Page 77 of What Sleeps Within the Cove

The hind raised its head slowly, deep golden eyes connecting with mine. Something in me warmed at the way it froze solid, at the way it waited for me to make my decision. It didn’t move to run away or flee the certain death staring it down, simply gave itself over to the instinct that made it wait.

I lost track of time in that moment, of the minutes that passed as the hind and I stared at one another. The people around me faded into the background, their translucent forms growing even more distant until it was only the hind and I.

I was not hungry.

The people I was supposed to feed looked happy enough for the night, and I…

I couldn’t justify killing more than was absolutely necessary. I couldn’t betray the trust the hind had placed in me by remaining.

I lowered the bow, shaking my head firmly as I turned away from the hind’s trusting eyes once more.

“No,” I said, tossing the bow to the ground at the golden-eyed man’s feet. “I will not kill for the sake of it when there appears to be enough food to go around.” All around me, the people working in the distance came into more focus than before, cooking over the fire. They were happy as they focused on their tasks, completely unaware of me disobeying the command I’d been given.

“You would leave them to starve?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“They look well fed enough to me,” I said with a shrug, takinganother step closer to the man. I stepped on the bow at my feet, snapping it in two as I glared up at him. “If you want the hind dead, then do it your fucking self. I will not be a man’s weapon to be used at will.”

FORTY-NINE

ESTRELLA

The man smiled, a curve of his lips that peeled them back from his teeth. I got the impression he didn’t smile very often, that the twisted and malformed thing was meant to be one of approval, even though it came across as more menacing in his inexperience.

He laid a hand on top of my shoulder, squeezing the armor there softly. I barely felt it through the structure of my clothing, but the burn of emotion in those eerie golden eyes was what stole the breath from my lungs.

I didn’t know this man, couldn’t recall having ever seen him before. It was both unsurprising and a shock, considering I couldn’t have told you my own name, and the wrongness of that was like a hollow within me.

But he knew me. That much was very clear.

“There’s my girl,” he said, the strangely familiar words pullingan unknown emotion from me. It swirled around in my gut, making my stomach sink into a pit I didn’t understand.

When he finally pulled back and removed his hand from me, he waved his arms at his sides in a brief, smooth glide. Tendrils of white rose from the ground to follow the path his hands carved through the air, the warm glow of them drawing my attention as I studied the way they danced. They felt familiar even as they writhed through the air, like the missing piece of me that I needed returned.

They came toward me, moving with a slow and steady pace. I couldn’t bring myself to fear them, to attempt to protect myself from those odd swirling lights as they reached me and brushed along my armor. Looking for skin, they coated my body in a vortex of light before they sank into the flesh of my hands, my neck, my face.

They slithered along the surface of my skin before sinking inside of me, disappearing from my view as my entire body pulsed with warmth.

Memories crashed into me so suddenly that my head exploded into blinding, sharp pain. I reached up with both hands, grasping my temples as a strangled scream tore up my throat and burst through the air. The man before me vanished, leaving me to suffer the pain of everything I’d ever lived surging through me once again.

The pain of loss and violation felt sticky on my skin, tears welling in my eyes as I sank to the forest floor. Sinking my hands into the dry underbrush, I let the abrasiveness of the crumpling leaves ground me in the reality of the here and now.

There were no flames of a funeral pyre burning my father’s body in these woods.

There was no cane cracking against my back in these woods.

There were no thorns from the Twilight Berry bush tearing my hands into ribbons of flesh.

There was no death waiting for me at the Veil.

I cried as they flashed through my head like portraits of my memories, rocking as my sense of self returned to me.

Adelphia’s voice was low and even in my memory, her words the driving force that made me push myself up off the forest floor.There is beauty in knowing who you are.

She’d been brave enough to know herself. She’d been brave enough to look at the adversity of her past and face life with her head held high. To do anything less would have been a disservice to her memory now that the life had been stripped from her too soon.

I knew myself. I knew my purpose, and I would not allow the Lethe to break me.

My legs wobbled beneath me as I stood, my knees bent to absorb the shock of shoulders that felt like they carried the metaphorical weight of the world. The hind came closer, her feathered tail swaying in the breeze with each step. It was only when she stood before me that she stopped, her golden stare meeting my own. She bowed her head ever so slightly, and I reached out a hand to touch the top of her face.

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