Page 144 of Riftborne
I needed a plan. And fast. Crawling back into bed, I tried tocalm my breathing. My thoughts were a whirlwind. I shifted uncomfortably, feeling layers of lace and tulle twisted around my thighs. I was still wearing the tattered dress from the ball.
Was that only last night? Memories from my last moments in Emeraal came racing back.
How far was I from home?
Fear flooded my body as I recalled the long journey here. The beasts, the voices, the towers.
I was in one of those towers.
No. No. No.
I was stuck, potentially with no way back. In the grasps of the enemy who had been killing us by the hundreds without a second thought. My hands began to tremble as the reality sank in.
How could anyone rescue me here?
Why had Laryk not raced after me? He had just stared with a dumbfounded look on his face. And Osta’s scream right before I blacked out...
I couldn’t bring myself to imagine what Osta was going through right now. I was sure she thought I was dead.
Perhaps death would have been better.
Tears welled in my eyes. Why did they bring me here? And even stranger, why were they keeping me alive?
Don’t work yourself up.
There was no time to panic. There was no time to let my mind spiral through the possibilities. Whatever the reason was, I wasn’t going to cooperate. I’d die fighting.
My mind was so cloudy, it was hard to stay focused. I shifted my thoughts to the voices that brought me here. What they said. Where I was.
They had called it Ravenfell.
While I didn’t get a look at them, I knew now their shadows were just a mirage, a defense to hide the truth of their physical forms. Forms that didn’t seem so different from us.
Forms that spoke the same tongue.
I leaned back, trying to clear my thoughts. If I wanted to survive, I had to find a way out of here. It would only be a matter of time before they decided to kill me…
Or worse…
Don’t go there.
Once I managed to calm my breathing, my thoughts settled on the only thing that made sense. My eyes slammed shut, calling forth the tendrils, urging them out of their hiding place. I was met with resistance. My mind swirled. Refocusing, I goaded them up my spine, feeling relieved when they finally made their way to my skull.
My connection to them felt different…
Weaker.
I took a deep breath, casting them out, sending them to the ether. Perhaps there was a mind we could take. They fluttered along the walls, to the door, through the cracks below…
An orb appeared mere paces beyond the room.
A mind.
It glowed with a warmer hue than the ones I was used to, but it would work all the same. It pulsed within my reach, calm and unassuming.
A perfect target.
The tendrils slithered toward it, ready to strike, but as soon as they reached the glowing orb, they were zapped, rejected, sent soaring back into the depths of my spine, terrified.
