A cut in my palm. A trail of blood.
Rhordyn stepping amongst a pack of Irilak, validating Cainon’s condemning accusations.
I saved lives,I tell myself, hammering the words into my brain until it’s ripe and swollen.
I saved lives …
Then why does it feel sowrong?
My face crumbles, silent sobs racking through me …
Not real. Just a horrible nightmare.
“Wake up.”
My voice is broken glass. It’s a tree splintered at the base, now strewn across the ground with flames licking its spindly branches.
It’s regret. Sorrow. Grief.
It’s the feeling that I’ve ripped something vital from my chest, leaving a deep web of holes where the roots were sown. Where they came out bloody and snapped in places.
Oily perusals scribe across me from all angles, making my skin prickle.
I lift my head, the waterfall’s thunderous heave a constant roar in my ears. A cluster of Irilak are loosely gathered around me, watching, nesting beside vine-strangled trees like black vapors spilling from the gnarled trunks. Ghoulish spectators to my violent unraveling.
He was warm …
I flinch.
A nightmare. A terrible, devastating nightmare where I heard terrible truths and did terrible things.
“Wake up.”
I slap myself. Again, and again, cheek flaming from the brutal assault. When that doesn’t work, I reach behind my arm and pinch an inch of flesh.
Hard.
The pain doesn’t help. It doesn’t bring me a sense of relief.
Doesn’t wake me up.
A few Irilak move closer, stretching from one pocket of shadow to another like dark taffy.
“Wake up.”
I release the latch of my necklace. Feel the stone, conch, and chain slip down my front and thump into my lap. I ease my shirt off my right shoulder and skate my fingers over the risen, barky blemish growing from my skin, sobbing when my hand brushes a clutch of silky protrusions.
My eyes squeeze shut, brow crunching as I breathe deep.
Hold until my lungs burn.
I reach beneath my shirt and pull my dagger from the makeshift sheath bound around my waist.
My eyes pop open.
“Wake up,” I growl, glancing down at my shoulder.
Three crystal blooms bare themselves to me, like iridescent swirls dipped in a sky full of sparkles, the biggest the size of a plum. I grab the smallest one first—no larger than a thimble—bunching its healthy cluster of petals before I set my dagger against the black stem.
