Page 45 of Skalterra By Nightmare (The Skalterra Duology #1)

Everything hurt.

A dull heat throbbed in my muscles, and sweat slicked my brow. I could feel it pooling beneath my back too, but I shivered, impossibly cold despite the heavy blankets that covered me. Nausea and pain roiled in my stomach, and a metal taste tinged my tongue. My ribs were the worst, though. Each breath I took sent shooting pains up my sides and across my chest.

While the purring weight on my ankles was familiar, the musky pillows beneath me were not, yet there was something cozy and reassuring about their smell.

But I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know if Gams was okay, or if the world was still in one piece. I felt like a dying fire, crumbling to ashen embers in my borrowed bed, used up, dried out, and turning cold.

I pushed myself up, forcing my way through the agony spasming through my ribs. Fur pelts insulated the wooden walls, and the lack of windows made it feel like a cave. A lantern that flickered with an orange flame cast long shadows up the pelts and across the ceiling beams.

Its light illuminated the dark sheen of Ciarán’s hair where he stood with his back to me in the doorway. I wondered where his cloak had gone, especially with how cold the room was, but then I recognized its tattered folds across my lap.

Jonquil blinked at me from the foot of the bed, curled up next to Liam’s backpack.

“Water?”

I croaked. My tongue felt like sandpaper.

“There’s a skein next to you.”

Ciarán kept his back to me.

I prodded at the shadows of my quilts until I found the leather container. I uncorked the mouth, and gagged on the liquid when it seared my raw throat.

“Careful,”

Ciarán murmured.

“Where are we?”

I demanded.

“Where’s my grandmother?”

“We’re at an outpost in the foothills.”

“And Gams?”

I pleaded. He was silent, as quiet as he was immobile. “Ciarán?”

“My Lady?”

I recoiled at the title.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Call me lady.”

“I’m bound to the service of you and your family. To call you anything else would be improper.”

I was sitting in a torn collegiate hoodie and a ripped pencil skirt. My hair was knotted, and my eyelashes patchy. I’d been rejected by my biological father, tanked my school interview, and released an imprisoned Magician so powerful they called her .

“god”, putting two separate realities at risk of collapse.

The title “Lady”

was anything but proper.

“If you’re bound to my service, do you have to obey me?”

“Yes, my Lady.”

He emphasized the title just to annoy me.

“Then I demand you call me anything except that.”

His shoulders heaved.

“Such as?”

“Anything you like. Just not ‘Lady’.”

“Ever-enduring pain in my ass, then.”

Heat rose in my face, and I brought the water skein back to my lips.

“It’s a bit of a mouthful,”

I said between tentative sips. He fell silent again, dutifully watching the hall outside my room. I studied his back, wondering if the man in front of me could really be the friend who had comforted me on a paddleboard and held me as I cried over my father.

“Look at me.”

He ignored me, and I set the water skein down.

“You have to obey.”

He pivoted slowly, turning his bright orange gaze on me. His pale skin was still bruised around one of his eyes, and a cut on his chin had been bandaged.

For the first time, after a month of fighting in this world and finding comfort in each other’s friendship in the next, we took each other in with our real faces.

I tried to find Liam in his, but it was harder up close with his dark hair and black sclera that looked like the eyes of a monster.

“Do you remember me?” I asked.

“It’s going to take more than a new hair color for me to forget you, Blue.”

“I don’t mean my Nightmare.”

He blinked slowly, and I thought he’d fallen silent again, but then he lifted a hand and unfurled his fingers.

Liam’s chicken glowed a dull blue in the dark of the room.

“What is this?”

He kept a serious frown fixed to his face, but the tiniest hint of panic laced his tone and shook his voice.

“It’s a chicken.”

“I know.”

He broke off, still staring at the little statue.

“I’ve never been to Keldori.”

“But you remember it.”

“Pieces.”

His eyebrows knit.

“Like what?”

I needed him to remember. I needed Liam.

“A steamcart.”

“We rode one recently.”

I nodded.

“What else?”

“A man. Some sort of leader, I think. Everyone respected him. Except me, for some reason.”

