Still, I screamed a silent scream, causing bubbles to form before me until they were all I could see. A whimper echoed in my ears, and despite knowing better—despite understanding that I could not fight this—I continued swimming until my armsbecame as heavy as the lead in my mind. My eyelids fluttered as my body slowly shut down until only one of my arms followed my will.
Another weak scream left me, the bubbles frighteningly smaller this time.
Something hard bumped my shoulder, and I spun around. It was a thicker darkness, the hard thing uneven and sharp and soft at the same time. Like the stones we would lie on back home in the spring, watching as the birds who’d fled our nation during the colder months returned.
Stone.
My mind wouldn’t cohere, but my instincts took over. With my eyes closed, I grabbed hold of anything I could, pulling myself flush against the cliff. Because it was a cliff.
My fingers were desperate as they clawed at the rocky surface, dragging me upward and ignoring how the stone ripped into my legs and stomach. Relief flooded me when it worked and the light above grew. I would not drown today.
Then the world before my eyes shifted. My back raked against the sharp stone as smoke instead of water choked me. I clawed at my throat when it burned, and the water evaporated, replaced by flames.
Help!I tried to scream, but the air was already too thick with the screams of others.
Then something wrapped around the back of my neck. I was dragged upward, almost flying through the dark smoke until brightness replaced it. My back connected with the ground so forcefully that whatever I had within me spewed out onto moss and leaves.
I coughed until tears streamed down my face, placing my hands beside me and pushing up to try to get breath into my lungs. When the convulsions running through me finally stopped, I wiped at my cheeks. My vision was blurry, but there was someone standing above me, so I cleared my throat a few times before lifting my face.
“Hey.” The girl with the pale hair, the one who’d been tied to Rakkel during the exercise on Svartoarna, blocked the moon. “You all right?”
A tremor seized me. “What the fuck was that?” I asked.
“What was what?”
“The smoke!” I said. “The fire.”
She frowned. “I don’t know about any fire. You were in the water.”
Water. I whipped my head around. Right. The lake was before me, its surface so still every star had its mirror in it. Behind us was a part of the forest I’d not been in before. We were farther away from the Hird than I usually ventured, even when I’d been chased during the night.
“You okay?” The girl looked truly worried.
Perhaps rightly so, because it felt like I’d lost my mind.
I coughed again, still tasting the ash. “What’s your name?” I got out when I was finished.
“Ilse Snarskog.” She stared right at me, her gaze unnerving.
When she reached out a hand, I accepted it.
“Thank you,” I said as my legs straightened. “I don’t really know what happened.”
My mind was still half in the vision, the smoke still pricking my nose. But my clothes were wet, and so was the hair hanging like thick curtains around my face. Whatever that was, it hadn’t been real. Even though the strand of hair I lifted to sniff smelled like I’d been to a bonfire all night instead of swimming in a lake.
“You jumped from the highest drop.” Ilse looked more impressed than she should have, given that she’d had to pull me out of the water. “I don’t think it’s going to help much with the initiates back there, but at least they won’t be able to fault your courage.”
I huffed. “I didn’t do it for them.”
She gave me a pointed look.
“Not only for them, at least.” I tried for a crooked smile. “It was mostly for myself.”
Ilse laughed. “Whatever and whoever it was for, you did good.”
“Thank you,” I said again.
The urge to cry suddenly came over me, and I cleared my throat, but my chest remained stubbornly tight and aching as the smiling girl regarded me. Wringing my hair out, I coughed again, trying to get some of that pressure to release.
