We stayed up all night. In the absolute, suffocating blackness of the cellar, where not even a sliver of starlight could reach, Eloise’s voice was a steady, rhythmic whisper. After going over our plan. She drilled the structural foundation of the portal spell into my mind over and over again. She told me exactly what I needed to say, how I needed to channel the magic from the small, compressed pocket within me that the iron cuffs hadn't fully snuffed out, and—most importantly—what I needed to think.
"You cannot just picture a place," she had whispered, her hand finding my wrist in the dark and gripping it tightly. "You have to feel the temperature of the air. Smell the earth. Hear the ambient noise. If your mind fractions, the gateway breaks."
I closed my eyes in the pitch-black room and
