Page 100 of Daughter of the Dark Sea

“It certainly is,” Blake responded tensely, his jaw clenched.

Kora was sure excitement wasn’t the word for what she was experiencing.

The glowing white figure had been drifting around the dome for a while now.

Kora sat, her legs crossed inside the protective glacial blue bubble she had built brick by traumatised brick.

Her sanctuary.

For the past few nights, since the exile attack, she’d been materialising here. Waking up in the in-between of reality and dreams. Past and present. Life and death.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The white thread, slithering like a snake, had taken the form of a tall figure. Its glowing hand created a constant tapping noise as it searched for a way in. A way to break through. A way to break her.

“Go away,” she moaned, rubbing her face. Would she ever get any peace?

Since she’d built the mental dome, it had waited patiently outside, as if it were watching her. Never leaving, never moving . . . that is until now. It circled the curved structure, tapping every clear, blue-tinted brick. Its glow had dimmed, but it lit the void lingering outside.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“Go away!”

She fell back, summoning a plump cushion to soften her back and head. She wasn’t sure whyitstill lingered. Why the connection was still hanging on by a literal thread. Why she could hear a voice no one else could.

Was she insane? Probably.

The incessant tapping continued, steadily growing faster and louder until it became a ringing in her ears. She marched to the edge of the dome, glaring at this simple, white, annoying, mystical thread pretending to be a person.

To be someone she knew.

“What do you want?”

It responded with a single tap.

“I don’t need you anymore,” she growled. Her rippling, water humanoid form was all she could manifest in this place, and her growl bubbled in her liquid throat.

The white thread spasmed, the figure shuddering, almost as if . . . as if it were laughing at her.

“What?” she snapped. Her temper flared and her skin steamed. “I needed you. And you weren’t there. You’ve been in my head, yapping and nudging for as long as I can remember, and when Ineededyou—where were you?”

The glow dimmed further.

“That’s what I thought,” she muttered.

She sat down by the edge of her shimmering, protective dome, and rested her head against the mystical bricks. She could almost feel the cool surface. Pity it wasn’t real, it was a nice reprieve for her headaches.

“Let me in.”

Kora shot forward as the thread spread its fibres against the brick by her head. Its hand stretching and unfurling into a webbed structure.

“No.” She shuffled back. “Never. Never again.”

Part THREE

The CITADEL

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