Prologue: Must Be Dreaming

This is the right turn, wrong universe
Taking me in full bloom…

~ Imogen Heap, "Must Be Dreaming"

The Queen of Shadow had a son. In hindsight, it was probably the one thing in this mad dreamworld that shouldn't have come as any sort of surprise, and yet it was the first to not only shock but truly frighten her.

Alex's immediate thought was to barrel into his arms in undisguised relief, but halfway through the action she stopped sharply to pummel him in the chest instead, shoving him back with ferocious indignation. "You…pathetic…coward!" she shouted, her voice breaking as much in wounded betrayal as anger. "How could you? You told them where I was – you turned me in, didn't you?"

"I wish," he retorted, and his voice – crisp, dry, and pure superior Justin – was accent-free. "Could've used the reward."

She took a step back to regard the Prince more carefully and realized with a sinking heart that he was as unlike the madcap English adventurer for whom she had mistaken him as he was unlike her real brother. His skin was pale as alabaster, but luminous – like moondust. His hair – glossy black and artfully tousled – framed an exquisite face that held only cynicism and disdain, especially in his eyes. Cool and silvery as slate, they were, and narrowed in something like contempt.

He was an idealized Justin – no, a Perfect Justin. Even his clothing was uncharacteristically perfect: an open-collared black shirt tailored to follow the lean tapering of his torso and gray trousers that traced the contours of his narrow hips and lithe legs. He was literally breathtaking – beautiful and terrible all at once, and impossible to look away from, even as the sight of him pricked her eyes to unshed tears.

"Justin?" the Dark Queen trilled.

Something jerked in Alex's midsection as Perfect Justin glanced beyond her, over her shoulder at the terrifying Shadow-incarnation of Theresa Russo. It was difficult to decide which was more nauseating: the Prince's casual disregard of her presence – as though she were no more than a piece of furniture to be pushed aside or looked around – or her memory of the Dark Queen's face. She did not turn to follow Perfect Justin's line of sight; the Queen's appearance – a corruption of her mother's, with strange dusky skin, hair like tarnished copper and those black, black eyes – was permanently seared into Alex's mind.

"Take your sister to her chambers and see that she is dressed for dinner," the Queen instructed, then with a rustle of black taffeta and stately sounding of high heels on marble, she made her exit.

Perfect Justin continued to stare after the Queen for a long moment, a distant glint in his silver eyes that might have been the spark of new malice or perhaps the kindling of a tear. When his eyes returned to Alex it was gone, replaced by the contempt that now tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"This way, if you please," he said with neither amusement nor spite nor, indeed, any emotion at all, as he raised a titanium wand he'd never had to fight for and directed her down a corridor of silver-veined black granite, its windows open to the perpetual, insidious red dusk-haze of the Dark Lands.

Alex went ahead of him without protest and crossed the threshold of a room lined to its rafters with massive ticking clock faces and dials, its floor fully occupied with nine massive octagonal boxes of burnished rosewood – eight in a circle with the ninth in the center. As she stared about herself in puzzlement – what kind of a bedroom was this? Were the boxes trunks – or furniture? – Perfect Justin muttered a word behind her, and she turned just in time to see him swirl the wand in an intricate pattern as the door slammed shut between them.

But she had no time for shouts of anger or betrayal, for the ticking of the clocks was growing louder, echoed now by rhythmic clockwork sounds from the octagonal boxes surrounding her, and as Alex turned from the door to regard her new prison, the lids of all nine boxes simultaneously hinged back in triangular sections to unfold nine…creatures. Droid-like women with lanky, yet sinuous, metallic bodies, their feet (if indeed they had any) anchored in their rosewood pedestals and their faces identical masks of age-stained gold with features ever so slightly like her Aunt Megan's, save for the eerie dial in place of the right eye and the lips a mere reflection in a rectangular bit of mirror. One beckoned a disturbingly human hand, its flesh a warm champagne gold, and Alex stepped toward it automatically as all nine began to weave in a stepless dance while crooning a hypnotic, electronic lullaby: "Why do birds suddenly appear / Every time you are near / Just like me, they long to be / Close to you…"

She had scarcely a moment to wonder why, in this macabre kingdom of Shadow, only Perfect Justin wore no mask, nor shared the Queen's feral black eyes, then the beckoning droid woman gently sprinkled a shimmer, like starlight, over her face, and Alex Russo ceased to exist.