Page 12 of Her Blind Deception (The Dark Reflection #2)

Chapter Twelve

T he craving woke me.

It clawed its way up my throat, clamped its tendrils around my muscles until they ached and shook, rattling my bones, sucking the moisture out of my mouth and my skin and my eyes. I moaned, tossing over as my stomach churned. How could the sheets be so damp when my body felt as cracked and dry as a salt plain? It was like the craving was a monster wringing me out, trying to keep from dying itself by taking everything my body had left.

Everything it took wasn’t enough. Nothing I had would be enough. It wanted the blue flowers. It wanted the bitter swell of petals against my tongue, the numbness in my mouth, followed by a sharp fizz in my blood. Not long ago, I’d found a whole glade of them, had eaten so many of them that the fizz had gone all the way to my fingertips and made my hair stand on end, pushing against my skin until suddenly leaping out of me in a surge of energy that had latched onto a stone and picked it up. The stone had levitated off the ground for a few moments as I’d stared at it, only saved from shock and fear by the comforting hum of the flowers in my blood, reassuring me that everything was as it should be, that the stone was supposed to be floating. Then the fizz had slackened, the stone had dropped, and I’d collapsed into a stupor full of vivid, pleasant dreams that felt realer than reality.

The thought of that now made my stomach twist again with longing, until I was retching, tears streaming down my cheeks. A bucket was thrust at me and I caught it, spitting strings of bile into it, groaning as my stomach clenched again around the longing, trying to expel something that wasn’t there. Fear rattled my heart. I was going to have a fit. A glass of water was held out to me as I wiped my mouth, but I shook my head, pushed it away. If I fitted, I’d drop it and fall into the broken glass. It had happened before. And I didn’t want water, anyway, despite how much the sandy dessert in my mouth gagged for it.

I needed the flowers.

‘You have to drink.’

I buried my face back into the covers. ‘Please leave,’ I groaned, the shame almost as sharp as the craving.

‘You know I won’t.’

‘I dreamed you did.’ I spoke into the pillow that smelled like my sweat. ‘I dreamed you locked the door and never came back.’

‘I’d have to find somewhere else to live if I did that. I like it here.’

The bed felt like it was swaying beneath me. Perhaps I wasn’t here at all, but adrift on a choppy sea. Perhaps I’d married Tallius and he’d put me on a boat and floated me away, like he’d once threatened he would do. Perhaps the part about the cave filled with the dead lying beneath glass was the dream, and the bronze boy with the fairy in the jar was just something else my fevered mind had made up. Perhaps he wasn’t stroking my back now, telling me I just needed to hang on, that the drug was almost out of my system. If he was a dream, then I’d been dreaming him saying the same thing over and over again for what felt like weeks.

‘The fairy is how I know you’re lying,’ I muttered.

‘What?’

But I didn’t answer, because the dark sea rose over my head and pulled me under.

There, I lived things I didn’t want to. My father doubled over, his great shoulders shaking with sobs. A claw-fingered physician holding my nose and pouring bitterness down my throat. Old words echoing around me, filling a cavernous emptiness. Be a good girl. Sit up straight. Smile and be quiet. What a pretty thing you are. Pretty Snow White. Such a shame you’re stupid. Such a shame you’re mad. Take your medicine, little princess. Such a timid thing. Say nothing. Just do as you’re told. Another broken teapot? Little idiot. Little mad girl. Such a shame. Shards of glass rained down all around me as I touched my mother’s clasped hands, her skin already cold. A bird perched in a cage, light rippling over luminescent feathers as it sang a four-note melody. Pretty girl. Sweet girl. Pretty little flower. But then there was no cage, and the bird was multiplying, morphing, until there were hundreds of huge, grotesque gulls swooping at me, catching at my skin and hair as I ran from them, screeching. Stupid girl, stupid girl, stupid girl.

I swam for the surface, fighting against currents that wanted to keep me wrapped in nightmares forever, my eyelids fluttering open as I almost made it, before being pulled back to the depths over and over.

Finally, I broke free .

I opened my eyes. My head was throbbing, my limbs ached, and I was so thirsty. But I pushed myself up in the bed, afraid I’d be lost to unconsciousness again if I didn’t.

The room was empty. Light from a cluster of violet orbs hovering overhead bounced from a pool in the corner and shattered across a ceiling of smooth stone. If I concentrated, I could remember entering this room. I could remember the caverns of glass coffins. I could remember eating fruit on a rug of dense moss. There had been a boy with pointed ears who’d held out his hand for me to take. It was difficult to fit the memories together when they wavered with the haze the blue flowers left over them. Just the thought of the flowers sent a stab of yearning through my stomach, and I quickly climbed out of the bed for the distraction.

