“We’re atop the tower now,” Stark adds, voice flat as if he’s placing a report in the command tent. “You can see the sky.”
I’ve noticed that. The rows of horizontal-slit windows high above us circle the round room, letting in a dim glow of sunlight. The air here is fresh, too. We’re no longer being pressed in by stone, like in that underground nightmare.
“We need to search this room,” I say, moving my eyes over the space.
There’s no one in here but the four of us and our wolves.
Something sinks in my chest at that realization. It’s probably delusional, but a part of me hoped we might find the goddess at the end of all this, here to guide us and help us. Ideally, waiting atop a shrine with her Tear cradled in her outstretched hand.
But all I see are dust motes swirling in the air.
Was she ever even here? Or did I read into that song too much?
My gaze drops to the floor, and my brow furrows. In the vision… Isawthe Tear. It was in a circular room, like this one, but there was tile on the floor. A beautiful mosaic.
I pace to a part of the floornotdrenched in my blood and scrub at it with my sleeve.
Slowly, dust and dirt start to come away, revealing a swirling tile pattern just like the one in my vision.
So it is here. Or I am where the vision showed me, at least. But where’s the Tear?
“I saw something like this when I used my foresight,” I tell them, words halting. “There was a room with beautiful tilework. And the Goddess Tear was in the center of it, waiting.”
This doesn’t look like the vision, though. The floor is so dirty. And the blood. There’s so much blood, more than I thought my body could possibly hold.
My stomach lurches as I get a small taste of what it must have been like for Stark and the others to watch me die and bleed out.
I shut that image away.
Stark, Venna, and Noemi all have their eyes on me, as if I know what to do next.
“The Tear should be here. It should be…”
I walk to the very center of the room, where my congealing blood still obscures the floor beneath.
Ripping a long strip of fabric from the bottom of my tunic, I swipe at the blood, searching. Where the fuck is it?
I look up at everyone, still crouching on the floor.
“I don’t understand…”
Noemi looks at me helplessly. Venna’s features are shuttered, distant. Stark just stares steadily at me.
Waiting. Waiting for me to do something. But what more can I fucking do?!
Idiedfor this Tear, for fuck’s sake!
I sit and then lie back, not caring that I’m getting blood all over my hair and clothes again.
I stare up at the ceiling high above, heart racing.
Was it all for nothing? Or… did Killian get here first, somehow? Does he have it?
I’m exhausted. I can’t think. I can’t even make myself move.
Stark’s words come back to me then:
How could you do that to me?
