As Jane scooted from the soft confines of the feather-lined mattress, the “servant” said, “You are in…Delfina.” She spoke with a question in her tone, as if she couldn’t quite grasp the fact that Jane didn’t already know the answer. “A kingdom without time or age.”

Delfina? She’d…heard of it, she realized with a start. Not the name, but the “kingdom without time.” A few of the beings she’d interviewed had mentioned another realm, a magical realm, with differing kingdoms outside the notice of humans. At the time, she hadn’t known whether to believe them or not. They’d been prisoners, locked away for the good of mankind. They would have said anything to gain their freedom. Even offer to escort her into their world.

What if…?

What if she’d crossed the threshold from her world and into the other? Jane finally allowed the thought to reach its conclusion, and her stomach churned with sickness.

Before the car accident changed her life so radically, she’d studied more than the creatures of myth. She’d studied the manipulation of macroscopic energy, attempting the “impossible” on a daily basis. Like the molecular transfer of an object from one location—one world—to another, and she had succeeded. Not with life-forms, of course, not yet, but with plastic and other materials. That’s why she’d been deemed an acceptable risk for interacting with the captured beings, both dead and alive.

What if she’d somehow transferred herself? But how would she have done so, she wondered next, when the necessary tools were not in her cabin? Latent effects of her contact with the previously transferred materials, perhaps?

No. There were too many variables. Namely, her new, royal identity.

“Rhoslyn,” she said, keeping her narrowed gaze on the girl as she settled her weight on her legs. Her knees knocked together, and her muscles knotted, but thankfully the dizziness did not return.