Chapter 22
Ariver of rushing blues and greens flooded around her as Tethys clung to the rickety wooden bench at the aft end of the canoe.
The ferryman, draped in shredded burlap cloaks, held out a gnarled hand.
She risked a glance toward the turbid water’s surface.
Swollen limbs and waterlogged fingers clung to the raft, slowing its processional down the river.
Tethys sucked in a breath, tremors of terror rushing down her spine.
She shouldn’t be here in this godsforsaken place. It stunk of grime and rot and death.
The ferryman hissed, his voice slithering across her face, and gestured to the midnight leather breastplate clasped around her abdomen.
She brushed a hand down it, tracing the ridges and valleys of souvenirs left by enemy blades.
If she focused on each individual scar, she could almost see a faint glimmer of the creature who’d left that mark.
Her nostrils twitched. Gruesome details of the battles she’d faced, the lives she’d stolen, clawed at her heart.
The ferryman dropped his oar, his hooded face illuminated in the glimmering, iridescent light.
This place, wherever it was, felt opaque.
As if the sky itself was fractured. He took a slow step toward her, hissing once more.
A growl from beside her echoed across the riverbanks.
He shook his head, raising a gnarled finger at the jet black beast seated to Tethys’s left.
What did he want, this skeletal creature that commanded the dead?
He snarled, pointing again to her breastplate.
Dangling loosely from her neck was a simple silver key.
Tethys pulled the clasp, anything to keep those demonic eyes from closing any more distance between them.
She held it out. Before letting it fall into his outstretched hand, slender fingers grasped Tethys’s bicep. Her eyes shot to her right.
Her blood went cold.
Seated beside her, in a bloodstained, gossamer gown was…her own face. Her own golden curls, now windblown and knotted, curled around her shoulders. Where her other arm should have been, only a gnarled, bloody stump remained.
“Offer anything but that. Anything but the key,” her mirrored self cried.
Tethys unleashed a scream that deafened even the roaring rapids around them. The ferryman lunged for her, his cloak wrapping itself around her shoulders. He clung to her with frozen limbs and bruised, rotten flesh.
“Anything but the key,” her mirrored self cried again, clawing at the ferryman as he dug his claws into Tethys’s biceps. The snarling wolf pounced on him, its growls blistering her with each ferocious bite.
She shut her eyes, willing her soul to leave this place, this vision, this body. Everything stilled as she faded into the abyss.