Page 46 of What Sleeps Within the Cove

I looked toward the other, finding the figure of a woman who glowed with golden light. It was far more faint than Khaos’s own light, as if she was a step removed from the power he possessed. Her skin was milky white, her hair split down the middle. One side of her head was straight hair the color of night, and the other was the complete absence of color. The pure white of it shown against the night sky of her other side, and the colors of her dress mimicked the pattern of her hair.

She nodded at me slowly, glancing down to the ground below us. An enormous lion prowled through the grass of the clearing, pacing around the scales that held us aloft. Its fur was the softest muted gold, each of his paws the size of my head and tipped with claws that would easily tear the eyes from my skull. Its face was surrounded by a mane of darker brown that framed its broad-chested, long body.

“Melinoe is the Goddess of Nightmares and Madness,” Khaos said, his voice carrying over the distance between us. “She will guide you through a series of nightmares, giving you pain and fear in unison. It will be your job to overcome each and every one, for every nightmare that you fail to pull yourself out of, for every dream that you succumb to and fail to overcome your greatest fear, your side of the scale will drop.”

“What if I do not succumb?” I asked, glancing toward the Goddess who took her seat on the scale. She laid back, staring up at the river overhead as I lowered myself to sit once more.

“Then she will lower. By the end of the trial, only one of you will survive the beast’s hunger. The Fates have chosen this as your trial for the River of Pain,” Khaos said, forcing me to look toward the other woman. With her own life on the line, she would do whateverit took to make me suffer. To make meforgetwho I was and where I was.

She’d bring me back to the weakest moments of my life, and I couldn’t even blame her for it.

I laid my head down, staring at the waters above for a moment before my eyes drifted closed unwillingly. It should have been impossible to fall asleep under the circumstances, knowing that a test and trials of my worst imaginings would wait for me as soon as I did.

The warm shimmer of magic coated my skin, forcing my eyes open to find specks of golden light falling from the river above. Melinoe stood on her own platform, holding my gaze as the magic in that golden light turned my insides warm and brought me comfort, easing my path to sleep.

My eyes drifted closed once more, the sounds of the onlookers fading as my ears rang.

And the nightmares began.

The cool wind of autumn blew across my face, teasing my skin with the familiar smell of home. The salty brine of the sea lingered just beyond the scent of freshly harvested earth, the tingle of Twilight Berry sweetness tickling my senses as I slowly pried my eyes open.

All sense of comfort faded as I watched the High Priest take his place at the edge of the Veil, the upturned earth between him and I telling me more than I cared to know about the time of year. His face was less weathered by the elements, less wrinkled with the stain of time to hint at a much younger age. I vaguely remembered a time when he’d looked this way.

He ran his thumb over the edge of the ceremonial dagger, testing its sharpness on his own skin as my throat caught in horror of the day that had changed everything for me. For my mother and my brother, for the path my life had taken for the next fourteen years. That first drop of blood sliding down the edge of the blade had been forever committed to my memory, a slow and tormenting glide that I saw when I closed my eyes.

To relive this moment all over again, as an observer watching one of my worst memories unfold…

This was true agony.

“Macario Barlowe,” the High Priest announced, raising his chin as sighs of relief echoed through the group of villagers gathered at the edge of the Veil.My mother’s familiar sob caught my ears, forcing me to look back to where my family stood.

My father’s mouth dropped open in shock, letting me observe the subtleties I hadn’t seen when I was a girl and so lost in the grief that consumed me. Brann’s eyes closed, his arms wrapping around himself as if he could shut out the desire to interfere. At the time I’d thought him just as lost as I’d felt, but I saw it now for what it was.

Restraint.

My father pulled my mother into his arms, ignoring the soft encouragement from the High Priest at the front of the gardens. His words were lost to time, the ringing in my ears drowning out all traces of sounds around me. Lips moved, but I couldn’t see past the pain in my head that came with that ringing.

I watched their gazes hold steady, stepping closer in an attempt to hear those words he’d given to her that had escaped me. The childlike version of me stood at his side, clinging to his legs desperately as he held my mother’s gaze and murmured to her with their foreheads pressed together. I snagged Brann’s gaze finally, something in that familiar warmth chasing away the ringing in my ears.

Sound rushed in all over again, so quickly that my head throbbed and I couldn’t help the whimper of pain. No one noticed me, no one but Brann anyway, an unseen intruder watching an event of the past.

“No one can know, Elora. Promise me,” he said, waiting until my mother nodded through her tears and glanced down at me. My father pulled away from her, reaching down and grasping the younger me at the waist to lift her into his arms. He propped her up on his hip, wiping the tears away from her cheeks with the warmest expression I could ever remember until seeing the way that Caldris looked at me.

“Don’t cry, Little Bird,” he said, touching his forehead to hers. I hurried closer, stopping behind him so that when he turned I’d be able to see the warmth of his face for myself. “I gladly make this sacrifice. Do you know why?”

She shook her head, her lips pursed tightly as she tried to keep her sobs quiet. The suffering of a child made the grateful people around us shift uncomfortably with guilt. It was a strange mix of feelings, to be both thrilled that one’s own loved ones were safe all the while feeling horribly for our neighbors. It kept families ostracized from one another, and I supposed that was the point.

Loyalty to the faith above all else became far, far easier to achieve if they could limit the people we cared about and turn us against one another. It was easier to keep us subservient if we were stranded islands living in proximity to one another, rather than a community that looked after our own.

“Why, Daddy?” the younger me asked, sniffling through her sobs. Watching the exchange, I shoved back the surge of emotion that made the inside of my nose sting and closed my throat. I knew the words that came next. They’d haunted me all my life, following me with the inevitable feeling that he’d be disappointed in me.

I hadn’t managed to do the one thing he asked of me.

“Because it means you’ll be safe here for another year,” he said, and the words took on new meaning with all I now knew. With all he’d known in that moment about what I was—who I was. “But promise me, when the time is right, you’ll leave this place. Fly free, Little Bird,” he said, and my heart clenched as he lowered me to the ground and stood. He smiled at her one last time, his cheeks tipping up even from behind as he turned toward me slowly.

He paused, as if he could see me lingering in the nightmare of this memory. I held his stare, the mossy green of his eyes searching mine as I waited for him to continue on. To turn away from the adult version of me, just as he’d had to turn away from the child. I didn’t know that he could see me, not until he gave me the smallest of smiles. It was a bittersweet thing, as if grateful for the opportunity to see me grown, as if he knew I was there watching.

Reliving.

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