Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis

on sensing her hands to identify their movements. The signals didn’t come from her, but she could recognize the tug of her muscles, the brush of skin. “—but doesn’t know. She never knows,” her fingers said.
    Amara wanted to scream.
    Someone was doing this to her. Someone was pushing and shoving around her muscles. Someone was shutting her out.
    â€œStop this,” Maart said. “Jorn will be back soon. Please stop.”
    â€œIf you’re not Amara,” Cilla asked, “are you a spirit? A mage?”
    Amara felt her lips stretch. Was she smiling? She never smiled like this. Not with her lips parting, her teeth visible.
    â€œThen who?” Maart shook. Frustration—and fear, too, Amara thought, but she couldn’t comfort him, couldn’t tell him his fear and anger helped as little as her own.
    â€œI am not a mage. I am—” Amara’s hands paused there. The next movements came slowly. “N-OO-L-U-N. S-A-N-D-I-AA-K-OO. The letters aren’t the same. We have a separate letter for the
d
. It’s a hard sound, like in
Maart
, and the
k
is softer. But this is close. This is how you’d say it.”
    â€œNolan,” Cilla repeated, almost a question.
    Nolan
, Amara repeated to herself. She didn’t know the name. How could she not know the name? This person was in her body. This person was in the tips of her fingers and the heat of her belly and the squish-and-pull of her lungs.
    She should know the name.
    â€œYou’re not a mage,” Cilla stated. “Why are you possessing her?”
    Maart’s hands kept rising and moving together as if he wanted to say something, but Cilla had said all there was to say. She looked calm. She was good at that. Even when she was afraid, nervous, she hid it under tight smiles and nods.
    This calm was new. Regal.
    â€œPossessing
her
? No, no, Amara’s the mage, not me. I’m just a boy. Amara she pulls me in, she makes me see through her eyes,” her hands said. “Her mage powers they do this but she doesn’t know it. You have to tell her. You have to explain.”
    The hands moved too fast. The inflections were wrong, as was the grammar—but not when Nolan wanted his words to work. When he cared enough to slow down.
    Amara wanted to shake her head. She wanted to dash away, move backward, as though that would leave Nolan behind in the space where she now stood and leave her free. Her body didn’t listen. Her connection to it was severed. Amara was thoughts, nothing more. She couldn’t even move that lock of hair out of her eyes.
    â€œSo Amara’s responsible for doing this?” Cilla asked.
    â€œYes! She pulled me in for years, since before Jorn took her from the palace I’ve been in her head, since before the coup. Always in her head. Locked up. She sucks me in every time I close my eyes. She can do more than heal but she never
knew
.”
    No.
Amara couldn’t think beyond that single dim word:
no
. This was madness. This was beyond believing.
    Maart was staring at Amara’s hands. Cilla scanned the rest of her. Her eyes dipped to the way Amara’s feet stood on the floor, wide and steady, then rose to the eagerness of her hands, and settled on her lips, her eyes. “I’ve never heard of this happening,” Cilla said. “Mages do odd things, but they don’t move into each other’s bodies.”
    â€œThey do!” Amara’s movements contained too much energy. “Amara does! Normally I can only watch, but now my medicine is changing something. Amara still pulls me in, but now I can … I can …” Her hands thrust out, then in, pressing to her breastbone. “I can
move
.”
    Tears pricked Amara’s eyes. Nolan’s tears. Not hers. She knew, because if her body was her own, those tears would’ve shown up minutes ago.
    â€œWhere are you from?” Cilla asked, still calm. “Are you