The flowers bloomed left when the passage split and bloomed straight when side tunnels beckoned. Always just one flower appearing, always dying as she passed. She was writing her path in light that existed only in the moment of her passing.
Time stretched strangely. She might have walked for minutes or days. Her legs burned with exhaustion. Her dress, already ruined, caught and tore on rough stone. The mark pulsed erratic, sometimes hot, sometimes cold, the connection unstable and searching.
Then sound reached her ears, not the whispers but something vast and rushing. Water. A lot of water.
The passage opened, and vertigo slammed into her.
A cavern stretched before her, so massive that the flowers' light couldn't find walls or ceiling, only the stone beneath her feet that ended abruptly in nothing. Somewhere far below water roared, how far was impossible to tell. An underground river perhaps, or something pretending to be water. In this place, anything was possible.
Behind her, new sounds emerged. It was the sound of claws scraping against stone. Something had finally noticed the light-trail, or the movement, and it was coming fast.
Briar pressed against the passage wall, but the flowers were blooming forward to the edge, right to where stone became air.
"No." But even as she said it, the second-to-last flower withered. Only one path remained—forward.
The last flower bloomed in the air itself, hanging over the chasm, its petals glowing bright against the void.
The scraping sounds grew closer, close enough that she could hear breathing that didn’t belong to anything she wanted to meet in these dark spaces..
The floating flower pulsed, waiting, beckoning her forward. It was as though it was speaking right to her. Trust the light you shouldn't have. Trust the flowers that shouldn't bloom.
She had a choice.
Jump, or turn back to the darkness and the things now hunting in it.
The mark flared, sudden and hot, Eliam's alarm burning through the weakened connection.
No time left.
Briar closed her eyes and leaped.
Chapter fifteen
The golden flower winked out as her feet left stone, and she fell into roaring darkness, chasing a light that had already died.
The water rose up to swallow her, icy cold and far too eager.
The impact stopped all coherent thought and stole her breath, leaving nothing but the panic of drowning. The current grabbed her immediately, hungry and purposeful, spinning her in the dark until up became little more than an idea.
She clawed for the surface and by some miracle found it, managing a gasping breath before something wrapped around her ankle and pulled her back under.
Not the current this time. Whatever this was had fingers, too many fingers, with joints that bent in ways that shouldn't exist.
Terror shot through her as the thing dragged her down. Her dress tangled around her legs, heavy as chains. The mark flared in response, finally waking up, the heat tempered by the river. Then she saw it—a sickly green phosphorescence in the water below, outlining something that her mind refused to process.
A face, but wrong. Eyes like deep pools, too many of them, clustered where eyes shouldn't be. The mouth opened, wider than any mouth should, revealing rows of needle-like teeth. The fingers around her ankle belonged to arms that were too long, too jointed, bending in segments like insect legs.
Another glow to her left. Then right. Then everywhere.
They rose from the deep places, dozens of them, their bodies emitting that corpse-light glow. In the brief flashes of visibility, she saw skin like drowned flesh and hair that moved wrong, not flowing with the current but reaching, grasping at her liketentacles. Some of the creatures had faces almost human, until they smiled. Others had given up pretending to be anything but nightmares.
The water filled with their voices, the words, vibrating through her bones.
Fae pet...
Marked thing...
Drag her down...
