Page 96 of Beyond the Winter Kingdom
As we walked along the edge of the river, I stole one last glance at my hand. The skin was still flawless. But that wasn’t what made me uneasy.
It was the tugging beneath my ribs, low and pulsing like something—I just didn’t know what.
Maybe I was crazy. Maybe Damon was crazy.
But gods help me—I was starting to wonder if he was right.
We walked until the trees thinned and a wide log stretched from our side to the other, moss-covered but seemingly stable enough, assuming neither of us slipped.
Poor assumption, given my shitty balance, but I wasn’t going to chicken out when we needed to cross.
Damon tested it with one foot, then the other. He jumped a little to test the give and when it held he said, “It’s solid. I’ll go first.”
He didn’t extend his arms like I would, or any person who was vertically challenged. He prowled several feet across with the ease of a silent predator before turning back to me.
“Coming, damsel?” he called over his shoulder.
I flipped him off, but he just grinned.
With a huff, I stepped onto the log. It was slick, damp from the misting air above the river, and my boots squeaked with every movement.
Unlike Damon the unflappable, I extended my arms outward in a tee formation and slowly started to shuffle across. As I neared him, he reminded me to go slow and keep close, as though I had any intention of doing otherwise.
The current rushed beneath me, loud and wild and untamed. I really did hate dark water. It wasn’t necessarily a fear of swimming or water—it was not knowing what was beneath the surface.
A splash sounded to my left.
I flinched, eyes scanning the roiling surface.
Nothing.
“Meera?” Damon called from in front of me. “You good? You want me to slow down?”
“Nope. I’m good,” I mumbled and forced a step forward. Another.
Then something cold wrapped around my ankle.
I screamed. Blind panic overrode all sense of reason as I swayed on the log, trapped in my own fight-or-flight response.
A hand, pale and bloated, its nails blue and cracked, like it had been drowned long ago and forgotten, held my ankle like a shackle. It reached up from the water like a corpse risen from the deep.
A splitting pain clouded my vision; an electric shock went through my body as I felt every muscle tense.
Everything went white—my sight, my mind—an emptiness that swallowed everything around me.
There was no sound. No river. No Damon.
Just me.
Floating.
Drifting.
Then, as if lurched from one place into another, my sight returned, and a vision appeared. It was ... me? And Damon?
I watched from an outside perspective as I screamed and launched myself into Damon’s arms. It was the snake incident from earlier, except I wasn’t seeing it as myself. It was from somewhere or someone else. An unknown third person that had been watching while Damon and I were none the wiser.
I felt my feet move as my body in the vision creeped forward. Everything blurred except the blood on my hand.