He was talking about my father. These were all memories from his last few days as Liam, things that had happened after Gams had given him the chicken when we left Keel Watch.

“A good instinct, honestly. What else?”

“You.”

He raised his glowing eyes from the chicken to my face.

“And needing to protect you. It was my purpose, I think.”

How many times had I joked that he was only hanging out with me because Gams was forcing him? Liam had always denied it, but he wouldn’t have been aware of any secret directives Gams had built into his Nightmare.

My friendship with him hadn’t been real, but Liam hadn’t been real either.

“Why do I remember these things?”

Ciarán asked.

“And why do I miss it?”

“You were a Nightmare.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

He shook his head.

“Your name was Liam.”

“I died.”

“Not an uncommon experience for a Nightmare.”

Ciarán stared at the chicken with his orange and black eyes. Liam had been blond, tanned, and perfect. Every difference between him and Ciarán highlighted everything Ciarán wanted to be.

“I knew the Saergrim in Keldori,”

he murmured.

“I remember seeing her.”

“My grandma.” I nodded.

“So that’s why I was never able to summon your Nightmare without you yielding,”

Ciarán said.

“I swore an oath to your family. I cannot control you without your permission.”

I remembered his arms around me as he stopped me from turning into a rotsbane. I remembered his arms around me in the hotel bed outside of Von Leer.

“You still haven’t told me where my grandmother is,”

I said before I could let myself get confused over my feelings for Ciarán. Or Liam. I still wasn’t sure they were the same person. How could they be if Liam didn’t exist and Ciarán did.

“And my friends too. Where are they?”

“The other Sovereigns are downstairs.”

I pushed my blankets off, and a new chill rolled over my body. I ignored it.

“My Lady—”

“No.”

I pointed a stern finger at him, still trying to fight my way off the mattress. Everything was sore, and the tiniest movements threatened to lay me out with pain.

“I told you, none of that.”

“You’re injured. You should stay in bed.”

“Then I demand you help me out of bed.”

Ciarán sighed.

“In over four hundred years, no Grimguard has ever forsaken their duty.”

“So?”

“So you are tempting me to become the first.”

The cold wood of the floor against my bare feet sent a fresh shiver up my spine. My ribs ached, and I held a shuddering arm over them, as if to keep myself in one piece.

I bit down on my tongue to keep from crying out when I tried to stand.

Something heavy settled over my shoulders, and I flinched away from Ciarán as he draped his cloak over me.

“I’m fine,” I lied.

“Your body isn’t used to using Skal, and you used a lot to free the Frozen God.”

He let me lean into him as I staggered to my feet.

“Stop calling her that.”

“Is that another order?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you prefer I call her?”

“Ethel. Or Gams. I don’t think she’d mind if you called her Gams.”

He was sturdy beneath me, and his armor smelled of fresh leather.

“I’m not going to call the Frozen God ‘Gams’.”

The hallway was narrow, and he lit a fire in his free palm to light the way down a set of wooden steps. Jonquil chased after us, purring at Ciarán’s heels. I hated that I needed his help, but I was grateful to have him to lean against.

“Sorcha said you broke your ribs, and you vomited blood, so she thinks you have an ulcer,”

Ciarán said as we navigated the stairs.

“Holding in too much Skal can do that.”

“I never had that issue before.”

“You were a Nightmare before. You were made of Skal. It was different.”

Holding in Skal would break my bones and rip open my stomach. Using too much Skal would turn me into a rotsbane.

I wasn’t sure I was cut out to be a Magician, much less the granddaughter of one of the four most powerful Magicians to ever live.

A fire crackled in a massive hearth that overlooked the narrow, vaulted hall of the ground floor. Yellow and orange light bounced off the contours of haggard faces. Two old women ladled liquid out of a steaming pot into mugs made of some sort of animal horn, and an old man shuffled to deliver them to the three girls sitting at the table.

Fana’s dark curls were immediately distinguishable, and she looked up as we came down the bottom step.

“Just-Wren!”

she cried.

Orla’s head jerked up next to her.

“Wren!”

