LUCY
Maybe I've fallen into a dream.
That would explain why Tavric and Jaxl have appeared out of thin air—and more so why Amara is with them.
Yes, it can only be a dream, Amara's presence being the clincher. Or maybe I'm hallucinating from the hunger, the stench, the cold fear of the unknown pressing in from every direction.
Whichever it is, this cannot be real. It doesn't matter that all my senses are screaming, that the scene before me is too vivid, too textured to be illusion. Amara is human. My human friend from the human world I tried to build for myself. She cannot be here.
She just cannot. If she is, that would mean… my mind refuses to finish the thought.
And yet I hear her voice clearly in the next second.
"Lucy."
I feel her warm touch as her hands fly over my face, my shoulders, my arms, checking and gauging with a frantic thoroughness that belongs entirely to her.
"Lucy, are you okay? Did those bastards do anything to you? Did they touch you?!"
