Again.Again.Even harder.
Now I am angry. This isn’t a peaceful release into the void; thishurts.
STOP!I want to scream, but my voice is gone. There is no air, no light, just the heavy thing beating me again and again. Something stirs, deep in the untouchable core of my spirit—a creature I once knew.
Then, all at once, the world floods back into focus. Sound, pain, touch, scent—they return to me in glorious clarity.
I open my eyes, and Cygnus is kissing me.
The scene is so bizarre that for a split second, I wonder if I’m dead.
Don’t people’s memories flash in front of them as they’re passing? Is it possible my brain is extending itself even further, crafting a full-blown hallucination?
His mouth is hot. His scent is everywhere—pine and sweat and something else, an earthy smell like rocks after rain. Then Cygnus’s lips pull away, and thatthingrams into my chest again….
I roll over and vomit.
“Thank the Gods,”Cygnus gasps.
I choke as putrid, salty water erupts from my chest. Gagging and spluttering, I hack up wave after wave of the awful stuff until thick saliva coats my throat and my lungs feel incinerated. My guts feel raw; my chest aches tremendously where Cygnus pounded it again and again.
“You were gone,” he says weakly. His voice is thick. I’ve never heard the Healer sound so shaken. Furious? Yes. Desperate? Certainly. But to my shock (and maybe horror?), Cygnus truly sounds like he is about to cry.
“What just happened?”I wheeze.
It is dark again, but not pitch-black like it was in the cave. We are partially submerged in warm, smelly, very muchnotsolid water, which would barely rise to my ankles if I stood up. Very faint amber light flickers against the onyx surface. My gown and hair are soaked.
“Well, when I walked through the gate, I saw something. Something terrible,” Cygnus says, with a hard edge to his tone that I’ve never heard before. “I think it was designed to scare us or maybe just kill us, because after a while, I realized I couldn’t breathe. But I didn’t know how to stop what I was seeing, and I couldn’t look away.”
“What did it show you?” I ask quickly.
“It doesn’t matter.”
I swallow, tasting salt and metal. I’m burning with curiosity, but I don’t want to share what I saw any more than he does.
“Was it real, do you think?” I ask tentatively.
“I think what I saw was real,” Cygnus says, looking down.
My stomach plunges. “You do?”
“I…I don’t know. I can’t be sure. Either it was real, or worse than a nightmare.”
That’s how I would describe what I saw, too.
It can’t have been real.I refuse to believe it.
“The banshees tricked us,” I remind him, feeling dizzy. “Those creepy people we heard? That wasn’t real, either. This is all just spellcraft.”
It has to be.
Cygnus meets my eyes. I can tell he doesn’t believe me.
“How did you get out of it?” I ask.
“I guess I…” He forces a heavy breath. “It doesn’t matter.”
“No! Tell me!”
