The scent of beeswax and roses still clung to your skin from the maids’ final ministrations. In the corridor beyond your chamber, footmen’s heels clicked in anxious rhythm, and somewhere below, the string quartet faltered mid-phrase. The wedding was to begin at noon. It wanted only ten minutes.

You stood before the tall mirror in your gown of ivory silk, seed pearls heavy at the bodice, a delicate lace veil trembling with each breath. Outside the window, carriages crowded the courtyard. You could hear the people beyond the gates, their cheers a distant, roaring sea. It was your duty to become the sea’s calm shore. Instead, you felt the floor shift beneath you.

The air itself seemed to shudder. A low hum, like a thousand tuning forks, rose from nowhere and everywhere. The light from the window bent, splintered, then burst into violent colour. You could not cry out. The room dissolved, the music with it, and the world turned inside out.

Then silence, cold and sterile.

You found yourself standing on a smooth grey floor in a vast chamber of glass and steel. The ceiling soared above you, and through the windows, you beheld a city not of spires and smoke, but of monstrous towers that clawed at the sky. Strange markings glowed along the walls. The air smelled of metal and something sharp, like the air after lightning.

A man in a fine but bizarrely cut suit of deep blue looked up from a table scattered with glowing papers. Another, broad-shouldered and dressed in garments that would scandalise any tailor of your acquaintance, rose from a low seat. A third, young and thin, gaped at you from behind a tray of peculiar glass cups.

You were not in England. You were not in your wedding. And if the faces before you were any indication, you were very far from home indeed.