CLARA STARED dumbfounded at the huge gaping hole in the wall of Emir's prison cell. Her intense desperation caused the power within her to well and burst in a flash of silver light.

When the Fyrian guard opened the door to her cell, her powers hummed in an instant, restless and affronted. They abhorred suppression, and as soon as the door with anti-magic was out of the way, her powers demanded release.

Not only was she free of her prison but Clara also created their way out. The opening led to the line of trees outside. The moonlight scanned the forest bed and Clara's moon magic core purred in satisfaction. It was where two parts of her were drawn—the forest and the moon.

She leaped over the slumped body of the unconscious guards and weaved around debris for the semi-conscious prince.

"Prince Emir?" Clara tapped his cheek lightly which he responded with a low grunt. The prince must have hit the back of his head when the silver beam of light sent a strong wind in its wake. But if they had to get away fast, he must come to his senses at once.

Biting her lip, Clara reached for the magical energy in her Earth core, that swirling green wisp awaiting her call. It slithered through her veins into her fingertips with the calm and patience of nature.

She clasped one hand at the back of his neck, the other skimming over the rest of his body to soothe.

The prince stirred and opened his eyes not soon enough to witness the emerald glow in her hand of which the power could only be possessed by an Earthal.

With one hand on his head, Emir sat with Clara's insistence to help. He felt energized and well as if he'd slept for hours, which he had not done for quite a while. He should feel sore and dizzy. The prince swore he remembered hitting his head on something sold, yet there wasn't a single scratch at the back of his head.

There could be only one explanation, so he turned to her with eyes full of wonder.

"You healed me." And there was no doubt about it. Emir remembered feeling her touch and the warmth that came with it even when his eyes were closed.

"I did. And we have to get our hands free of those shackles." Clara swiped her hand vertically in the air and the chain which connected the manacles snapped in half.

"How are you feeling? Can you stand?" she said when the prince remained his stare pinned on her. Clara wounded a hand around his arm when a sudden spark made them flinch and pull apart.

Her lips parted as if she'd seen the prince in a new light. Clara didn't know what changed from those angular jaws and the way he clenched them as he returned that same intensity of attraction with his midnight eyes. His full lush lips were drawn in a thin line and his fists were balled, shaking, as if it took everything in him to resist the instinct of gathering the princess in his arms and showering her with...

Clara blushed and shook her head to drive away the obscene thought of her and the prince in an intimate position.

"It's the connection of our powers," he said, getting up, his face turned away from her. "They can recognize the bond—"

"The bond?"

"The twin bond," was Emir's terse reply. "The Sun and Moon are the celestial brother and sister of the Sky, who each swore to guard the world day and night. But that also meant they could never be together, never in the same part of the sky at the same time."

"And the connection we felt..."

"A part of the Sun and Moon is within us. Through us, they can recognize each other and feel the spark of their connection."

"Oh." Something in Clara's chest fell. It was getting harder and harder to deny her heart's whispers. Sure, there was an undeniable attraction and she wasn't certain when it even began.

Was it when she first laid eyes on him on the very first day she woke up in another princess' body? Or when they first became one with the stars, carrying her in his arms as they probed the night.

Perhaps it would be the time when they had been trapped in the confines of the hidden sanctum. Thinking back on it, something did change between them, a sudden shift to openness.

And that kiss, brief yet sweet, they shared in Caelholme in the middle of a dance. Her lips tingled at the memory.

But did Emir feel the same way? No one in their right mind would randomly kiss a friend without a strong reason. And the prince already made a point that he had no plans to talk about them. As if he was possessed and had no recollection of it ever happening.

"Anneliese?"

Clara awoke from her musings. She was still slumped on the floor. Emir offered his hands in front of her, palm up.

"Quick, check the dungeon!" a voice shouted from the top of the stair, and perhaps a dozen or more footsteps scrambled down.

In no time, Clara and Emir shot through the wall into the darkness of the forest.

The evening mist had risen and thinned out and now covered the sky loosely, like thousands of baby spiders leaving trails of silk behind them. The moonlight, so bright and silver before, was sickly grey. The air was damp and chilly.

She kept her eyes on the ground to prevent tripping. The shadows were imperceptibly fading along with the light. Some colors in the background stood out more, though, like bright little poisonous mushrooms and the quick tail of an orange salamander. But everything else became shades of black and white and gray.

Sounds grew strange. If her heel crunched dead leaves, sometimes it seemed silent; sometimes it echoed loudly off rocks and logs.

But it wasn't long before the fog began to settle in earnest as they ran and ran. At any other time, she would have been simply fascinated. The girl who

But now... there was something creepy about it.

