Darkness rushed around Elaria, swallowing the scream still ripping her throat apart.

But this darkness was not the soft, breathing void she had floated through before.

This one was violent.

It slammed around her like a collapsing storm, edges jagged, temperature wrong—freezing one heartbeat, burning the next. Colors she had no names for flashed inside it, fracturing across her skin like bruises in reverse.

The hand that dragged her was impossibly strong.

Unyielding.

Desperate.

Not the ...