My skin stings and my lungs tingle. Am I melting? I don’t want to become a puddle.
I hate puddles.
I suddenly see myself hopping over foul-smelling ones back in Tarelexo to avoid the hem of my dresses dragging through the filth.
Fallon, get that chain off yourself. I cannot touch you as long as you’re strapped to my crow.
Lore’s voice springs my mind off puddles.
I blink, then gaze in awe because lodged inside my basket is his crow.Oh my Gods, I caught you, Lore!I laugh.I caught you!
FALLON!!
I think he says more, but my mind begins to hum.
Like my ears.
Like my blood.
My lids begin to droop.
All of me begins to droop.
Something that feels like a giant fist wallops my chest. Hardens. Falls away.
I swear to fucking Mórrígan . . . That I will lock you up . . . In my fucking castle . . . For the rest of your bloody . . . Life.
I smile and skim my fingers against feathers which harden to metal under my fingertips. Weird.
This is the only time in my life . . . That I beg you . . . Not to touch me . . .
My lungs spasm, and I cough, except that drags wet salt down into my airway. I gag, then choke.Lore—I can’t—breathe.
A low, keening whine pierces my eardrums. Is Lore crying? He doesn’t strike me as someone who ever weeps. The whining grows louder and brighter, like the light. The water’s turning so clear that I spot bright pink.
So much pink.
My body becomes tangled in pink as though I’ve been gift wrapped in a ribbon.
A really large and muscular ribbon.
And scaly.
I skip my fingers over the scales, marveling at their softness, and then I marvel because the trench is growing smaller and smaller. My lungs expand so fast that they press painfully into my ribs. If my mother swims me to the surface any faster, they’re going to splinter bone.
I close my eyes and concentrate on not passing out from the pain.
Lore?His name rolls through our mind link barely louder than a whisper.The cage?
A beat of terrible silence echoes between us before he rasps,Still tied around your fucking neck.
Though words are not made of air, especially ones spoken inside one’s mind, Lore’s answer feels like a deep inhale.And your—everything inside of my body aches . . . everything outside, too—crow?
Still there, Little Bird. Still there.
Good,I whisper a second before the top of my head breaks the surface of Mareluce. I gasp, then black out from the sheer pain of oxygen biting my scorched lungs.
* * *
