Chapter 1

Irock, bunched and bound around myself, filling my lungs with a drugging bout of air that’s all him.

So much him.

He’s painted all over me. Hideous smears on my hands and arms. Drying.

Cracking.

Like the cracks weaving through my chest.

Don’t cry.

Don’t cry.

Don’t cry—

The choked echo of Rhordyn’sfinal words pummel me like fisted blows to my unguarded heart. I tug the talon’s empty sheath from where it was stashed down the back of my pants, chucking it like a hot coal.

What have I done?

Don’t cry.

I belt out scream after scream—the sound wilting with every painful scour of my raw and ruined throat until each is barely a wisp of noise.

I thread my fingers through my hair. Fisting it. Tugging at the roots. Images blooming on the backs of my lids in rapid succession:

The burrow. The small rank cells and their withered inhabitants.

The Aeshlian—chained beneath a single beam of light.

A cut in my palm. A trail of blood.

Rhordyn stepping amongst a pack of Irilak, validating Cainon’s condemning accusations.

I saved lives, I tell myself, hammering the words into my brain until it’s ripe and swollen.

I saved lives …

Then why does it feel so wrong?

My face crumbles, silent sobs racking through me …

Not real. Just a horrible nightmare.

“Wake up.”

My voice is broken glass. It’s a tree splintered at the base, now strewn across the ground with flames licking its spindly branches.

It’s regret. Sorrow. Grief.

It’s the feeling that I’ve ripped something vital from my chest, leaving a deep web of holes where the roots were sown. Where they came out bloody and snapped in places.

Oily perusals scribe across me from all angles, making my skin prickle.

I lift my head, the waterfall’s thunderous heave a constant roar in my ears. A cluster of Irilak are loosely gathered around me, watching, nesting beside vine-strangled trees like black vapors spilling from the gnarled trunks. Ghoulish spectators to my violent unraveling.

He was warm …

I flinch.

A nightmare. A terrible, devastating nightmare where I heard terrible truths and did terrible things.

“Wake up.”

I slap myself. Again, and again, cheek flaming from the brutal assault. When that doesn’t work, I reach behind my arm and pinch an inch of flesh.

Hard.

The pain doesn’t help. It doesn’t bring me a sense of relief.

Doesn’t wake me up.

A few Irilak move closer, stretching from one pocket of shadow to another like dark taffy.

“Wake up.”

I release the latch of my necklace. Feel the stone, conch, and chain slip down my front and thump into my lap. I ease my shirt off my right shoulder and skate my fingers over the risen, barky blemish growing from my skin, sobbing when my hand brushes a clutch of silky protrusions.

My eyes squeeze shut, brow crunching as I breathe deep.

Hold until my lungs burn.

I reach beneath my shirt and pull my dagger from the makeshift sheath bound around my waist.

My eyes pop open.

“Wake up,” I growl, glancing down at my shoulder.

Three crystal blooms bare themselves to me, like iridescent swirls dipped in a sky full of sparkles, the biggest the size of a plum. I grab the smallest one first—no larger than a thimble—bunching its healthy cluster of petals before I set my dagger against the black stem.

“Wake up.”

I slice.

Fierce, fiery pain snaps through my collarbone, snatching my breath, filling my eyes with tears quick to spill down my cheeks.

This horrid reality doesn’t dissolve. I don’t wake in sweaty sheets with a scream splintering my throat.

I let the hardening bloom fall from my hand and grab another. Tilt the head.

“Wake up.”

Another blow of pain flays me, pouring fire through my veins as I heave breath into my staggering lungs. I don’t wait for the pain to ebb before I snatch the biggest bloom, gather the petals, and set the blade against its thick, woody stem.

“Wake up!” I snarl, and slice—once, twice, three times before I finally sever the head, releasing a tortured wail as more tears spill. The bloom tumbles from my fingers. Thumps to the soil.

Still, this nightmare continues to pin me down with its crushing might.