They passed through thick patches of gray clouds whose colony droplets were so large she could almost make out each one. Water seeped out of everything like magic; she saw a bead of dew appear and pull itself together at the tip of a pine branch like a living thing. For a moment, she had a glimpse of the black-and-white world reflected in it before it silently fell to the ground.

The fog found its way through her clothes, which became heavy and damp. And then hot and itchy, and freezing and itchy as her legs and body moved beneath them.

A few times it was so hard to see that they almost stepped off the path. Emir let out an un-princely oath as he twisted his ankle on an exposed root.

The land began to slope downhill and the fog poured down beside them, rolling like a slow-moving liquid. Tendrils shot out before the rest of the clouds as if feeling out the way. It curled and rippled around obstacles like trees and stones.

The princess began to be genuinely frightened.

"Here," Emir said, stopping. "You look miserable. Take my cape. It will keep the worst of the damp off."

She turned to argue with him. Wondered if he would think less of her if she reached for his hand.

But fog quickly filled the space between them. The prince's body already seemed to fade and dissolve into gray. As he took off his cape and swirled it, the fog flowed along, blanketing him completely.

"...not cold at all the splurble burbly..."

His words sounded strange and distant.

"Emir?" she called out, uncertain.

"Right here." He sounded odd like the words died inches from his mouth as the mist stopped them and they fell to the ground. "Hang on. The—"

Whatever he said next was muffled.

"Emir?"

She walked the meter or so to where she thought he was. There was nothing but a wall of swirling white.

"Emir?!"

She spun around. The fog made little trails behind her skirts and hair.

Finally, there was a muffled response, a little exasperated sounding.

"Where are you?" she demanded.

Her heart began to pound. She could hear it. She could hear that and the breath in her ears and nothing else. Not even the noise of the pebbles she knocked around as she spun desperately looking for the prince.

She knew she should stay where she was. She should stay like a fawn and let Emir find her. If both of them moved around, they would be lost.

Harrumphhh.

There was a strange noise like grinding or a whuffing. Clara thought it sounded a little like an angry bear. But it wasn't entirely a natural noise.

"Emir?" she whispered. She wasn't sure whether she should scream so he could find her, or stay silent and let whatever that noise was pass by without ever seeing her.

Silence all around.

Heavy silence.

Her mind filled the empty, swirling fog with images. Eyeless, leering, toothy smiles. The shadow monsters of the Dread. The strangely black and fluid forms they took out here would fit in so well with the fog.

And still, there was silence.

And then the nearly silent scrape of gravel on the path.

"Emir?"

Nothing.

Then: Harrumphhh.

The princess ran.

She aimed for what she thought was deeper into the forest; it didn't matter. It was all around her. She would feel safer under the trees. Things didn't look for princesses, for people, under trees.

Right?

She looked behind her; white streaked with gray to mark where she had come from, like a sticky shadow.

She looked ahead. It, too, was blank white and—

Thunk.

She smashed her head into the thick and spiky branch of a dead pine. An offensive, white-hot pain exploded from her forehead. She reeled backward, hitting her back on another tree.

Her right eye was clouded; when she tentatively put her hand up to see what was wrong, it came away covered in hot, fresh blood.

Harroomph.

She bit her lip and wiped the rest of the blood out of her eye.

"Emir!" she cried halfheartedly.

She watched the cloud swirl and twirl in front of her. Something was making them move. Something was making them slide and bubble, like foam on top of a pot being boiled clean.

She saw the smile first.

The black, toothless smile, wide and wider and then impossibly wide. Two yellow eyes above it opened into existence. And long, unlikely, skinny black arms, rising to reach around and drag her in.

She screamed. A long, piercing, terrible scream that never made it past her lips. Her mouth was open, and she felt her throat working and her lungs lose their breath, but no noise came out. Utter silence, despite how hard she screamed. No one would ever hear...

The thing smiled even wider.

Clara stumbled backward, hands out to either side, feeling for trees. There was nothing she could do. She couldn't run blindly deeper into the woods. So, Clara resolved to fight.

The moonlight sword appeared in her right hand, carved to the hilt. Its twenty-four-inch blade pulsed a soft glowing light, mimicking the stream of silver from the moon.

The demon swayed sickeningly from one side to another, like a snake trying to decide which way to pounce.

Clara screamed again to give herself strength. But again, nothing came out.

The thing suddenly rushed at her. Inhumanly fast, with no warning.

She raised her sword and brought her arm down, her blade into the monster. The thing twisted in surprise, spiraling round and round, turning its long neck and body back to regard her full-on.

The monster dipped quickly around her attack and circled her calmly. Two, three, four times as long as she thought it was.

While she was trying to fight its front half, its endless tail formed coils about her legs.

