“Not likely,” Lyla giggled. “He doesn’t want you anywhere near her. They’re in a world a human like you can’t reach now and he won’t want to be interrupted. My job was to kill you. Akareth thinks you too insignificant to do the job himself.”
“I care nothing for your cowardly god.”
“You should. You have his attention and that’s quite difficult to get and dangerous to keep. You’re—”
Mullins forced the bit into her mouth and buckled it tightly around her head before she could finish. I watched as she was dragged back to her cage and locked inside.
“I’ll take first shift,” Cathal volunteered, wiping his bloodied knife on his pant leg.
I nodded and turned back to face Nazario. “He seems eager.”
“He’s a man who likes to keep busy.”
Letting out a breath, I stepped around him and headed toward the treehouse to find Meridan in the same position as before with Dahlia lying on the bed in front of her. She looked up at me, her eyes big with worry. With no immediate solution to offer, I knelt by the bed, pulling Dahlia’s hand into mine. She felt like ice. Like a corpse that had been floating on the waves for days. I raised her hand to my mouth and pressed my lips to her knuckles, praying to God. To Lune. Anyone who would listen.
I just wanted her to wake up.
He will know me
And he will wish for death instead
~ Reighley Sanders
Darkness so thick I could feel it under my skin surrounded me in an endless abyss of silence and horror. It had gone on for days. The torture. His voice speaking to me, burrowing into my thoughts like a rat eating through a corpse. Though I tried to hide, there was nowhere I could go that he could not find me and all would begin again. I wasn’t sure if it was a game or if I was being punished, but I could feel the fragments of my existence being pulled apart, and the talons of his presence sinking deeper.
I sat in a cave somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, knees hugged to my chest, but it did nothing to help the cold that had settled in my veins. A small circle of dim light surrounded me, rich with colors, and I knew it was all I had. All the life left in that graveyard.
My teeth chattered as I stared at the hues dancing in the sand around my feet. Little ribbons of blue and violet like waterreflecting from the surface of a pool. Above me, his great ocean loomed, a world of its own waiting to swallow me again. Where I’d retreated, he had not yet found me, and I prayed it would be a while before he did.
“Hiding, are we?” a soft voice said.
I looked up to find Lyla standing with her shoulders slumped, loose, dirty rags covering her. But fabric was not all that dressed her. Blood coated her skin, dripping into the rocks where she stood. Dark circles tugged at her eyes and her hair looked just as ratty and unkempt as ever.
“What else am I to do?” I said, my voice like sand.
“He knows where you are, you know.”
I shuddered at the thought, but some part of me knew it. “Why doesn’t he come for me?”
“It’s his game. To make you think you’ve escaped. Hope stolen is worse than the absence of it in the first place.”
“How would you know that unless you hoped once?”
“I have hoped. I hoped mother would come for me. I hoped he would release me. I hoped the sons would not use me like their little whore. I hoped,” she said through a clenched jaw. “I hoped and I hoped and I hoped.” Taking a breath, she relaxed her features, shrugging her shoulders. “Until I didn’t anymore.”
I stiffened as Lyla took a step toward me, the blood dripping down her arms and legs as if she’d bathed in it.
“Why are you like this?”
“They’re tearing me to pieces trying to get me to tell them how to free you of this. Your pirate and that other one with the red hair. They want me to stay awake, but they’re ignorant to the fact that even the briefest of slumbers will give me more than enough time with you.” She raised her hand in front of her, wriggling her fingers. “Hmm. I’ve got all five in this place.”
“What are you talking about? They’re dead. All of them.”
Her eyes shifted toward me, reflecting what tiny amount of light I had like glass marbles. “Oh, you’re not used to this, are you? They’re not dead. Not yet. You’re dreaming. Or did you forget?”
The words didn’t make sense. I blinked, trying to understand them, but it was ridiculous.
“N—No. I woke up. Days ago. And then I was brought here.”