“Please wake up …”

A blow of humid air dusts the side of my face from the waterfall’s spray, and my gaze drifts to the right. To the ledge he fell over, the frothy nether that swallowed him in a misty gulp lit by a beam of sunlight breaking through the canopy, creating prisms of color that are almost inviting.

I stare, mesmerized by the lure of their intoxicating beauty. Like a soft hello. Come look at me. Touch me.

Play with me.

A strange yearning fills me, and I become bluntly aware that this is one of those horrific nightmares where the only way to jerk awake and escape … is to fall.

To follow him.

Relief surges through my veins, and I let the blade slip from my hand, necklace clattering to the dirt as I push to a stand. I step closer to the ledge, into the spill of sunlight that bathes my skin with its lustrous warmth, caressed by another flurry of misty wind.

I imagine somebody whispering for me to wake up, becoming more insistent, buffeting me with a demand, then screaming. Imagine somebody shaking me so hard I jolt back to the now, nestled in a bed of inky sheets in a room that’s all curved edges and sun-soaked windows, packed full of a botanical scent.

Those oily perusals scribble across my skin in erratic motions …

Another step forward.

The tips of my toes tingle, the sensation traveling through the arches of my feet, up my legs and spine, making me shiver. My hair—a tangle of thick, iridescent ropes—is tossed around my shoulders by the thunderous, billowing spray rushing up to meet me.

Don’t cry …

“Wake up,” I whisper, the words lost against the roaring might of the water heaving over the edge.

My eyes drift shut, and I tease my toes farther forward—

The jarring squawk of a krah crackles down from above, followed by a shrill squeal.

I whip around, attention delving through the jungle’s gloomy guts to where a sprite is spiraling toward the ground, propelled by its single wing hanging at an odd angle. Another chases, half the size and making twice the sound.

There’s a soft thump as the injured one plunges into the underbrush, chased more delicately by the child—stealing nervous glances at her surroundings before she flutters beneath a silver-blue leaf in the same vicinity.

Irilak stretch from their darker pockets of shade, curling around tree trunks and waxy-looking shrubs, sniffing in the direction of the fallen meal. A rattling symphony shakes the silence, and my heart dives, thoughts churning.

Like a tidal pool gushing full of inky water, the Irilak converge on the helpless sprites.

Something inside me snaps.

“Stop!”

The voice that tears up my throat is not my own, but a hundred others wrestling free with the force of shattered glass. It’s anger, fear, sorrow. It’s all my heartache and hurt honed into sharp bits that cut.

The Irilak crouch, cower, hide—squeals of fear ripping free, some condensing into puddles of black, others stretching to blend with the trunks of lanky trees.

Silence follows, stark and so hollow it feels as if my heart is the only one beating in the world. The Irilak’s collective attention scrawls across my face. My arm.

My outstretched hand.

Looking down, my guts drop.

Splits web across my skin, barely containing the black, bulging matter that singes the edges of my frayed flesh like a silent threat to release.

To slash and saw and slay.

Again, I look at the Irilak, each one jolting away from my sweeping gaze.

I almost spilled myself. Almost killed them all.

A sick feeling takes root inside my chest …

“I— I didn’t mean to.”

They twitch in unison, like they’re dodging the blow of my words.

I step forward; they flinch again.

Icy shame douses me from head to toe, and I scrunch my hand into a trembling ball.

They’re … scared of me.

These predators that suckle the wet life from anything that steps into their domain—that feed on fear—are afraid of this thing beneath my flesh.

Of me.

“I’m sorry,” I plead, my heart lodged so high in my throat it’s hard to speak past. “I didn’t mean it.”

Any of it.

I grip the tether of darkness flowing through my veins, feeling it singe my soul as it thrashes against me like a fish on a line, finally giving in to my firm and persistent tug. I reel it in, in long, deep drags, until it’s a slithering knot coiled within the chasm beneath my ribs.

The splits in my skin knit together, leaving scratchy lines all over, but I don’t stop reeling. Don’t stop apologizing.

Don’t cry.

