Page 40 of Beyond the Winter Kingdom (Faeted Seasons #2)

Meera

“Godsdammit!”

The word left my mouth like a curse and a prayer all at once, just as a golden snake slithered across the ground beside my boot. I yelped, stumbling backward and, in a moment of sheer panic, launched myself toward Damon like he was a lifeline.

Spoiler alert: he wasn’t.

The air whooshed out of his lungs in an exaggerated puff as I collided with his chest. Rather than catching me gracefully, he staggered backward, our combined momentum carrying us both down.

“Ow,” he grunted, pain coloring the single syllable.

“Sorry!” I cried out, but my attention was still half on the snake, which had vanished into the underbrush. “Did you see it?”

“What, my life flashing before my eyes?” he asked dryly, rubbing the back of his head.

“There was a snake!” I gestured wildly to the area, even as I climbed off him, brushing dirt and leaves from my body. “You didn’t see the snake?”

“Nope,” he said, still seated as he eyed me with a mixture of amusement and wariness. “Just saw you run into me like a damsel in distress.”

“Take it back,” I said, feigning my offense. “I am no damsel.” I bent at the waist, offering him my hand.

He looked at it, then pushed himself up without taking it. “And risk falling again? Nah.”

I rolled my eyes, muttering a few creative curses under my breath. “Whatever. Let’s just keep going.”

I turned back toward where the snake had disappeared, only to find the forest still and silent again. Dark green foliage and twisted roots carpeted the ground, dotted with the trailing vines of little blue flowers we’d been following for weeks.

“Ah, shit,” Damon muttered, stepping closer.

“What now?” I asked warily.

His hand caught my wrist, lifting it gently. That’s when I saw it; my right palm, scraped raw from our fall, blood welling at the edge of the wound.

“It’s fine,” I said with a shrug, tugging it back. “Just a scratch.”

He gave me a look that said I was full of it. “We need to get supplies from Corvo. I don’t want it getting infected?—”

He broke off as I rubbed at the wound with the edge of my shirt, staining it red. When I pulled my hand away, there wasn’t a mark to be seen. Only a smudge of blood on otherwise unblemished skin.

“Okay, wow,” Damon muttered. “You heal really fast. Even faster than Vareck.”

“That’s ...” I wasn’t sure what words I was looking for, only that I was having a hard time finding them. “I’ve never healed that fast before.”

He narrowed his eyes, watching me like I was some kind of puzzle he was determined to solve. “Do you think it has something to do with Evorsus?”

I snorted. “You’re crazy.”

“I’m serious. You’ve been here for over a month now by our estimation, and weird things keep happening. The land responds to you.” His gaze flicked to my hands again. “You’re not just fae. What if something inside you is ... waking up?”

“This again? You say that like I’m housing some sort of monster.” I laughed at a borderline hysterical pitch, waving the comment off. “Nothing is waking up. I probably just ...” My voice faltered. I didn’t have a good explanation. And worse, part of me thought he might actually be right.

We kept walking, the silence stretching between us for several long strides.

The path narrowed, brush pulling at my legs until the trees opened into a moonlight-dappled clearing. A wide river cut through the middle, its current fast and foaming where it hit submerged rocks.

“Well, that’s inconvenient,” I muttered.

Damon stepped up beside me, squinting downstream. “We’ll need to find a shallow crossing. Or a fallen tree.”

“I should probably mention I’m not exactly the strongest swimmer.”

“You did okay after you jumped off a cliff,” he teased.

“Okay, that’s fair. I am a decent swimmer, but I don’t like dark water.”

His lips curved. “Afraid of snakes and water? You’re just full of surprises.” He smirked, stepping toward the bank. “Come on. Let’s find a way across.”

As we walked along the edge of the river, I stole one last glance at my hand. The skin was still flawless. But that wasn’t what made me uneasy.

It was the tugging beneath my ribs, low and pulsing like something—I just didn’t know what.

Maybe I was crazy. Maybe Damon was crazy.

But gods help me—I was starting to wonder if he was right.

We walked until the trees thinned and a wide log stretched from our side to the other, moss-covered but seemingly stable enough, assuming neither of us slipped.

Poor assumption, given my shitty balance, but I wasn’t going to chicken out when we needed to cross.

Damon tested it with one foot, then the other. He jumped a little to test the give and when it held he said, “It’s solid. I’ll go first.”

He didn’t extend his arms like I would, or any person who was vertically challenged. He prowled several feet across with the ease of a silent predator before turning back to me.

“Coming, damsel?” he called over his shoulder.

I flipped him off, but he just grinned.

With a huff, I stepped onto the log. It was slick, damp from the misting air above the river, and my boots squeaked with every movement.

Unlike Damon the unflappable, I extended my arms outward in a tee formation and slowly started to shuffle across. As I neared him, he reminded me to go slow and keep close, as though I had any intention of doing otherwise.

The current rushed beneath me, loud and wild and untamed. I really did hate dark water. It wasn’t necessarily a fear of swimming or water—it was not knowing what was beneath the surface.

A splash sounded to my left.

I flinched, eyes scanning the roiling surface.

Nothing.

“Meera?” Damon called from in front of me. “You good? You want me to slow down?”

“Nope. I’m good,” I mumbled and forced a step forward. Another.

Then something cold wrapped around my ankle.

I screamed. Blind panic overrode all sense of reason as I swayed on the log, trapped in my own fight-or-flight response.

A hand, pale and bloated, its nails blue and cracked, like it had been drowned long ago and forgotten, held my ankle like a shackle. It reached up from the water like a corpse risen from the deep.

A splitting pain clouded my vision; an electric shock went through my body as I felt every muscle tense.

