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Caldris roared. “There’s no fucking need for—”

Another blow knocked me fully into his grip, and my body went lax.

Then everything faded to black.

2

The feeling of water sluicing over my skin drew me from the depths of slumber. I opened my eyes suddenly, staring out at the dark, reflective surface beneath me. All around me, faint lights twinkled in the darkness like the night sky, stretching on and on for what seemed like an eternity. There were no mountains, no trees, no signs of life—merely an endless void.

My arm lay against the water beneath me, supporting me above the surface as I stared down through the murky, flowing surface. I lifted a hand, studying my fingers before I pressed it against the water once more. It slid beneath the surface, and the water streamed over my hand, flowing as quickly as the waters of a rapid river. Shifting, changing, moving. I couldn’t see the bottom of the strange river beneath my body. Shadows and specters twined together seamlessly, writhing and filling the water.

The macabre, weathered face of a man passed beneath my hand—his skin was pulled taut to his skull, his eyes closed and cheeks hollow. I pressed my face closer to the water to study the way my fingers moved within the fluid. A spectral woman passed by, her eyes closed as if she was in eternal slumber until the moment her torso passed by my hand.

Her eyes flung open. She grasped onto me, and her mouth opened into a scream, revealing razor-sharp teeth. I tugged on my hand, trying to pull it free, but she and the water held me captive.

“Let go!” I screamed, pulling as hard as I could.

Those teeth seemed to rotate in a circle within her mouth, spinning in a vortex that felt like it would suck me into an entirely different world. She slowly dragged herself toward my hand, while I desperately fought to pry her fingers off mine.

“Let it be a lesson for you,” a male voice said as he pressed the paddle end of his oar against her torso.

He pushed her away, and her shriek and wail echoed through the cavernous empty space as she drifted off. I was finally able to yank my hand free. My lungs heaved as I cradled it to my chest, having nearly lost it to my own curiosity.

“Do not play with things you don’t understand, girl.”

“What was that?” I asked, rising to my feet.

The water supported me as I stood; whereas his skiff seemed to float within the liquid that somehow solidified for me. Skulls hung off the sides, the flesh melting from the bones in various stages of decay. The bones of a person’s spine lined the seam of the boat itself, curving around the edge.

“Something that would have done anything for even just a taste of your blood,” he answered vaguely. His face remained hidden by his hood that draped over the front of his head and torso. Whatever existed below it was lost to the darkness within, making me wonder if he was even a man at all or something else entirely.

“Why?” I whispered, and the sound bounced between us.

He chuckled, the sound deep and entirely otherworldly. “You might be oblivious to your true nature, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t creatures out there who see you for exactly what you are, girl,” he said, slipping his oar into the water. He rowed away, turning his skiff away from me as I scrambled after him.

“Wait! Tell me what I am!” I called after him, watching as he moved impossibly fast. I seemed unable to follow. My feet moved, but it was as if I ran in place. “Please!”

“Be careful what you ask for,Little Bird.”He stopped rowing, turning back to me slowly until only the glow of golden eyes came from beneath his hood as his stare met mine. “Some secrets are better left in the dark.”

My world spun, his face disappearing as he turned away, leaving me to collapse in the water. My lungs filled with air, as if they’d been deprived the entire time I was in this place. What absorbed me wasn’t the river.

It was the hard stone floor beneath me in a cell.

I suddenly thrust myself into a sitting position.

Caldris stared at me, his expression as confused as mine.

***

“Estrella?” Caldris asked.

He sat on the opposite side of the iron bars of his cell. A stone passage separated us, hobbled and broken between the two free-standing prisons holding us separate. Ifeltthe iron surrounding me, elevated slightly over the damp passage between us. Something scurried in the back corner of my cell, tempting my eyes away from the mate who stared at me as if he couldn’t believe I existed.

“Thank fucking Gods. Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?”

“Some secrets are better left in the dark…” I whispered, my voice trailing off as the words fell from my lips. A reiteration of something I knew well; the words slid off my tongue like a well-known, familiar mantra.

“What did you just say?” Caldris asked, maneuvering to his knees. He paused with his hands only a breath from the iron of the bars, his head cocking to the side as he studied me intently.