Page 19 of Lore of the Tides

This darkness was a web. It pressed on her, smothering in its obduracy.

Please stop, I can’t bear it.

She tried to protest within her mind, but the darkness leached coherent thought like a fungus.

A parasite.

Lore gasped for breath, phantom chest heaving, but there wasn’t enough air to satiate.

Where griffin cries pierce the sky, and shadows strike the mountain’s heart, here I lie...

The voice continued, repeating the riddle over and over until it grew discordant and deafening. Now the voice had the piercing edge of panic. It was afraid that Lore would not find it, that it would be trapped in this tomb forever.

The impenetrable darkness became tainted with the taste of damp, dank earth. Creatures with hundreds of legs skittered across her skin. She tried to jerk away and brush them off, but her arms wouldn’t work; she couldn’t do anything at all.

Putrid darkness pressed itself on Lore’s tongue. Shoved itself down her throat. Filling her lungs.

She tried to thrash, to brush the creatures from her skin.

This was all in her mind.

Lore could not feel her body, she could not feel her body at all.

What body?

Had she ever had a body?

This was all she knew, this darkness, this was all she’d ever known, these swarming, creeping creatures her only companions. This was all there was, all there had ever been, all there would ever be.

No one was coming to save her...

She opened her mouth to scream, not caring if the creatures invaded her. Let them eat her from the inside out, let them end this misery, let them...

Chapter 6

Return to me, Lore.”

Lore came to, shaken back to awareness by a pair of elegant hands gripping her shoulders.

Lore screamed, the sound bursting out in a torrent.

She coughed, heaving, gasping, filling her lungs with sweet, fresh air. She breathed in again and again, gulping it down. The more she inhaled, the more her terror subsided, the more aware she became of her current circumstances.

Syrelle’s grip was tight on her shoulders, where he’d been shaking her. His eyes were wide, scared. Magic poured out of him in waves, reaching for her, surrounding her. Heat from his fingers burned through the linen of her dress.

This was the first time he’d touched her sincebefore.

“Don’t touch me.” Lore lurched out of his grip.

It wasn’t hard. The moment she’d spoken, he’d jerked back himself as if she were her grimoire and had burned him for daring to place his hands upon her.

Lore wished shehad. Burned him.

She craved seeing him in pain.

She wanted to pull him from his body and send him to that place where she had just been. That dark, horrid place. Lore raisedher fingers to her lips. Used the back of her hand to swipe the blood on her face.

She could still taste damp and rot and corrosion on her tongue. She worried she would retch.

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