Orla leapt from the table and barreled into me. Pain shot through my ribs, and I cried out.

“Oh, no. I’m sorry—”

“It’s okay,”

I insisted. And it was. I was back with Orla. Ciarán released me, letting me lean into my embrace with my friend. She shook with sobs, and I held her as tight as my aching muscles would allow.

“Orla, we’re okay.”

“He tricked me.”

Her whisper was a heartbroken hiss.

“A week ago, Ferrin said he had a special mission for me. I didn’t know he was taking us to the Frozen God. Galahad and the others don’t know. I didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye before we left.”

I pulled away from Orla, and the firelight caught the streams of tears that fell from her face.

“Orla,”

I croaked.

“Galahad’s dead. Ferrin killed him.”

Her eyes filled with fresh tears.

“No, he didn’t,”

she whispered.

“He wouldn’t. Ferrin wouldn’t—”

“He was going to kill you.”

“I know.”

Her chin quivered as she tried to remain strong, but then something in her expression broke, and she fell into fresh sobs that racked her body.

I buckled under her embrace, and Ciarán steadied me. Familiar strawberry curls rushed to Orla’s side to help her back to the table.

“Sabrina?” I asked.

Sabrina’s head snapped towards me, and her eyes, black and orange like Ciarán’s, caught me off guard.

“My Lady Saergrim.”

She knelt down on one knee. As if that wasn’t mortifying enough, several others in the room followed suit.

“No.”

I shook my head.

“Don’t do that. You tried to shoot me.”

“It was a misunderstanding,”

she growled, and I got the sense she loved kneeling for me just as much as I loved being kneeled for.

“What are you doing out of bed, girl?”

One of the few who hadn’t knelt bustled over.

“Ciarán, you should have called me.”

The woman’s floor length robes of leather and fur weren’t something she’d ever worn in Keel Watch, but the sharp nose and chin were unmistakable.

“Sarah?” I asked.

“It’s pronounced Sorcha here.”

Sarah prodded at my side, and I yelped in pain.

“Back up the stairs with you. Ciarán, you might have to carry her.”

“I want my grandmother,”

I pressed.

“Where is she?”

“Ethel is fine,”

Sarah grunted.

Ciarán tried to lead me away, but I held a hand up.

“You called her Ethel,” I said.

“All those decades, and all those Nightmares in Keel Watch Harbor.”

Sarah smirked.

“One of us was bound to be lucid.”

“Two of us.”

The other woman still stood over the pot of stew. She waved the dripping ladle at me. The white hair she kept so short in Keel Watch was long and braided into a crown that wrapped around her head here.

“And who else was going to keep Ethel updated on Skalterra?”

“Gladys?” I asked.

“Aoife is my name here, my Lady.”

She shuffled over and shoved a horn full of steaming red liquid into my hands. She nodded to a man standing by the hearth.

“And that’s Ronan, but you know him already too.”

Ronan, who looked an awful lot like Mr. Ronald Lane the Librarian, bowed his head to me.

“Please, sit. Drink.”

Aoife-Gladys pointed to Orla’s table.

“You’ll feel better.”

“I’ll feel better when someone tells me where my grandmother is.”

Sarah, or Sorcha, frowned.

“Go ahead then.”

She shrugged at Ciarán.

“Show her. And then it’s straight back upstairs. I don’t care whose granddaughter you are. You have a fever.”

“Show me what?”

I demanded. Ciarán helped me forward to the low-framed door past the tables.

Night was heavy outside, but the stars shined bright in the bitter cold. I still didn’t have shoes on, and I held Ciarán’s cloak tighter around my shoulders as I stepped out onto the snow-covered path.

Despite the clear night, thunder rolled in the distance, and a sharp wind tugged at the cloak.

“Careful, Blue,”

Ciarán murmured.

The building we’d come out of was made entirely of wood with few windows and a steeply-sloped, multi-tiered roof. It stood at the top of a hill nestled against a cliff face. Ahead of us, the landscape flattened in the distance, before giving way to a bay of massive icebergs. Either side of the bay was dotted in firelight ranging in hues of red, greens, and golds.