My internal fingers tangle with the thorny vines of loose emotion that tore up my throat, pulling them back inside one sawing drag at a time. “I’m so sorry,” I rasp, unwrapping them from around my ribs and rotting heart, leaving a trail of ravaged flesh I know will never heal.

I gather all the hurt and the sorrow and the pain into a single barbed ball, then pluck little beads of luster from the branches of my veins—squishing them flat. Smoothing them. Wielding them into a crystal shell around the knot of prickly pain.

I don’t want to hurt anymore.

To feel.

I want nothing—blissful, emptynothing that doesn’t coax me to think about the horrible thing I did. Because this isn’t a nightmare at all.

It’s real.

Fissures crackle across the surface of the dome, so I add another layer. Another.

Another.

I keep plucking, dimming my insides one pinched bead at a time. Keep squishing, smoothing, applying—until the crystal is thick and sparkling, that ball of emotion stuffed down deep and locked away.

My next breath pours into me unburdened, blown out on a shuddered sigh. I blink, freeing the warm tears that had gathered in my eyes, feeling heavy but light. Hollow but full. Broken but whole.

Nothing.

This is better …

My gaze drops to my dagger and chain and the three bloody blooms in the grass—the large one too big and bulky to tuck into my pocket. I dig a hole in the ground and bury it, patting the soil before I carefully gather the others. I secure my necklace around my neck, succumbing to the tight gulp of my fake exterior as I stab the dagger into the makeshift sheath bound around my waist.

Looking at the blood on my hands, I frown, stretching my fingers, scrunching them up …

Hairline cracks weave through the dome.

“Shit,” I mutter, squishing more beads of light, bogging up the gaps. Unfortunately, it’s no magic fix-all. I just have to … keep plucking and squishing and bogging. Forever.

I can do that.

The underbrush crunches and pops beneath my bare feet as I walk toward the spot where the sprites fell. Every step, every breath, tracked by countless pairs of eyes.

The Irilak drift backward in the wake of my approach, maintaining a healthy distance. I kneel, drawing on the heady scent of damp soil and decaying vegetation, brushing through soft, flimsy foliage to reveal the sprites—the smaller one with tear-stricken cheeks and twigs in her fire-red hair.

She looks up at me, dragging on the other’s torn garb, trying to haul her toward a tiny scrap of light filtering through the canopy. “Ge ni ve lashea te nithe ae nah! Ge ni ve lashea te nithe ae nah!”

Something, something, chase, worry … cake? Or is it eat?

Hmm.

Too bad I flunked sprite linguistics.

I look at the larger one face down in the dirt, her hair the same bright red. Perhaps they’re mother and child? She’s even wearing a similar dark shift, but in place of her left wing is a frayed nub, a clear liquid leaking from the wispy sever.

Another sharp caw pierces through the canopy, and I peer up, squinting toward a single blade of light and the dark shape circling, circling …

“Ge ni ve lash te nithe ae na!”

“It’s okay,” I murmur, gently sweeping the injured sprite into my sore palm that bears a wound I refuse to acknowledge, tucking her close to my chest. The younger one flutters up until she’s hovering near my face, her wide eyes steeped in emotions that make more cracks appear in that crystal dome—cracks I bog with another layer of light plucked from my dimming insides.

My next blink feels heavier than the last.

“Where do I take her?”

She looks around at the Irilak still cowering in the shadows.

“They won’t hurt us.” I don’t know why I’m so certain—as certain as I am that I never want to feel again.

Ever.

Nothing is everything I never knew I needed. The ability to skate along the surface of my conscious mind, lift my feet and move forward. To continue down this pulseless, soundless void.

It’s … safe.

With a pained glance at her mother, the sprite waves her little hand—a gesture for me to follow.

The Irilak cleave a path for us as I trail her through the jungle, every step away from that heaving waterfall feeling like a string is tethered to my ribs, stretching.

Stretching.

I tune into the injured sprite’s shuddered breaths, timing my own to match their pattering beat.

Rescue this life. Make her safe.

A task. A tiny, quivering task. Something for me to focus on.

A faint beacon in this shadowy pall.