There was a pot of water with a ladle by the bed, and I swooped on it, guzzling down as much as I could drink, trying to appease the clawing thirst in my throat. But when I’d emptied it, my stomach roiled, and I retched half of it back up again, straight back into the pot I’d drunk it from. I wrapped my arms around myself, rocking back and forth as I waited for the nausea to pass. So weak. So pathetic. My stepmother had been right to get rid of me.

I climbed up on my unsteady legs and stumbled to the door, struck dizzy by the sight of long, shallow scratches in the wood. Like someone had been clawing to get out. I ran my thumbs over the swollen tips of my fingers, shuddering at the feeling of my ragged nails, reaching for the latch even though I knew now that it would be locked, gently rattling it.

Footsteps sounded beyond the door. My fingers sprung off the handle and I stumbled back, staring at the latch with wide-eyed terror at the unmistakable sound of a key turning in the lock. The door inched open. A woman with spiral curls stood gaping at me with strange, violet eyes.

‘You’re human.’ Her hand shot to her belt, as though she was grasping for a weapon that wasn’t there.

‘I’m sorry.’ The response wobbled out of me. I held completely still, barely breathing, as though if I kept still for long enough, I could disappear. I wanted, so badly, to disappear. I felt a strange prickling against the skin of my face and arms, cool and barely noticeable, but familiar too. Her expression changed from one of shock to one of pity. She let out a slow breath.

‘Oh Elias,’ she muttered, shaking her head. ‘Where’d he find you?’

‘I... he... I was in a cave,’ I stumbled, trying to piece together my memories as the nausea began to churn at my stomach again and cold sweat tingled down the back of my neck.

‘The tombs. Stars forsake me, you came in through the caverns? And he brought you here?’ Her strange, bright eyes scanned my face, her hand going absently to the tips of one of her pointed ears. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t fit in the pit with all those cursed boggies.’ She almost laughed, but then a frown drew furrows across her brow. She tilted her head to the side and my skin prickled again, just as a shudder stole the strength in my knees. She darted forward and caught my arm as I staggered. She smelled like a flower bed on a warm day. ‘You have magic poisoning,’ she said as I tried to steady myself and choke down the urge to vomit. ‘How long has it been since you ate?’

‘I don’t… don’t know,’ I managed to mumble, feeling at once tense with a fear bred from years of sanctum lectures on the dangers of fall spawn and desperate to believe that she wasn’t going to hurt me.

‘Come on, then. I think you need to leave this room.’ Her gaze flickered to the ruffled bed behind me and I dimly wondered how awful I smelled.

She led me back out into the room beyond, to the thick carpet of moss, the slants of sunlight peeking through crevices in the rock, and gestured to me to sit. I did so gratefully, not sure how much longer my legs could have held me, and she vanished through another doorway, returning a few moments later with a glass of water. I took it, even though the fear of broken glass hissed away at the back of my mind. I was so thirsty.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Mae.’

‘Pardon?’

‘My name. It’s Mae.’ She sat cross-legged before me, her head tilted to the side as she watched me with those unnerving violet eyes. ‘What’s yours?’

‘Gwin.’ I sipped the water carefully, looking everywhere in the room but at her, feeling fluttery and light-headed with nerves. I’d heard the Grand Paptich preach against fall spawn so many times over the years. I used to have nightmares about them, about creatures whose appearance I never quite fixed on in my imagination. They usually had fiery eyes and horns and pointed teeth. Sometimes they had wings, sometimes they had extra limbs, and scales and tails and long, curved claws. But she... Mae... wasn’t any of those things. I knew they could be devious, though, had magic they channelled from the Shadow Realm that filled them with a feral violence, making them unstable. Dangerous. My limbs were stiff with preparation to leap to my feet and flee if she lunged for me. But she didn’t. She just watched me.

Somewhere, a door opened, and a beam of sunlight smiled across the room, before it was shut away again. Footsteps on sand.

A man entered the room. The one I’d thought I’d dreamed, who’d stroked my hair and told me I wasn’t going to die. Elias. He raised his eyebrows at Mae.

‘I thought you’d--,’ he started to say, before his gaze drifted to me and he froze.

‘Come and sit with us, Elias,’ Mae said calmly. ‘I think you have some explaining to do.’