Everything went white—my sight, my mind—an emptiness that swallowed everything around me.

There was no sound. No river. No Damon.

Just me.

Floating.

Drifting.

Then, as if lurched from one place into another, my sight returned, and a vision appeared. It was ... me? And Damon?

I watched from an outside perspective as I screamed and launched myself into Damon’s arms. It was the snake incident from earlier, except I wasn’t seeing it as myself. It was from somewhere or someone else. An unknown third person that had been watching while Damon and I were none the wiser.

I felt my feet move as my body in the vision creeped forward. Everything blurred except the blood on my hand.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

My knees hit the log. Damon’s hands grabbed my shoulders as I fell forward, yanking me upright before I could hit the water.

“Meera!” His voice sounded distant, like I was underwater. “What happened? Talk to me!”

I blinked, vision slowly sharpening.

The hand was gone. The river roared as it always had. I looked down at my ankle.

Nothing.

Not a scratch. Not a bruise.

But something inside me was screaming .

“I—you saw that, right,” I asked quietly, breathless. My heart pounded a million miles a minute.

Damon’s grip tightened on my arms. “Saw what?” His voice was taut. Alert.

“The hand. There was a hand,” I said, scanning the river, even though I knew I wouldn’t see it again. “It grabbed me. Gods, it touched me. I wasn’t just imagining it.”

He looked me over carefully, his eyes flicking from my face to my legs to the water. “There was nothing there, Meera. One second you were crossing, the next you dropped like someone cut your strings.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. My chest heaved as I struggled to find the words. “It showed me something. A memory. Not mine, though. Not exactly. It was mine— ours —but from the outside. Like someone was watching us earlier when I fell.”

Damon’s expression turned grim. “Evorsus?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “It didn’t feel like it. Or maybe it did. I—gods, I don’t know what I saw now. Maybe ... maybe I imagined it.”

“Don’t do that,” he said. His jaw tightened, a muscle flexing in his cheek. “Don’t pretend. If you say there was a hand, then I believe you. In this vision, did it say anything?”

“No.” I hesitated, then added, “But I felt like it was trying to show me something. It was focused on my hand. On the blood.”

He let go of my shoulders slowly, but his eyes never left my face. “We need to get off this log, and preferably, out of this realm.”

“Agreed.”

We crossed the remaining few feet quickly, neither of us daring to look down. My legs trembled as they hit solid ground again, the pressure in my chest lessening, but not gone.

Damon reached for me instinctively. His hands skimmed my arms, checking for injuries again. “You’re sure it didn’t say anything?”

“Positive. It just touched me.” I trembled, wrapping my arms around myself.

Damon gave me a hard look. His mouth pressed into a thin line, his eyes sweeping the shadowed edges of the riverbank before shifting to the dense woods beyond. Whatever he was thinking, it wasn’t good.

“I think we should stop and take a longer rest,” he said, voice low and clipped.

I blinked. “What?”

“You’re shaking, something just reached out of the water and hijacked your mind, and we’re still in the middle of nowhere with no idea what direction the flowers are actually pointing.

” He stepped away, already scanning for a decent place to set up camp.

“You’re spooked, with good reason. We’re stopping.

I’ll take watch while you sleep. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Corvo will show up. ”

“All right.” I didn’t argue. For once, I didn’t have energy, or the will. “Let’s just get further from the river. I’m not comfortable being so close to it.”

Damon dipped his chin in agreement, then held out his hand.

I took it for what it was, not a romantic gesture but a protective one.

With all that had happened, it was obvious the realm had an interest in me.

Now something had just grabbed me. It happened right in front of Damon, and yet he saw nothing.

I was going to hold on to him for dear life.

He found a shallow rise just beyond the tree line where the ground curved slightly upward and offered a view of both the river and the path behind us. It wasn’t ideal—nothing about this situation was—but it was defensible.

I sank down onto the forest floor while Damon pulled two dehydrated food kits from his pack. He worked fast, creating a small fire pit with a flick of the lighter and a little air magic, coaxing embers to life. I was grateful for the distraction, even if the warmth hadn’t touched my skin yet.

“Here,” he said quietly, dumping some water into one of the packets and handing it over. “You’re pale.”

I stared at him. “I’m always pale.”

“You’re paler .” His tone left no argument. “I wish I could give you something more substantial than this?—”

“It’s all right. We’re both stuck here and doing the best we can. Thank you,” I motioned with the bag of barely edible food. “I appreciate this.”

Damon sat opposite me, the flicker of the firelight painting shadows across his face. “You want to talk about it?”

“No.” I didn’t even hesitate.

He nodded once, then tossed another stick into the flames. “Okay.”

Silence stretched between us. Not uncomfortable. Not quite.

“I didn’t think it was possible to see my own memory from someone else’s perspective,” I finally said. “And yet, there it was. That moment with the snake—like a vision but twisted somehow. I could feel emotions that weren’t mine in reaction to what I was seeing.”

His gaze was steady. “And you said it focused on your blood?”

“Yeah.” I looked down at my palm again.

“I don’t like it.”

I snorted, but it lacked any humor. “Tell me about it.”

“Maybe Corvo will have some answers for us,” he said with a tight smile that didn’t meet his eyes.

“Maybe,” I agreed, equally unenthusiastic.

“Sleep, Meera. I’ll keep watch.”

I wanted to argue. To say I didn’t need watching. But the truth was, I didn’t feel safe. Not from what was out there ... or from what I had seen.

So I lay down and stared into the flames until the warmth finally found its way to my bones.

But even then, I didn’t close my eyes.

I wasn’t sure what I’d see if I did.