A storm raged at the bay’s center. Heavy clouds sat low over the water, and blue lightning forked at its heart, flashing against the icy faces of the surrounding icebergs.

“What is that?” I asked.

“The Bay of Teeth, where your grandmother’s prison used to be,”

Ciarán said.

“But her prison has been broken, and now she’s doing what she can to hold both Ferrin’s and the Barony’s armies from entering Keldori.”

I shook my head.

“That storm is…Gams?”

I remembered the flashes of blue lightning that had brought the cavern caving inwards as we’d made our escape.

“But then how do we get her out?”

“We don’t.”

Ciarán’s arm tightened around my shoulder, but I pushed him off.

“I’m not leaving my grandmother in the middle of a storm!”

I snarled.

“She’s my grandma! She’s— she’s—”

Wonderful. Fiery. Compassionate.

Everything I wasn’t.

My legs shook beneath me, and I couldn’t feel my toes in the cold, but when Ciarán took a step towards me, I took a step back.

“We aren’t leaving her in a storm,”

he promised, but his furrowed brow and strained frown didn’t do much to put me at ease.

“The original Divine Sovereigns froze her in the Rift four hundred years ago, and Sorcha says we can do it again.”

My heart plummeted, and I turned to look back at the distant storm. My knees buckled, and I let Ciarán catch me this time.

“We have to re-imprison her?” I said.

“We have to try,”

Ciarán conceded.

“We don’t have a Tulyr, but we have you.”

“You want me to do it?”

Freeing Gams had put both Skalterra and Keldori at risk, but there was something cruel about refreezing my grandma and condemning her to a life in a town full of phantom people.

“I’m sorry, Blue,”

Ciarán said.

My grandmother had opened her home and her arms to me for the summer. She had cared for me. She had given me a job. She had made sure I had friends.

And now she stood at the vortex of a storm, holding off two armies, not necessarily because of me, but I’d played a role in bringing Fana and Orla north. I’d been Ferrin’s missing puzzle piece in finding Keel Watch Harbor. I’d broken the glacier in an effort to save my friends.

And now I was the one who would have to lock her away again.

“How much Skal does she have?”

I asked.

“She can’t last forever in there.”

“I’d give her three months, give or take,”

Sorcha sniffed behind us. I twisted around to watch her shuffle down the snow-covered path.

“Lucky for us, she’s a better Magician than she is a backgammon player, but you need to go back upstairs and get better because you’re headed in there to fix this before it’s too late.”

She pointed a wrinkled hand at the storm in the distance.

“Leave her alone, Sorcha,”

Ciarán sighed.

“‘Heal her ribs, Sorcha’. ‘Fix her ulcer, Sorcha’. But then it’s ‘leave her alone’ as soon as you don’t need me,”

Sorcha snorted.

“I’m only out here to let the Lady Saergrim know there’s someone here to see her.”

“Who?”

I demanded.

Sorcha already had her back to me as she retreated back into the building.

“No, don’t worry. I’m leaving!”

Ciarán helped me after her, and while I had no idea who might be waiting for me inside, my heart hammered painfully in my chest.

“Sorcha, the Nightmare isn’t very happy,”

Aoife hissed as we came back inside.

“I can hear you, Gladys,”

a woman’s voice said from the hearth.

“But no. The Nightmare isn’t very happy.”

The flames of the hearth dyed the newcomer’s blonde hair in shades of orange and gold. She turned her head to watch us enter, and my stomach flipped.

“Wren, my love,”

she said.

“what did your grandmother tell you about poking around Keel Watch Harbor?”

I gave a strangled cry and broke free of Ciarán to stumble across the hall, unable to reach her fast enough through the pain that lanced my sides.

She leapt up from the bench to help close the distance, and I collapsed in her arms, crying.

It wasn’t her real body, but she smelled just like herself. Warm and floral and perfect.

“Mom,”

I sobbed and squeezed her tighter as we held each other on the floor.

“Hello, my love.”

She tucked hair behind my ear so she could press a kiss against my forehead.

“Welcome to Skalterra, my little Magician.”