Excerpt

From Chapter 1:

Excerpt read by the author:

Light floods my vision, but there’s no warmth in it, and I shut my eyes, wondering where it’s coming from. The darkness returns, and not just the darkness of my vision, but something far deeper, a terrifying abyss that freezes my heart.

The darkness in my mind.

I know I’m lying on a hard surface, and that I woke up here a moment ago, but before that, there’s nothing – nothing. Just a yawning maw of blackness gaping across my thoughts, a monstrous beast that hollowed out my head, leaving emptiness where memories should have been. Coldness wraps my entire being like an icy blanket; even the air in my lungs chills me. Questions assault me, a million flaming arrows aiming for my heart, and one strikes its target with the greatest impact: Where am I?

I sit up and blink, turning my face away from the whiteness that blinded me before. And all I see is ice. Ice and iron. Thick bars stretch up from the ground before me, reaching for the dark ceiling, with frozen water filling the narrow spaces between them. The frosty, pale blue wall glimmers, frightening and mesmerizing at once. It looks so sturdy, it might as well be a mountain, cutting me off from any hope of escape in that direction. Only a small, round window – the source of the light – breaks its otherwise solid form. The cold floor stings my bare feet as I stand and approach it, hoping a glimpse outside might help me figure out where I am. But the window is barely bigger than my hand, and all I see outside is a vast stretch of snow and the pale, empty sky above it. Nothing that tells me anything except this: I don’t belong here.

But where do I belong? I sense a great shadow looming over me, as if an invisible knife hangs over my head, and hug my bare arms. But the gesture brings me no comfort, for these pale, slight limbs look foreign, though they’re parts of me. I realize I haven’t even a memory of my own appearance – whether my legs are long or short, whether my face is heart-shaped or round, whether my eyes are black or blue. Who or even what I am. The very body I inhabit might as well be a stranger, and the unfamiliarity sends a new chill racing down my spine. If I don’t even know what I look like, how can I hope to discover who I am? Where I came from? Or how I ended up in this icy prison?

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