She continues stroking my hair. ‘It would have been better that way, for everyone. An abomination like you should never have been allowed to live. But the people were frightened,you see. If your birth almost drowned an empire, one can only imagine what your death could do. And so, here you are.’
I’m shuddering uncontrollably, still wrapped in her arms. This is no hallucination. This is all part of my trial. A test designed to deceive. And this, the cruellest deception of all. I didn’t just fall into the trap – I jumped. Blindly. Eagerly. Because I so wanted it to be real.
‘You know, Blaze, in many ways dying was a gift. It meant I no longer had to live with the shame of knowing it was I who brought you into this world.’
Falling down a mountainside hurt less than this.
With everything I have left, I push my mother away from me, shooting pains licking up my wrist. Her golden-brown eyes are now narrowed with loathing, her soft smile a hateful, mocking sneer. I watch, horrified, as her face begins to contort, her features twisting, her skin stretching thin over her bones and then melting into nothing, replaced by hard, shiny scales. Her eyeballs fall out of their sockets, rolling across the rock and coming to rest by my feet. She rises taller and taller until she towers above me, and from her hands sprout sharp silver claws, as long and deadly as daggers.
My mouth is open in a silent scream. Every instinct is telling me to run, but it’s as if my brain has disconnected from my body, because I can’t move.
The beast looks down at me with eyes as red as blood, and when it speaks its voice drips out of its gaping mouth in a sibilant hiss. ‘Storm Weaver.’
My breath hitches.
‘Come, little Singer. Let me slit you open. Let me suck the marrow from your bones. Let me see if you bleed red, or rain.’
I am rooted to the spot.
The beast moves closer. ‘Let me slice your skin. Let me carve the shell of your skull. Let me wear your teeth round my neck like a talisman for all to see.’
I am utterly defenceless. No one is coming to help me. I am going to die here on this gilded stone stage. I am going to die broken and bloody and afraid.
When the beast speaks again, it is with a different voice, heavy with grief. ‘I would rather a daughter dead than a daughter damned.’
I almost topple backwards. The voice is my father’s.
Then it changes again, becoming cold and contemptuous.
‘A waste of space,’ Aunt Hester spits. ‘That’s what you are. Unworthy of the Harglade name.’
Next comes King Balen’s voice, a silken purr. ‘Hello, little dove.’
Suddenly the voices start coming all at once, oozing contempt like congealed blood from a deep wound. Some I don’t recognize. Nameless enemies with endless names for me.
I try to run, stumbling over the terrain on my throbbing ankle, clutching my wrist to my chest. By the time I realize the stretch of rock leads to nothing but a thirty-foot drop, it’s too late. There’s nowhere left for me to go. I stand at the very end of the jutting ledge and watch my death approach. The beast advances, accompanied by a torrent of resentment. Loudest of all is my mother’s voice, her words cutting me into pieces.
My drizzle begins to fall, the light rain clinging to thebeast’s scales, dew drops glittering like jewels on the ends of its sharp claws. It’s so close to me now that I can smell the blood on its breath as it bares its teeth.
Then, another voice. It’s not coming from the beast but rather from inside my head, drifting through a fog of memory, soft and light like ocean spray. I remember the way Queen Hydra had leaned in close, as though she were telling me a secret.
Sometimes, we must lose our footing in order to find our balance.
For a moment I hear nothing but the drizzle pattering against the beast’s scales before it lunges towards me with a deafening roar.
But I have already stepped backwards into the air.
I hit the surface of the lake with such force it sends shock waves through my body, jolting me awake. And I see it now. I understand. There’s no one more suited to this trial than me. River had said it himself only last night.
You know, perhaps better than anyone, that hatred can sink its claws in deep. And if I were you, Blaze, I would start sharpening my own.
The claws that cut deep, the words that cut deeper. The dark, twisted creature that plagued me long before I set foot inside this arena.
The beast. It’shate. It is hatred itself.
I move faster in the water than I ever did on land, even without the use of one arm. I was always a strong swimmer, even as a child. My mother taught me well. For a moment I feel as though I’m back there, in the cove below Bartell Manor, racing her to the shore.
Only it’s not my mother on my tail, but the beast – and it’s gaining on me.
