Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Dahlia
My brain feels like a weight inside my skull, holding my head to the pillows.
How did I get here?
Muddied consciousness.
Strange sounds.
A scream cut short in a throat.
It takes several heavy beats of my lashes that seem to thunder on my sensitive cheeks for me to remember what happened.
Robert gave me a sleeping tea to help me disappear for a while, to numb the pain, to temporarily fill the hole in my chest. To mute the cruel, haunting words. ‘He doesn’t want you. You meant nothing to him.’
Fatigued, my palms slide around the swelling between my hips. A tug deep inside my heart fills me with an insatiable need to cry and wail, but the tea seems to dowse the pain.
Why is it so dark?
Rolling to my side, I feel around the sheets for the edge of the mattress, fingers seeking through dark, empty space for the switch to my lamp. Finding it, I sigh and flick it over, but nothing happens.
Sluggishly, I lift myself to a sitting position and blink against the dense dark.
“Spero?” I squint at his cot cloaked in darkness, unable to make out more than a vague shape.
Outside the cabin, something bangs, a single loud pop that echoes around the mountain, ricocheting off earthy walls, and then stopping. Seems to have disappeared into the canopy of the Redwind above.
That sounded like…
It can’t be. Memories of my final few nights at the Half-tower, of war, of unrest, come tumbling back.
Was that a… a gunshot?
My heart lurches.
I jerk off the mattress, hitting the floor with a thud, forgetting about the tiny human inside me. Staying low just in case, I crawl to Spero’s cot on my forearms and knees.
Squatting, I lean over the edge to scoop him up, finding his chubby body in the dark. Heavy relief washes over me once I have him cradled against me.
It wasn’t a gunshot.
Couldn’t have been.
It is so quiet that every slight sound seems amplified. I trail my fingers on the walls as I feel my way along them. My feet shuffle as I amble into the main room.
Focus. I take in the pitch-black space. Between the open front curtains, I can barely make out my neighbouring cabins.
There is no power.
In the distance, I hear a wooden door swing open and close, and a man ask, “What was that awful bang?”
“Everyone stay inside.” I hear a woman answer him, loud enough to warn us all. “Our windmill is down. The batteries will kick in soon. Go back to sleep.”
I bump Spero on my hip as he gurgles and bumbles. When I lean against the wall, peering through the front window, I watch dark figures, outlined by the glow of their torches, spread out, searching for… something.
I shuffle backward and walk away from the door, my mind still in a fog from the tea. Feeling my way, I head back to my room and lay Spero down in his cot.
I can’t quite tell, but I think his eyes are wide open. I touch his cheek reassuringly. “You’re okay.”
By the bedside, I kick something weightless. I pick it up and stare at it; time draws out as I notice the brown-blonde fur and the small frown, immediately wanting Spero’s fluffy bear for myself tonight.
Such a grumpy bear.
There is a creak in the main room, followed by my own unbidden gasp in my ears. I follow the sound to the front door, my body tensing, going completely still as I stare into the dark void. “Who is there?”
My pulse beats in my neck.
“Lucy?” I think I see… something. A figure… And it is like I am getting drawn in, sucked into the black space while trying to find a shape. “Robert?”
A metallic taste swirls around my tongue, and as I lick my lips, the black void moves forward, becoming solid. Energy borders the form like black dye seeping into the air.
A huge male figure.
In a hood.
Towers in front of me.
But before I can scream, the male drags his hood back and the smallest of light from a torch outside slides along a shiny metal plate.
“Hello, little flower.”