Chapter 17
I retreated to Fhírinne the first chance I got, the fountain’s dribble soothing me almost instantly.
I traced my eyes around the room, unsure where to start, but hungry to find something useful to sink my teeth into.
Anything to dull the endless questions rattling about in my skull, but they snowballed nonetheless.
Where was Cillian? Had Celine been hiding magic from me this entire time? What were the Ancient Lores? Why had the man of mist helped me? What was the stone’s purpose? Who was Bethesda really? But most importantly, how the hell did I fit into all of this?
“Stop!” One thing at a time. I focused on my breathing, willing my mind into submission.
I waded through the willows, my fingers tangling in the crisp leaves as I made my way to the journal cabinet.
A click, and the lock popped open. I took my time surveying each shelf until I settled on a glittery spine encased in a single ray of sunlight, my fingers latching around the suede cover.
Sitting on the bench nearest the solarium window—the stone warm from the late afternoon sun—I flipped open to the first page.
While I doubted I would find any answers within, God knew I could use a good distraction.
Property of Yelena Romanoff
December 8, 1942
New York in the snow is less impressive than I had figured it might be.
Russia: now that’s snow. But Papa promises we’ll go back one day, when the war has come and gone.
I fear though that this might be my home now.
This dark, dingy, mess of a city. I hate it here.
The smell, the dry air. All of it. Papa keeps reminding me how much I’ve wanted to practice my English, he says this is my chance.
I wanted to argue and remind him my English was already quite strong, but I suppose he’s right.
There’s always more to learn. Though I would have been fine practicing with Nadia back home.
Since we arrived, I have had these … visions of the war as if I’ve lived it, but different somehow.
The soldiers are more monsters than humans, and I cannot escape them.
I never run fast enough or hide well enough.
They find me beneath the bombs and gunfire.
They always find me. Lately, even when awake, they find me.
Visions. Monsters … yeah, coincidence didn’t exist. What were these strange stories trying to tell me?
I flipped the page and the next and the next.
Each new entry was a little darker and deeper, the same as Margaret’s had been.
The similarities between journals, the way they lined up with my own life, became so cut and dry it could split skin.
Before long, I began reading Yelena’s words as if they were my own, fully immersed in her rapid decline and never noticing my heavy limbs.
Or that the calm of Fhírinne was lulling me to sleep.
I entered the dream already fleeing. Solid rock walls encased me on both sides, giving me one option: to barrel ahead.
My feet slogged through black waters as the heavy stench of mildew burned my eyes.
Worse still, I had never seen this hollow canyon before, meaning I had precisely zero idea where I was going.
The beast’s voice rumbled from the gorge’s mouth behind me, chilling my blood. “I very much like our games, child! Hide-and-seek may be my favorite of all. It makes the meal so much more”—he slurped through his teeth with a smack—“tasty when it’s tinged with fear.”
Just keep going! Mind your steps! My feet thrashed through tall, razor-sharp grass that sliced my exposed calves with minimal effort as I scoured my surroundings for any hope of concealment.
Then I saw it: the source of the putrid stench.
Faces screamed and moaned from the canyon’s edge; their bodies melded into the stone walls themselves.
Human faces. My stomach turned, threatening to spew my lunch.
What the hell is this place? The black water at my feet began to rise, sweeping up my ankles and latching on tight.
No, not water anymore … hands! Dozens of hands, their nails broken, bloody, and gray.
The hair on my neck stood on end, and I kicked to keep more hands from taking hold.
“Famine,” one face screamed.
“Envy,” cried another.
A woman near the top waved her half-severed arm to get my attention and rasped, “Deception.”
I writhed in the water’s grasp, but with every move the hands clenched down harder.
My heart threatened to rip clean out of my rib cage, when the answer hit me like a crashing wave: fear.
The canyon thrived off my fear! I forced my eyes shut despite the beast’s taunting chatter in the distance and focused on my breath.
In, out. In, out. In, out.
Warmth encompassed my head and the panic inside me quieted where it touched.
My mind stilled, my heartbeat slowly steadying in tandem.
I grabbed hold of the calm, willing it into my bloodstream and out to my limbs.
You can do this. The hands hissed as warmth crept down to my toes, and my eyes shot open in time to watch the misshapen fingers return to water, slushing into the cracks and crevices.
