Page 91 of Flirting with Darkness

“If I’d warned you, you wouldn’t have had the fight to emerge.”

Most of my rage evaporates.

If I thought Valdred’s voice delightful, this one is something else. Not suave, but grave, not deep but endless, like the vibration of the earth itself made into a sound so pure and terrifyingly enticing.

Musicians would die to hear another note, another sound.

“How could she emerge?” Valdred whispers to himself. Now I notice a trace of fear, in both his eyes and his voice.

It pleases me.

Aedron glances away from me for the first time, and I feel the loss of his eyes, like a candle blown out in the dark.

“You know how, boy. These are the waters where the rulers of the folk laid their powers to grant them to Morrigan, so she might stand above all of our kind. The waters have always been poison to all but she.”

He’s talking in riddles or gibberish.

“Then how did I get out?” I demand. “Is it because you pulled me?”

“You’d never have reached the surface if you were not you, little star.”

“Right. That makes perfect sense.” He doesn’t want to answer me, and I decide not to push. I have bigger concerns. “Look, I just need to get out of here. Please show me to a portal, or a gate, or whatever. I can go home, and we can all forget this ever happened.”

Aedron tilts his head. “How do you think they’ll welcome you now, back in your iron world?”

I don’t know what he’s talking about, but he’s staring straight at me, as if to point out an obvious flaw.

Maybe the waters made a worse mess of my already dreadful gown. I glance back toward the surface, to check my general state.

My heart stops. I hadn’t noticed how slow it was until I wait for it to start again.

I should have died seven times in the minutes it takes.

I stand completely still and silent, as I watch my reflection.

In a way, I am myself. I recognize myself: the shape of my lips, my diminutive height.

The rest, however…

I notice the hair, first. It was coppery-blond moments ago; now it’s blue.

Not a discreet, dark blue-ish black like Aedron, but proudly shining like deep waters and clear sky. My hand touches my locks, half expecting to find them different, or gone, but they’re right here—and decidedly blue against my fingers.

Then there are the ears, long and curved at the tips. And the eyes, of a pale amethyst, overbright, when they were their normal pale azure the last time I looked in the mirror.

I am not myself at all. My face has changed, ever so subtly, thinning in places, hardening in others. I don’t think my own mother would recognize me.

Maybe that’s just the reflection in the water. Right?

But the hair’s still blue in my hand.

“What did you do to me?” I whisper.

“I restored something taken from you long ago.”

It makes even less sense than anything he’d said before.

Only his words are starting to have the ring of truth, though I don’t understand them.

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