I shoot out through the last tunnel, finally landing aboveground. I fall to my knees in the snow and wretch and wretch and wretch. Up comes my breakfast and last night’s dinner and anything else that might have been within my system.
My ponytail is pulled behind my back the moment I start to heave, Kearan holding it out of the way from behind me.
When I think I’m done, I grab a handful of snow and shove it into my mouth. I know it should feel so cold against my teeth that it burns. But there’s nothing. No registering of the temperature.
Yet it still melts, and I swish it about and spit. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Don’t think about the fact that snow doesn’t feel cold anymore. That’s the least of your concerns.
“Did he … kiss you?” Kearan asks.
My body convulses again, but there is nothing left to upend.
“He did something to me,” I say when I can speak again. “Something is very wrong.”
“It’s all right,” Kearan says. “He’s dead now. No one could have survived that cave-in.”
I shake my head. “He’s alive.”
“How do you know?”
“I put a dagger in his heart and another in his throat. He’s still walking and talking.”
And then there’s the bit I don’t want to admit to.
The fact that I can feel him.
I don’t know exactly where he is, but I know that he is. We are connected somehow. From the moment I struck his heart.
“He called you Sora,” Kearan says.
“That was my family’s nickname for me.”
“How could he have known that?”
“I—”
The point of a spear juts under my chin from where I still kneel in the snow. I was so distressed that I didn’t realize we were no longer alone.
And then it happens again.
“You took something that wasn’t yours to take, Threydan. The siren artifact is the property of the king, and you will return it immediately.”
Spears were pointed directly at me from a dozen different directions, but I only laughed at their presence.
“You can’t kill me. You can’t take the artifact. I am the panaceum now.”
A spear embedded into my shoulder, but I couldn’t feel the pain of it. There was only numbness as I pulled it from my skin. It dripped blood onto the green earth, but my skin was already healing, the blood replenishing and the wound disappearing.
Then Irushed them, determined to kill every last one of mycrewmates. They chose their side.
When the memory subsides, I look up to see more weapons pointed at Kearan. It’s the men returned from our distraction, finding us at their camp.
I can’t find the proper fear within me right now. Not when my body and mind no longer feel like I control them. That’s far more distressing.
One of the men says something in that unfamiliar language, but my eyes widen as my mind translates the words.
“You’ve woken him.”
Why can I understand him now?
What did Threydan do to me?
I stand slowly, so as not to get stabbed, and stare down the man who spoke.
“What is he?” I ask, somehow speaking their language back to them.
The man’s eyes widen in shock. “He’s already changed her.”
“What is going on?” I ask.
A different man steps forward, presses his spear against my cheek, and slices across my skin.
Kearan tries to leap to my side, but burly men restrain him. One throws a punch into the center of his stomach, toppling him. Meanwhile, my head whips back from the sting of the cut. I feel my blood drip down my face, though I can’t feel the cold air against the open wound.
“She still bleeds. He hasn’t performed the ritual yet.”
“What ritual?” I ask.
“Sorinda, what’s going on?” Kearan asks. “How are you talking with them?”
“We need to make sure he doesn’t find her body,” the one who spoke before continues.
“What do you want done?” another asks.
“To the deep with her.”
Something hard crashes against the back of my head, and everything goes black.
Chapter 13
WHEN I REGAIN CONSCIOUSNESS, my eyes feel so very heavy, so I keep them closed.
And then I realize I must be dreaming.
For I feel weightless, and my body drifts as though it were floating.
At least I’m not falling, I think distantly. Or having some nightmare about the night my whole life was ripped from me.
I think it curious how muted and strange everything feels. Sounds seem too far away. Or perhaps too close? There’s a whooshing that sounds nothing like wind and a pressure on my skin that has no temperature.
And finally, I register the sensation at my heart. That warmth that seems contained. Out of my reach. Yet vital somehow. My entire life force held within one spot.
And then I remember Threydan.
My eyes shoot open.
I blink several times before I can make sense of what I’m seeing. Light threading down from above. Thick shapes hovering above me. A large void spread out in front of me: darkness in every direction as far as I can see. Which admittedly isn’t that far.
I try to stand, to move my fingers. Pinch myself awake.
But then I realize I’m restrained.
I look down, my head moving more sluggishly than usual. Some sort of iron weight rests on the ground, dirt flecks stirring when it shifts. My arms are bound in front of me at the wrists, and as I try to free myself, to thrash, bubbles drift upward.
Bubbles?
The realization sends my pulse hammering away at lightning-fast speeds.
I’m underwater.
I’ve been underwater for stars’ know how long, and yet I’ve been breathing just normally. Or at least I was before I realized my predicament.
Now my lungs have increased their pace.
This is a horrible nightmare.
Except …
That heat within me, the numbness to temperature in my limbs. That all really happened, didn’t it? Some frozen, sleeping man did something to me. The faint taste of bile still sits on my tongue.
I don’t know what’s real and what’s not at the moment, but I know one thing. Regardless of whether or not I’m dreaming, I do not want to be down here.
I lift my head, realize the floating blocks above me are ice. I’m still in the frozen northeast. The water should freeze my limbs into immobility, yet I cannot feel it.
But my cheek still stings from where the man cut me on his spearpoint.
Right after I came out of that ice tomb with Kearan.
Kearan.
They’ve taken him or killed him.
And that thought, while it once would have not made a difference to me—now I feel incensed.
That is a member of my crew. He is no one’s for the taking. Not while I’m still alive.
I need to get out of here.
My cutlass is gone, of course. So are a good majority of my knives. But surely, I had far too many on me for those men to find them all.
I slip my fingers into my boots, only to come up empty. I try for pockets in my clothing, but the water has made the fabric stiffen, and it’s hard to reach inside my coat with my hands bound. I hear something move behind me, and I go very still.
Sound travels faster underwater, doesn’t it? It could be something very far away, I reason.
You can’t be afraid of the dark when you’re the monster lurking in the shadows.
That’s always been true on land. But underwater?
Believe it.
I have to.