Her hand presses on my shoulder. “I will never judge your past, Ez. I know who you are now, and I see who you are becoming. You can tell me anything.”
And I feel it … The threads inside of me untangling, spreading out like petals on a breeze. I can trust her with my darkness, and she will shelter me.
I look up. “I ki—”
The flower bud in my hand blooms, spewing golden pollen into the air. A huge puff blows over my visor and under the edge of my helm.
And then the nightmare begins.
50
Rosalina
“Ezryn? Ezryn!” I scream. He’s staggered backward, clutching his helm, crying out with a voice I’ve never heard him make.
Pollen smears across his visor and down his neck. His movements are jerky, frantic. I need to steady him.
I lunge forward to grab him, and a yellow blur shrouds my vision. My throat tightens, nose tingling.
My head spins. The trunk of the willow tree wavers in and out of focus, becoming two then three. My legs shake beneath me, and I look down to see the ground is moving under my feet, rolling over itself like waves.
Ezryn. I have to grab Ezryn. A horrible scream fills the air. Is it his voice or mine?
I need to get out of the willow tree. But the long dripping branches are gone. Spiderwebs surround me. I cry out, trying to push them away, but the sticky threads grab hold of me, pulling, pulling, pulling.
I fall to the ground. Hard. When I look up at the night sky, the moon is gone, replaced by the white face of the Winter wolf. The wolf howls, deep and mournful, but his maw is filled with blood. Has he just hunted or … The wolf coughs. Blood sputters across his jaw. It’s his blood, his blood…
The wolf in the sky gags again, and the blood pours out, enough to make the waterfall run red. There are figures standing on the wet rocks beneath the tumbling water. I know them. Help. Help. I want to cry the words out loud but there are spiderwebs over my mouth. Help. Help.
The figures turn around, and Dayton and Farron stare at me with empty eye sockets. They wave at me, slowly and in unison.
Then I’m tumbling, and I can’t remember where I was before, but it wasn’t here because here is Orca Cove, and this place feels familiar and unfamiliar all at once.
A rainy street. Pieces of broken wood and a destroyed book. A pickup truck with headlights like an evil face. A man touching me with greedy fingers.
Somehow, my mind forms a coherent thought: this isn’t a hallucination. This is a memory.
And that is so much worse.
The image shifts. My bedroom. Blood on a knife, on the ground. Tears and screaming and my own skin torn away from me.
No … No more. I don’t want these memories.
Then a strangled cry, one I wished I’d never have to hear again as my mate cradles his mother’s body. And they’re frozen, one by one, and there’s nothing I can do.
Stop! Stop!
This isn’t happening. I need to find Ezryn. The ground shifts again, and I’m back in the grove except the trees are closed in all around me and mud keeps swallowing my feet.
But I need to get to Ezryn.
“I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t.”
His voice. Each step fills my body with nausea, but I forge ahead.
“I’m coming for you,” I think I say. I hope I say.
He’s back under the willow tree. But the problem is it’s so covered with spiderwebs, and I don’t want to touch it.
