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We’d undressed fast, in a flurry of heat and passion, but we got dressed again at lightning speed, in a flurry of panic and worry. We wanted to warn the town, but it was too late. The alarm bells started ringing before we raced out of the house. The bitter, briny smell of the violent Blackforge Sea had already filled the air, and our neighbors and friends were yelling and climbing the towers. I hadn’t been in town to give them the extra five seconds to move out of the way of the dangerous tide.

Black curls of water lapped at the shop doors, snatching away carts and signs and anything else that had been left behind in the chaotic race to climb to safety.

“We’re too late,” Revel said. He picked me up and landed at the bottom of the tower in three steps. I grabbed the railing and began climbing. Revel came up behind me. Up and down the road, the villagers were climbing to the tops of the towers. The usual calls for loved ones to let others know they were alive and on the tower could be heard over the rush of the turbulent water. My limbs felt exceptionally heavy as I climbed past the first two platforms. I assumed it was the weight of knowing that I hadn’t been there to warn people. The dizziness had returned, so I made a point of not looking down.

“Rafi! Up here!” Lyric’s face peered over the railing on the top platform. I headed all the way up and climbed between the railings. Lyric hugged me. “It’s happening more often,” she said grimly. Revel joined us. I held his arm for physical and moral support. My limbs were shaky and weak. It was surely because of what had just happened between the two of us. We both knew it was a dangerous decision and that we’d put our lives at risk, but we couldn’t stop ourselves.

Everyone stood huddled and holding each other as the tide filled the gulley and rolled greedily up on shore to grab whatever else remained. And then the tense silence. The current slowed and smoothed, and several hundred feet down the gulley, the sea’s surface rippled and vibrated with vicious, frenetic energy. I turned my face into Revel’s chest, no longer able to watch. A loud sucking sound filled the air as the water retreated, taking its carnivorous, monstrous fish with it. The sound was followed by the worst, most gut-wrenching silence. I hadn’t found the courage to lift my face from Revel’s chest, but I heard Lyric gasp behind me. There was a victim.

I took a deep breath and lifted my face. The dizziness had grown worse, and some of the nausea had returned. My limbs felt weak and tingly. Something wasn’t right, but it wasn’t just from the terror of the moment. I squinted into the sunlight. It was far too nice a day for such a nightmarish tragedy. I looked in the direction that everyone was staring, eyes wide with fear and a collective breath being held. In seconds, someone would learn that their loved one had perished in the most horrendous way possible.

Two men trudged through the fresh mud toward the skeletal remains. I didn’t hear anyone still shrieking frantically for their loved ones, so it seemed the victim was someone who’d come to town alone. The men stopped at the remains. One leaned over and removed the silver chain from the ankle bone. Breaths were still held, and people gripped each other tightly.

“Number 32,” the man yelled out.

Gasps flew out from every tower, and I heard sobs starting one tower away. I looked up at Revel. His head had dropped, and his eyes were closed. Lyric took hold of my hand. “Was it someone you knew?” I asked. It seemed everyone on the tower was looking at me.

I looked again at Revel. “Who is it?” My voice trembled, and the possibility of who it might be began to take hold. My entire body started to shake violently. Revel couldn’t bring himself to look at me and then a memory landed like a bomb in my head. We’d only spoken of the anklets once, in the beginning, after I’d experienced the Krakatow firsthand.

“It can’t be.” The words barely creaked from my throat. “It can’t be Raina.” Tears started to flow like waterfalls. “She’ll be at home, in the kitchen. It’s Enzo’s lunch time. She’ll be at home.” Even as I said it, I began crumpling into a state of despair that was taking every ounce of energy from me. I grabbed Revel’s shirt. “Tell me it’s not her!”

Revel tried to pull me into his arms, but I pushed him back.

“No! Stop! It’s not her!” My knees gave out. Revel caught me before I collapsed. I looked up at him. The pain I was feeling was mirrored in his gaze. “It’s not her,” I said weakly. It felt as if my entire life flowed out of me, and I was merely a ghostly shell of myself. Then everything went black.

Tiny sharp teeth clacked loudly in my face trying to get hold of my nose. I spun away and flew through the air straight into a thicket of trees. I gasped and woke up. The room was dark, and it took me a moment in my feverish delirium to make out some of the shadows. My head throbbed as if someone was hammering a stake through it, and my skin was on fire. At the same time, I shivered as if I’d been soaked in a tub of ice. Who was I? Where was I?

A face came into view. It was familiar, but my muddled mind would not make sense of a name. My eyes drifted shut. It took too much energy to keep them open, and the dim light in the room only made the pain in my head worse.

Then voices drifted through the haze. “We have to take her. This is not grief. It’s something more.” It was a woman’s tone, a woman I recognized.

“Madi?” the name crumbled out of my dry mouth.

“Yes, Rafi, it’s me. Here, have some water.” Her hand went beneath my head. It felt as if it was filled with lead. A smooth cup pressed to my lips. I drank a few sips and immediately fell into a coughing fit. I cried out as the jarring motion made my head explode.

“Please, Revel, we have to take her,” another voice said. “She’ll die.” It was Lyric. Was I dying? I was. I could feel it.

“Where’s Raina?” I asked weakly. “I need Raina.”

My pleas were met with silence. Somewhere in the fogged darkness, I found another source of pain. Not a physical one, but one that hurt all the way through my bones nonetheless. I couldn’t understand what made me feel that way, but I didn’t have the strength to straighten out my thoughts.

I drifted into a blackness that was more comforting. Strange images made me flinch and ball up with tension, but the blackness helped me not think. It helped me not feel. The emotional and physical pain that had drained my energy faded in that comforting blackness. I was being pulled away from my body. I was leaving life. Of that, I was sure. Movement jarred me, and it felt as if my body was floating, being lifted from the bed. Then I breathed in his scent, his comforting, familiar scent. I was in Revel’s arms. Some of the pain and confusion lightened just from being so close to him. I pushed my face against his chest. I was being carried away, out of the room, out of the cottage. And then more darkness.

I woke again to the same throbbing in my head. Every muscle hurt, and it felt as if my mind was separated from my body, a body that was being jostled about. The night sky was above. Or had I died and gone to the stars? They looked close enough for me to touch. I was dying. The fresh night air cleared some of my muddled thoughts. The notion that I was dying was solid in my mind, and it gave me some relief. I wouldn’t have to face the sorcerers. I wouldn’t have to marry one of the two princes. I wouldn’t have to say goodbye to the man who owned my heart. Would Revel despair at my loss? Would he grieve? I missed his arms. They were the last thing I remember when I was still in the cottage. I was outside now. A hand took mine. I followed the arm up to the face. It was Lyric. Her eyes and nose were pink from crying.

“Lyric,” I said with the bit of energy I could muster. “Don’t cry. We’ll always be besties.”

She whimpered. “Hush, you’re going to be fine.”

“What happened?” Something awful had happened, but I’d blocked it from my mind and now I was sick, dying apparently. “Where are we?”

“We’re in a wagon. We’re taking you to get help.”

“Am I sick?”

Lyric bit her lip. She didn’t want to say, but I squeezed her hand to prod her on. “We think you were poisoned.”

“Poisoned.” The word puffed off my dry, chapped lips. It was such a pretty, poetic word with such a venomous meaning. “But who? How?”