet before a storm.

The stupor broke. A line of darkness detached itself, twirling as if to form a hurricane, descending upon her body to whisk it away.

It was suddenly so cold that the breath leaving the girl’s lips had turned white. It moved towards the darkness, which recoiled at the contact, unsure. To anyone watching, it would appear as though the shadows had a life of their own and that right then, they were considering their options.

They continued their descent, reaching closer and closer still and then–

A wall. An invisible line separated the girl and the shadows. They spread, enveloping her in a glass case of darkness. An unbreakable case. The girl was light and there was far too much of it, even if she slept, even if the darkness was hers too.

The mark on the side of her stomach reacted to the attack, coming alive to protect its owner. It glowed, burning her skin and healing it, so fast the girl never knew it happened.

The shadows hissed. They could never move fast enough, and they were so tired.

The girl stirred, her eyelids fluttering. Light and shadow froze, waiting.

She opened her eyes. She saw the shadows. She didn’t scream. For all her intelligence, the girl still thought them hallucinations. The shadows were annoyed by her naiveté; the light could do nothing about it. The girl blinked her bright blue eyes, ignorant as to how beautiful the shadows and darkness looked on them, how her skin glowed fiercer in its wake. She raised a hand, the hand that had been scarred in a fall. But what kind of fall would draw blood and paint her skin with it? Sometimes the girl saw it, the mark, but she was quick to ignore anything that fell under the category of unnatural. She’d been doing it for years. It would be her doom.

The shadows pressed down harder. The name. All she needed was to utter the name and it would be over.

The girl felt it, the need to speak a word foreign to her mind and tongue, to call out the name. Her lips parted and it was there, just below the surface, begging for freedom. The shadows reached down, a hand built of starless sky trying to touch her.

Suddenly, a ray of early morning sunshine entered the room through the window, and the battle raging inside the room fell away as though it had never been.

It was the same thing every night.