Minutes pass.Maybe an hour. I’m not quite sure. Other than the shadows creeping slowly across the clearing and the cold stone numbing my legs through the layers beneath me, nothing seems to have changed at all.
We’re still simply sitting on the stone while the old dragon lady chants and rattles her strange instrument from the centre, the sound drifting through the mist and waterfalls without ever quite stopping.
Yawning, I check my watch once, then again a few minutes later, only to find the hands have barely moved.
Just past midday.
I frown, rubbing my palms against my tights to force some warmth back into them. I don’t get it. Is this really all we do? Sit here and wait for the Blood Moon to rise?
I mean, I’m not against it. I’d rather be mind-numbingly bored for the next few hours than have my Threads torn apart and be forced to live through my past and possible futures. But still...
With heavy eyes, exhausted from the hike and the complete lack of sleep last night, I give my cheek a sharp slap to keep myself awake and glance over at Ezzy and Neeve beside me, but they look as tired and confused as I feel.
Then Ezzy lifts a hand to scratch the side of her head.
Yet her hand doesn’t stop.
It keeps going, her elbow stretching behind her like it’s made of wet rope, and another hand lifts from her shoulder.
Then another.
My breath catches as an eerie, unsettling warmth floods through me.
What the hell?
Blinking hard, I shake my head and look at Neeve. She’s standing now.
No. Floating.
No, not Neeve.
Her braid has dropped behind her, thick and dark, curling across the moss like a tail. Or maybe it is a tail. Maybe she’s always had one and I’ve only just noticed.
Something sour slides up into my mouth as my gut turns and I look down at my own hands.
But they aren’t hands.
The lines in my palms are moving, glowing faintly beneath my skin, splitting and branching out like roots, like rivers, like my Threads are trying to crawl out of me.
Around me the Shaman’s singing rises.
An entrancing pace that drags my focus forward, past her to where the sunlight pours through the waterfall mist, breaking apart into ribbons of colour that scatter over the clearing, too bright, too beautiful, every shade bleeding into the next until I can’t tell where the air ends and the light begins.
Love explodes through me as my chest cracks open and I gasp, because it’s too much, too warm, too huge to fit inside me. I want to swim in it. No, eat it. No, press my face into it and breathe until there’s nothing left of me but colour.
Wrapping my arms around myself, a massive grin spreads across my face as for one impossible second, everything loves me.
The sun. The stone. The wet green cliffs. The moss beneath my legs. Heck, even Lee, sitting across the circle with his stupid eye-patch, looks unbearably human, and I almost laugh because how could I have hated him? How could any of us hate anyone when we’re all just sitting here, breathing, trying not to die?
Dropping my hands back down, I stare at them as I turn them over slowly, watching the glowing lines drift beneath my skin with the same breathless wonder as a child seeing snow for the first time.
Then my gaze catches on my scar.
Idly, my fingers start tracking the faded lines, over and over as the minutes pass until something cold settles over me.
With a shiver, I look up as a cloud slides across the sun. It opens its mouth and swallows it whole, causing all the colours around me to vanish in an instant as the clearing drops into a shadowed darkness.
Frantically, I spin around, breath snagging in my chest as I search for the others, but the clearing is empty now.
