The loud crash of her door flying open that morning sent Selene's heart slamming against her ribs. For one terrible, dizzy second, she was not in this strange room. She was back in the castle. Back in her old room, in the Royal Pack. The sound was the same—a violent announcement that her peace was over, that someone had come to take something from her.
She had gone to bed very late. She knew she had training with Zephyr at dawn, but sleep had been impossible. The missing scroll haunted her. She had laid the others out on her small table, reading their familiar lines again and again, but her mind kept circling back to the one that was gone—the special scroll, the one that tied everything together. She didn't remember finally falling asleep, only that it felt like a sudden drop into darkness. And then, this rude awakening.
