Page 24 of What Is Dark Within Me

A SPELL TO GAIN THE BLESSING OF THE DARK SAINTS

Even with her eyes closed,Aleja knew she wasn’t back home. Her body sank at least three inches deep into a mattress wide enough for her to spread her arms and legs out without reaching the edge. Everything hurt, especially the dull headache she figured was a remnant of the spell Laurent had cast as he fled the cabin.

Aleja opened her eyes when his slack face filled her mind. This room was not some secret space in Laurent’s cabin she’d overlooked. The bed’s sheets were a deep burgundy, silken against her arms, and almost the same color as her hair. Each of the four posts supporting the canopy overhead were carved to resemble snakes winding around the branches of a fig tree that met over the bed’s center.

She shot up, despite the ache in her ribs. Flashes of light bloomed like flowers in her vision. What truly made her want to run was the smell. Vanilla and woodsmoke. It was in the air. On the sheets. On her.

“You’re awake! Nicolas told me I shouldn’t bother you, but I’ve been so bored,” a gravelly voice said. She hadn’t noticed Garm, curled up by the fireplace on a plush black rug that matched his fur.

“Nicolas?” she muttered, as the events of the past few hours flooded into her mind. “Where are we?”

“You were badly injured. Even with your new powers it would take some time to heal, and the snow wouldn’t stop falling, so he brought us home,” Garm said casually.

“Home?”

“It’s the safest place in any of the worlds. If I go tell Bonnie you’d like lunch, would you share it with me?” he said, tail wagging so much that his entire body shook.

“Sure, uh, go ahead,” she told him.

I have to get out of here now, Aleja thought, as Garm disappeared through a shadow. The room’s door was as elaborately carved as the bedposts. It depicted swirling clouds, with a lone figure tumbling down from them, his black wings slicing through the air like daggers.

She slipped out from under the sheets, noting she was fully dressed. Her boots were nowhere to be seen, but the floor was warm beneath her socks. A greasiness covered her face, but not enough to show it had been more than a few hours since she’d taken a tumble down a cliff near Laurent’s cabin.

Where the hell had the Knowing One brought her?

The question made her want to swallow, but her throat refused to move. Her early magical education had been filled with tales of the worlds the Otherlanders inhabited: the Green Country of the fey, the cave-cities of the vampires. Some were tucked away within the human realm, but others could only be accessed by those who knew how to walk the hidden paths between them.

Something Aleja certainly couldn’t do on her own.

Just where do you think you can go?said her voice.You should focus on using the Knowing One right now.

She made it to a window and pulled the curtains aside, expecting to be confronted with a landscape of shadow and flame. Instead, there were tall mountains red against the sky; spires of rock jutting upward, looking like distant cathedrals. In front of them, a forest shrouded in mist, except for the needle-like tips of the tallest pines. Directly below the window was something that looked no more sinister than a vegetable garden, with a few people mulling about in the soil.

“You’re not entirely healed. You should be in bed.”

Aleja whirled to find a beautiful woman with dark curls holding a silver tray. A bowl of soup steamed next to a chunk of rustic bread. Beside this was a chunk of roast with crisp black edges paired with a plate of small potatoes.

“Relax, I’m not here to torture you,” the woman laughed, her full lips opening into a smile that would have been infectious had Aleja not been so frightened. “I’m Bonnie. Please, sit down and eat. I told the folks downstairs to keep the boss’s dog distracted, but Garm has taken a liking to you. Better get that roast down fast, or he’ll demand scraps.”

Aleja couldn’t take her eyes off Bonnie’s clothing. The woman wore a gold and green dress clinging to her round stomach and wide hips. A woven crown of wheat and rye sprigs topped her tight curls. Her right arm was covered by a tattoo sleeve—orange carrots, pale bones, sprigs of thyme, rosemary, gnarled yams, mustard greens, and even a bright yellow squash.

“I like your tattoos,” Aleja said dumbly, because she had no idea how else to respond to an obscenely beautiful woman carrying a tray of her favorite foods.

“Thanks! Here, sit.” Bonnie gestured to a small table Aleja hadn’t noticed. “They’re quite new. We didn’t have tattoos like this in my hometown.”

This last sentence had implications, and Aleja wasn’t sure how to address them. “Where exactly are we?”

Bonnie laughed again and stole a potato from Aleja’s plate. “You are asking a very complicated question. We call it the Hiding Place, but that’s Nicolas’s term, and he,” she waved her hand in the air before licking the leftover salt off her fingers, “is a very dramatic man.”

“Is this the Green Country?” Aleja asked. That was the fey realm—the first of the other worlds that’d come into her mind.

“Not exactly. This is what your magicians might refer to as a pocket dimension. A world within a world, hidden from those who don’t have the key. Please, eat. The soup is getting cold, and trust me, it’s yummy.”

Aleja hesitated before she reached for the silver spoon. Her entire life, she’d been warned against Otherlander food. “Don’t worry,” Bonnie said, as if reading her mind. “It’s fine. The Knowing One hardly needs to trap people with enchanted food and wine.”

Bonnie pushed the soup bowl in her direction, and Aleja finally took a sip. The richest broth she’d ever tasted chased away any lingering cold in her chest. “You called it the Hiding Place? What exactly are you hiding from?”

Good, said the voice in her head.Find out whatever you can. You never know what you’ll be able to use later.

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