Slow Waking

A Romantasy NovellaRosalind Larkspur was seven years gone into a sleep no one was supposed to wake from when the Cradle's careful order finally cracked — and she opened her eyes in a war that had moved on entirely without her.She remembers a census-man's face. She remembers her sister's hands. Everything between then and now is a decade of other people's memories, harvested out of her a night at a time, and the man standing guard at her cell door with a face full of guilt she doesn't recognize and shouldn't trust.Corin Vane was assigned to the Cradle to keep its secrets, not to notice the Wellspring in cell nine humming with more life than a woman who's supposedly been asleep for ten years has any right to. He was never supposed to be the one who let her out. Now they're both fugitives from a facility that isn't supposed to exist, carrying a decade of stolen reserve that could end the war — or get them both quietly disappeared before anyone learns the Cradle ever had a problem.Waking up is only the beginning. Staying awake is the fight.