I feel the world sway, hands on my face.My cheeks are very hot, and pins and needles crawl over every inch of me, climbing my limbs, rippling over my torso.It’s so hard to focus past these moments of here and now.Something’s not right, I’m sure of it, but should I care?
“I’m sorry,” the girl’s voice whispers to me, hoarse and close, the heat of her breath on my ear.“I didn’t… I thought.”She clears her throat.“Portuk said you were dangerous, a threat.I believed him.”Her whisper carries a hint of terror to it as her words tremble.“Why did I believe him?”She sighs softly, breath a shaking stream over my hot skin, stirring the prickling further and making me whimper.“She’s given you too much,” the girl says.“You may never recover.I’m so sorry.”She gasps softly.“But I swear to you, Farah is fine.I didn’t hurt her, just knocked her out.She’s safe, Remalla.”
Farah.A small face flashes in my head, followed by the image of a bright, red piece of fruit.
Apple?The need to weep squeezes my throat, my chest, even if I may never understand why it appears from nowhere to choke me.
But it’s the second name that catches my attention.Remalla.That’smyname.I cling to it like it means something, even if it doesn’t, not right now.I should be sad.
Shouldn’t I?
Don’t worry, the voice in my head speaks to me, distant, so distant.I’ll make sure you regain what you’ve lost.But this is the only way.You’ll just have to trust me.
All right, I think back to her.If you say so.
It’s her turn to sigh.You’re going to be very angry with me when you are yourself again, she tells me.But they would have insisted on coming with you.They would have died where you’re going, Flame.You would have lost them, and all would have fallen.I hope you understand when the time comes.This was the only option I had.
I don’t respond because I have no idea what she’s talking about, or if she’s even real.The boat (I’m on a boat?) is rocking again, and someone’s foot appears in my line of sight, crossing over my body.
“Get her up,” the woman’s voice says.A man grasps me and tugs me upright, and I’m going to throw up again, I can’t help it.He curses as the bile burbles up, and I’m suddenly face-first over water, heaving helplessly into the black surface.“Be careful with her,” the woman says.
“Thenyoucarry her,” he snarls back.He jerks me upward again, and this time there’s nothing to come up, even if disorientation and nausea war with each other to make me puke.I’m over his shoulder, flopping against his backside, unable to move at all as he steps up out of the boat and onto a flat, wooden deck.
We must be where we were going, then.Except, there’s suddenly fire and shouting, and when I feel myself fall, there’s no way to stop myself from hitting the boards hard.
Or from rolling over and over, images caught in my vision while I tumble, of swords and torches and a sudden rush of people from the dark.
All just flickers of instants that go away the moment I plunge into the cool, black water.
***
Chapter Two
I won’t survive for long, I’m aware of that much, but it’s hard to muster anything past a vague sort of sadness.At least the pain will be gone at last, the deep water, real this time, soothing on my hot skin, easing the pounding in my head.I’m sinking, limbs immobile, feeling myself flip slowly over onto my back, muffled sound growing quiet, light flickering through that same wavering surface above while I fall away from the fire that dances past the ripples above.
Something grasps my wrist, hard and unrelenting, and I’m jerked upward, a rag-stuffed doll, my head impacting the edge of the wooden slats.Heated wetness runs into my eyes, forcing them closed.The shouting is crisp and clear again, the tingling returned, and the agony sears me so thoroughly that I know I whimper once more.I can’t stop it and don’t even try.
My body is tossed to the deck, face down, just a sliver of activity visible when I blink the thick wetness from my vision.Mostly moving feet, reflected torchlight, chaos and madness that could simply be my muddled mind.When a man hits the wood next to me, thudding hard enough to shake us both, his face turned toward mine, I recognize the terror dying in his wide-open eyes.Not because I know him, but because I’ve seen death come for many, delivered it with my own hands.
He has only a moment left.
I watch him leave his body, can almost imagine a shimmering soul rising from the meat suit he leaves behind.A foot impacts his remains, sending him sliding out of sight, the boots planting in front of me.
She’s panting hard, and there’s blood running down her leg, pooling around that same foot that delivered the dead man to the deep.Men rush her, forcing her away from me.Why are they fighting?What has she done?My next blink clears my vision again, gaze finding another corpse.A young woman is laid out on the deck, her eyes wide and staring at me, though she’s not there anymore to see me in return.There’s an odd angle to her neck that tells the part of me still familiar with such things that it has to be broken, red hair glistening in the firelight.I know her, I’m sure of it.I have a name on the tip of my tongue, saying a soft little farewell to Fethest as the big man who sneaks out from behind the attackers catches my eyes, his own fear written all over his face.
I know him, too.I don’t like him, I don’t think, though why is lost to me.
Portuk.Yes, Portuk.In a sudden surge of hate without purpose, I hope he dies, too.
How strange, that relentless and savage response.
He dives into the water and vanishes, the woman standing in front of me still bleeding, still fighting.But they are so many, her feet dancing a pattern I know, I understand, even if I can’t move myself, and she is one, alone.
Don’t leave me alone.That thought makes me weep.
She’s tiring, blood loss weakening her.I’m blinking tears now, thinning the thick sludge that no longer blinds me, the flow slowed.There was a time she wouldn’t have been so easy to defeat.What’s happened to her?To… Vivenne.Her name comes back, too.They press her, a flurry of swords slicing at her.She stumbles over me, just a half-step too far in retreat.When her feet vanish, her presence gone, I hear a splash and then nothing else from her.
While the men crowd around me and stare down at me.
