The pixie’s lip curls.Clearly, as I can think of no other reason than desperation for you to crawl back to that sniveling bitch.
“I’m glad you feel no obligation to hold back how you truly feel on my account, Rina.”
I’ve never trusted her, Niko. She’s always used her morality as an excuse to take whatever the hell she pleases.Marina scans the beach warily, her clear blue gaze lethal.Where’d she go?
“As I dragged her here against her will and then horrified her with the sight of my true self, she’s probably skulking in the shadows somewhere plotting my demise.”
She’ll have to get in line,she signs viciously,as I’m one of your best friends, and I get to kill you first.
“A privilege I’d never deny you, of course. May I inquire which offense my death is in regard to?”
She ignores me, kneeling at my side with a harried sigh. Bile burns up my throat as I struggle to turn my head toward her, my death shuddering as every muscle in my body rebels against the small movement.
A sharp breath shoots from my lungs as my fingers go numb and my vision blurs. “Rina,” I gasp out before my jaw clacks together, rattling my skull. “I’m afraid I’m about to become even more useless to you.”
I’d laugh again if I could, because Marina has no patience for things like invalidity, but the sound remains as trapped in my throat as my screams. When she doesn’t reply, I wrench my headsideways to find she’s disappeared. I blink, the sunlight searing my retinas as I search for where she’s gone.
“Rina?” I rasp, my voice pathetic and weak. There is no answer.
My death spears from me suddenly, and a guttural groan sounds from deep in my chest as I’m wracked with sharp agony. My bones are brittle, my skin too tight, and black edges my vision as I peer down the beach to where my magic thrashes angrily in the air.
A boy walks alone on the sand—a child I’ve chased over the woven bridges of the Grove many times. I grit my teeth, trying to draw my ribbons away from her. Their pull is insistent, their thirst for her innocent life reverberating through my heart with an urgency it takes me far too long to understand.
The girl’s gait is oddly measured—unnaturally smooth for that of any child. As she moves steadily closer, I take in her closed eyes and the tears dried on her full cheeks. Her lower lip trembles in terror, and her hands claw the air in front of her like she fights an invisible force.
For a moment, my own pain ices over with pure rage. Because I know intimately how it feels to be trapped in a dream you cannot wake from; know the terror of your body acting without your consent.
The Aeternalis once controlled me the same way. Called to me in my dreams and commanded my movements, just as the girl is being commanded.
Right down to the rapier in her hand.
Fuck.
I curse my useless body as another wave of agony threads beneath my skin, like licks of flame searing through my veins. It is the sensation I feel any time I’m about to seize—when the pain is too much and my body shuts down—and though I trydesperately to hold on to consciousness, it looms over me like an inescapable shadow.
I reach for my death, but it’s been too long since I bore their burden. My hold is feeble and unpracticed, and the magic slips from my grasp like wisps of silk. My ribbons flail, weakened by my exhaustion and pain. It’s all I can do to drape them over my body, and hope the girl stumbles into one before she manages to slit my throat.
My thoughts scatter as pain shreds through my bones. The air around me grows lighter—or perhapsI’vebecome lighter—as I can no longer feel the grit of the sand beneath me or the pressure of the atmosphere. I’m floating above the world, and I wonder vaguely if I’m dead. Weightless, dark, infinite, just like last time.
But then, there’d been a light to crawl toward. Now, there is nothing.
Nothing but pain, and there is no pain in death. It is as grounding as ever, even as I float above the sand toward the trees. Away from the beach; away from the girl and her blade.
The agony finally proves to be too much. The black edging my vision swells, and the last thing I see before my body betrays me, is the sky of my kingdom. The sky of home.
I come to with a ragged groan, digging my fingers into my eyes in an attempt to relieve the pain resounding through my skull. Colors bloom beneath my lids in rhythm to the deep throb rattling through my brain.
Tick, tick, tick.
Slick panic grips my chest as the heart of the island beats endlessly in my ear—a sound that’s haunted me since I was achild deep in the Hollows, and has threaded into the nightmares of adulthood nearly every night since. When I open my eyes, it’s to find the Letum sky has disappeared, replaced by endless black rock. Suffocating, and horribly familiar.
A grunt escapes me as I wrench away from the ceiling in horror. Head swimming, I scramble backward only to find more stone. My back collides with another wall, the touch of it icier than my death, beckoning a thousand horrible memories to the surface.
After all these centuries, I am trapped once again in the misery of the Hollows. Buried beneath the weight of earth and suffering.
The oxygen stalls in my lungs, and for a terrible moment, I’m sure I’ll never breathe again.
I can’t be here. I can’t be here.
