Page 10 of Lore of the Tides

She harnessed her magic, focusing on the warmth coiled within her. That delightful gathering ofSourcehad become so familiar to her that in the morning whenDeeping Lune’s power banked, or when she was locked in her room andDeeping Lunewas with Syrelle under lock and key... she felt lacking, deficient, wrong. She yoked the magic,hermagic, let it pool within her, though it was harder to come, weaker than when she held the grimoire in her grasp and held an image of what she thought the other grimoire might look like, feel like, be like.

Within her mind’s eye she saw dreamlike glimpses of loving hands sewing the bindings of two books with silken thread infused withSource. Scarred hands pressed to pages, their fingers appearing to be dipped in ink, mirrors of Lore’s own. But these were not Lore’s hands. Not herSourceflowing into the pages.

She immediately recognized one of the books, her grimoire,Deeping Lune. Its binding was already completed, the stitching of flowers and moons gleaming in the light from some nearby window just out of sight, brand new. The other, thicker tome wasAuroradel.

Made by the same alchemist. Infused with the sameSourcethat was even now stirring within her chest, flowing through her veins, making her magic shimmer and glow.

Lore held the vision within her mind, freezing it like a painting, arresting this moment from another time, and compelled it toward the water in the wooden bowl. Willing the shimmering pool to still. The surface to become a mirror. No, a window, a vessel to look through, to the other side.

Show her not where the book had been, but where it was now.

Lore’s mouth went dry as she looked through the surface, through the window, and saw... nothing.

There was nothing there, it was as though the book only existed in the past.

She’d seen this before when she’d tried to look and had given up. But Syrelle was right, if Coretha became heir and reigned over the people of Duskmere, things would be worse.

So she looked back at the nothingness, trying to push it aside, move through it maybe... and that was when she realized, it was not that there was nothing there... there was something.

Darkness.

Lore thought she’d known darkness.

When the moon was new, the fires banked, and the earth shrouded in night. But this darkness was unknown to her. An absolute dark so deep it seemed this place had never known the concept of light.

She pushed further into it.

Cold.

It was cold here. Despite it being insubstantial, as if it were happening within her memory, goosebumps erupted on her flesh, her physical body reacting to this other place as if she were truly there.

She swallowed, trying to moisten her dry mouth, tasting metallic rock upon her tongue. She smelled something damp and rotting. Mold maybe? Ancient. She tilted her head at a sound. There was a scratching beneath her. Little claws from a darkling creature skittering over rock. She heard the sound of water—was that outside the ship or here with her on this other, dark plane?

But the moment she focused on the smell, the taste—it dissipated, slipping through her fingers like sand beneath a strong river current.

A bead of sweat dripped into the bowl, breaking the spell.

She glanced up at Syrelle where he sat with his head in his hands, his shoulders hunched.

Lore would catch him sometimes raising his hand to tap on antlers that weren’t there. Reaching for fluffed curls to pull into a bun.

As if he himself forgot who he was at times.

“It’s almost dawn. We will try again in the evening. Thadrik, have Cecil escort Lore back to her cabin.”

“Yes, Commander.”

Cecil. Lore might be able to see the sunrise from the deck today, then.

Cecil, a guard with floppy rabbit ears, was Lore’s least hated guard. The quiet female didn’t have much to say, and despite being mostly kind, to Lore’s chagrin, she wouldn’t take Lore to see Finndryl, or tell her where he was or how he was doing, but she did bring Lore topside some days. Mostly, unlike the others, she didn’t call her “witch,” and Lore appreciated her for that.

Lore followed the guard, who was short by fae standards—only a few inches taller than she—down the corridor. Cecil may be short, but she more than made up for it with muscle honed from years of practicing with the intimidating sword hanging from her hip. The two arrived at the fork—turn this way for Lore’s cabin and a locked door, or continue straight, toward the sunrise. Lore hesitated. Cecil turned to look, her eyes scanning Lore’s face.

Pity for the hated human girl shone in her overly large eyes, though Cecil tried to conceal it.

“Would you like to go up on the deck today?”

“That would be lovely.” Lore tried to sound calm, and not at all desperate, though she was.Desperate, that is.