Confined for daring to use a talent in public, Erinii takes the opportunity to escape and the only place to run is the Citadel.

Being a bastard on Bassinor has been difficult enough, but Erinii Zakkata has always done her duty to family and that was what landed her in the facility to begin with. Gassed into a hallucinogenic state, she has spent four years trying to swim out of the fanciful creations of her mind, and with a little intervention from a familiar face she manages to find reality again. Or did she?

Until she can find a way to escape she has to appear to be a madwoman in a psych facility, and when the role comes far to easily she has to wonder if she has made it out of her nightmares or is she still trapped in her own mind, living out an escape that seems far too good to be true?

A representative from the Citadel is now featuring heavily in her fantasies, but is he real or just another illusion to keep her from escaping her imprisonment?

Time and a heavy detox will tell.

Excerpt:

As the gas flowed from the ceiling to pool around the edge of her bed, she hoped that she had gained enough strength to keep the gas out while enabling herself to breathe. Watching her door open, she tried to keep the blank and cheerful expression on her face.

“Good morning, Zakkata. Who are you today?” The breather strapped to his face made the expression in his eyes all the more poignant. She knew those eyes.

“The Swan Queen, of course.”

She got to her feet and swept past her stepbrother Davio and then waited for him to escort her down the hall.

Images of the last few years in a drugged state flickered through her mind. The breathers did resemble squids, wrapping their limbs around the face of their wearer and protruding downward to house the filter.

The stone walls were actually a solid-pour composite designed to keep the psychic emanations to a minimum.

As she entered the dayroom, she was hard pressed to keep her face in its bland configuration. Patients were arranged haphazardly, some tethered to their chairs and some roaming free. These were the tumbling trolls and fairies of her imagination.

They were wearing the same tight, sleeveless top and black tights that she wore as well as black slippers. They shrieked, moaned and rocked in place, each had a caretaker with them, but no one was moving to help them.

Keeping her features straight was the hardest thing she had ever done. She took the seat that Davio directed her to and smiled politely at the server who brought her a tray containing a sandwich of dried bread with some protein spread on it and an array of pills.

“Thank you, squid face.” She smiled beatifically at the server and the startled man bobbed his head.

As he had yesterday, the server walked over to Davio and began speaking. “They are lobbying to get her freedom, you know. Can you believe it, after what she did?”