I don’t hesitate as I uncork the vial and pour it right down my aching throat. I’m unconscious before I hit the floor.
Lydia Benton
My feet are buried in damp sand. Each pull of the tide toward the shore covers them further, and soon I’ve been sucked in so deep, I am completely unable to move.
Upon the horizon, a wave grows and grows until it crests so high, it blocks out the blazing sun, turning the daylight off like snuffing a lantern and casting the beach in eerie, sudden shadows.
“Help!” I call, but I turn my head and find that no one is there to save me. The dark sand stretches for miles in either direction, and I am completely alone.
“Help!” I call again. The wave is barreling toward me, picking up speed with every moment, now a solid, terrifying wall of water.
I pull and pull but my feet stay glued to the earth.
The rush of the ocean is deafening, dizzying.
I look down, and find myself, once more, in the body of my childhood. My white play dress is dirty with sand, and the pink ribbon around my waist is limp and ruined.
I raise my chubby hands to cover my ears, anything to stop the painful roar, but before I do, I hear something to my left.
“Lydia?” The voice is barely a squeak. I turn to see Ivy besideme, no older than six. Her golden curls whip around her face, picked up by the sea breeze. She’s dressed identical to me, as we often were as children. Her round cheeks are pink from the force of the wind and her brown eyes are huge and terrified.
I’m moved by a bone-deep need to protect her, but my feet will not budge. I cannot move. I can’t do anything but stand there as the wave barrels toward us.
“Don’t look, Ivy!” I shout. “Look at me.”
“Lydia?” she whines, her voice sharp with fear.
“Ivy!”
The wave crashes into us, pitching our bodies into its icy depths. I search for Ivy’s hand in the dark waters, but my fingers slip through the surf and come away empty.
Reality arrives in splinters, but that incessant roaring noise doesn’t stop. It’s as if it’s coming from within my own head. The volume causes such intense pressure, I feel like my skull might burst.
My vision is bloodred, the inside of my eyelids illuminated by blindingly bright light.
My hand lands on a plane of sharp gravel that bites into the flesh of my palm, and in my other hand, I hold a cool, smooth object.
I push myself fully upright, and force my eyes open, ignoring the stinging sun.
For a second, I think I must be in another dream. My brain can’t seem to make sense of where I am.
I’ve been dumped at the bottom of a bowl.
Well—not a bowl, I suppose. I search for the right word. I’m sure my father must have said it once during all our family dinners discussing history and archaeology.
Acoliseum. The word comes to me with stomach-churning clarity.
Above me, circular stands carved from snow-white marble are filled with thousands of faeries. Our kingdom isn’t particularly large; nearly everyone must be here—and they are the source of the roaring.
The nearest stand is probably ten feet above me; close enough to see the faces of the faeries who leer down at us.
They’re open-mouthed and shouting, screaming with equal parts glee and terror. “Get her!” some yell, or “Run, Queen Lydia, run!”
I look down at my hand, the one not holding me up in the dirt, and find I’m clutching the horn of the unicorn I stabbed. It shimmers an iridescent blue in the beating sunlight. The wider end is ugly and jagged from where I tore it from the poor beast’s body, and the other is a deadly sharp point.
Whatever sleeping draught they made me take to transport me here has left me feeling groggy and nauseous. The crowd goes absolutely wild as I finally stand.
I rotate in a slow circle until I find what I’m looking for and—yes. There he is.