A tendril of light seeped from my feet into the earth right behind me. Well, that’s new …
“There really is no sense in hiding from me, you know,” the beast called, far closer than before. “I will find you no matter where you go. You are in my world now.”
“Shit …” I spun around, narrowed in on a break in the charcoal bushes ahead, and banked toward it. The people in the walls lamented at my departure, begging me to help them.
“Yet, you insist on running? Foolish woman.” The monster laughed maniacally.
I pushed my body to its limits, raising my hands to steer the thorny branches away from my face as I thrashed through the opening ahead.
A ruthless spike sliced a gash in my palm that gushed on contact, but I didn’t stop.
Thorns tore at my arms, legs, anything they could get their claws in, and I swore the bushes themselves giggled with pleasure.
One final push hurled me out the other side. Oh, thank God—
The solid ground beneath my feet disappeared, sending me flailing through the open air. A gangly hand grasped at my shirt collar, but the beast hadn’t been quick enough this time.
“No!” it howled.
The feral sound carried the whole way down, mocking me as I fell to what felt like my death.
When I finally connected with the water’s surface below, it greeted me with the same gentleness as a concrete slab.
If it weren’t for the sharp prick of cold stabbing like a million needles across my skin, I’d have lost consciousness, but it forced me to fight.
I gulped the black waves in mouthfuls, clawing toward the open air above until I broke through the surface with a deep gasp.
“You foolish thing,” the beast snarled from fifty feet overhead, its enormous silhouette pacing along the cliff’s edge. “The death I offered you was far more gracious than anything you will find in the murky depths!”
With one last bare of its teeth, it was gone.
I treaded water and locked onto my willow tree, swirling in the strong gusts of wind on the shoreline. If I reached it, I could force myself to wake up. I’d be safe. I started paddling toward it when the raging waters calmed all at once, a gut-wrenching silence taking hold.
You have to get out of there, now, a strange voice cried from the sky.
But I didn’t search for or question it. I had no time to.
Instead, I dug my arms into the glassy surface and thrashed for the frost-covered stones on the beach.
Just a little farther. Twenty feet, fifteen feet, ten—a raspy screech bubbled from somewhere deep below, one voice and somehow ten all at once.
“It seems a little fly has gone and gotten itself all tangled up in my web.” It shrieked. “Finally!”
Misery … you have to move, Fey, the female voice called again.
I buried my hands in the surface and throttled my way to the shore. The water trembled with an eerie hum. Six thick tentacles erupted from the surface, blocking any possible escape route.
Do not look it in the eye, the voice ordered, conviction in her words.
And for some odd reason, I believed her. I bowed my head toward the water as the muscled arms dipped closer, exposing a cat-like eyeball at the tip of each in my periphery. Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look. They hovered above, each eye taking its turn to carefully study my face.
“A human?” The tentacles lurched in confusion. “I have not had the enjoyment of human flesh in centuries! What a lucky catch, indeed. What shall I call you, morsel?”
“Please, don’t—”
“Silence. Your name, now,” it barked.
My tongue turned to lead.
“No matter,” it snickered. “Name or not, I shall have my fill.”
The gangly, fleshy arms jutted into the sky above me with effortless force, freezing at their tallest point as teeth ejected along their full lengths.
Answer, my disembodied helper yelled.
“Fey, my name is Fey!” I shook, all feeling in my limbs gone.
The meaty tentacles froze.
“You are the cloaked one’s human?” Its tentacles recoiled. “To eat you would most certainly find me on the greater Lore’s bad side.”
Time stood still. The air, still. My heart, still.
A sudden, heavy grasp around my thigh pulled me below the waves, and water crowded my lungs.
I clawed toward the surface, but down I went, into the depths.
My head cracked hard against the stone floor and I cried out, fully prepared for a rush of water straight into my lungs, but air came instead.
I dared a peek to my left … the shore. It had dropped me on land?
I felt the creature’s eyes on me. “When the Queen of Lore gets her hands on you, I bid you to remind her how Misery spared your life, if only for her sake. Should you not, I will ensure a death far slower and exceedingly more painful than even she can conjure up.”
The water bubbled, the domineering eyes gone as quickly as they’d come.