She brought her sword down again on the flesh closest to her, sinking all the way through with a strange, unlikely sound—

The monster screeched and howled and whipped its forked tail around. The princess swung her sword again, trying not to lose her advantage by staring at where she had sliced the thing in half: the flat, raw wound and white-and-black pus that issued from it. Its tail kept wiggling on its own while its head and body squirmed and drifted through the mist.

Sunlight slashed through the fog and suddenly her scream turned on, hoarse and ragged and horrible, and everything was bright and painful.

When her sword connected this time it made for a ringing metallic noise—as if it had crashed against something equally metal and dangerous.

"Anneliese!" Emir cried out as he saw her raise her sword again.

It was his daylight sword—its blade flashing gold and yellow; it was his body she was aiming for. The fog had thinned slightly, and she could see his confused, defensive stance.

"You almost struck me..." he started to say, then noticed the piece of the demon on the ground that twisted and sprayed viscous black blood from where she had hacked it off.

"But where..." he started.

The other half of the demon flung itself out of the fog at the prince's face. Emir immediately deflected the attack, hitting it to the side.

Before she could even think about it, Clara raised her sword and hacked at the thing again. While her blow didn't cut through it this time, it did injure it, causing it to scrabble and scream on the ground, grinding its head into the dirt. Emir took careful aim and stabbed the monster in the throat.

The two watched, heaving, as the thing hissed and died.

Emir shakily ran his hand through his hair. It was unclear if he was recovering from the brief fight, the surprise attack, or the princess almost killing him by accident.

"Nice job," he finally said, pointing at the two halves of the creature on the ground.

She looked at him—he was a little pale, to be sure, but he spoke as if she had recited a poem from memory or some other little mundane things. She didn't understand fully how he could be so... blasé.

"Thanks for the help," she said, trying to match his tone. "We... make a great team."

"We do indeed, although it seemed like you were doing pretty well on your own. A princess and a monster slayer. They'll be singing an epic about you," he said with a grin.

She gave a courtly curtsy in response. "It's all in a day's work."

The last bit of blood from the creature bubbled up and hissed into the ground. Its body faded.

"What could that thing possibly be?" Clara poked the ground with her sword where the remains of the creature used to be. "It could be like the other shadow monsters sent after me, but I haven't seen any quite like it before."

"It has no previous memories. It would have left an essence when it died otherwise."

"So... where to?" Clara turned in a slow circle. "And what place is this? Where exactly is 'here?'"

"If my guess is right, given that this place matches the book's description well, we're in the Mystic Forest."

Clara winced. "There's nothing mystical in this place, mind you. But..." She pinched her eyes into narrow slits, trying to see through the mist around them. "If what you say is right, then we must be in the heart of the forest, the mist grows thicker in this part. Which also means"—she gulped—"more like this creature, the anima, lurks in here.

"And quite a strategic place for the master to build a fortress here. No one would think of looking for them in this place of abomination. Even the Elders wouldn't dare."

"Then you realize no one would think of looking for us here either, right?"

Clara and Emir exchanged a look and tension replaced the momentary relief from the defeat of the shadow monster. They jumped into a defensive position, their backs facing each other.

A chill skated up her spine for a split second before two figures stepped out of the darkness. Recognition instantly flashed to Clara and Emir. These hooded creatures of darkness were there when Anneliese was attacked on her way to her cousin, and they were also present the day Emir's mother died.

"Hollows," Emir spat to the ground, his grip on his sword tightening. There was only a meager restraint he could muster to stop himself from charging.

"The Dread and the master said playtime is over," the Hollow on their right hissed. Drool dribbled down his chest as his pointy teeth licked his chapped grayish lips. Beneath his robe was a man with a hairless, skull-like head. Those red eyes were a beacon of danger in the middle of the misty dark forest.

"Come, Celestial holders," the one to their left said, "you are under our mercy. They did say to bring you alive but not a word of you being unhurt."

The Hollows chortled as they inched their floating bodies toward them, trapping them in.

"What do we want, brother?" the first Hollow said with a snicker.

"The whole of Hiestora at our feet."

Clara was only half-listening as she worked her mind with a plan to escape. The Hollows were close enough that some of the mist circling them disengaged and reached for her.

Without so much of a warning, Emir stabbed the daylight sword into the ground. He sliced through it in a circle and then up, sending soil dust to shroud their escape.

They took off, not looking back. The big roots made it harder to move faster as they had to jump over and make sure they wouldn't trip. They had not gone that far but when Clara looked back, there was no sign of their captors.

Clara slammed against a tree. The back of her head struck the wood with a sickening thud.

Her vision blurred before clearing. When it did, a third Hollow was revealed. His gaunt face was only inches from her.

"Time to sleep, princess."