I watched my memories flit by my eyes as he drew them into a little box … except they weren’t my memories. This person remembered me.
This body was my mother’s.
As soon as I realised, Vidrol and Fjor fell away. Shattered glass flew back into the windows, unbroken panes fitting carefully back into their frames. I didn’t fall again; this time I rose. I was standing, alive, in the kitchen. I was staring into the eyes of death—dark and simmering, like the slow burn of coals. I was staring at a red mouth wide in a silent scream. I was listening to the drumming of a terrifying power. It was an army breaching a crest, coming for me. I could smell the foul breath of the horses. I could see the foam from their muzzles and hear the gnashing of their teeth. They were beasts from the afterworld, and I saw them as something pierced my chest. Death struck me with cold precision, those great big winged beasts trampling over my body as it crumpled and fell. I heard the glass of the windows blow out again. Some of the pieces scattered over my legs.
The drumming drifted away, my soul taken on the backs of those beasts of war. They fled into an infinite darkness, which became dirt once again.
Somewhere in the real world, I could feel the boundaries of my mind struggling, the edges of my power reserves wobbling. I was going too far into Calder. Too far into the Darkness. I was diving without a safety line, knowing I didn’t have enough strength or energy to pull myself back out again … but I was desperate to find some kernel of hope in all that misery. I was desperate for a solution, an epiphany. A miracle.
The dirt filled my mouth, packing around me heavy and suffocating, until I was once again falling backwards, pulled upwards, drawn through the earth to a table, where I was washed and blessed.
To the King’s table, you go.
I was a sectorian this time.
I fell to a floor, familiar, with booted feet walking around me. Fjor’s dark eyes stared down at me, an unfamiliar expression on his face. He lifted his boot, drawing up and away—impossibly tall, impossibly large. He shoved his boot into my midsection, but I felt no pain.
“We’ll inflict worse on her than he did.” It was Vidrol who spoke, though I couldn’t see his face.
“And she will inflict worse on us,” Fjor agreed, grinding his heel down. “This worm has no right stealing from the likes of us.”
I could feel them slipping away and the trembling began in earnest, my teeth clattering together in the real world as this vision-world changed again, and I became the man looming over a girl with death in her eyes. I felt the exquisite pain and pleasure, the warmth around my sex and the cold stab of pain shooting through my entire body. I heard the pounding of death as it swarmed over me, an army of undead warriors, deformed in freakish beauty, shrouded by shadow. They drove their spears through me, each stab accompanied by a scream of fury. They carried me off on their steeds, skewered above their heads, their pace never letting up as they raced into darkness.
I could feel hands on my skin in the real world, shaking me, my name battered about my ears, but I was stuck.
Stuck in the dirt.
Scattered into a million pieces.
I rolled into mud, and then washed into a stream of water, tracing a torrential path up a mountain. Little pieces of me clumped back together, the water carrying me all the way to the top, where my body began to piece itself back together, flake by flake. I was barely whole again before those eyes of death were staring into me, dark and burning, hotter and hotter and hotter until I was burning too. The horde of death descended in a storm of shrouded steeds and shadow-eyed warriors. They ripped me apart with their burning hands, setting each piece of me on fire until I was a cloud of burning particles.
I washed away in the rain.
It folded over my head, water stealing into my lungs, my hands clawing for the surface.
My hands.
Not the Spider’s hands.
“Stop,” I croaked, trying to force the word out of my mind and into the world.
I was being dragged down as long, clawed talons dug into my ankles. The arms that reached for the surface were definitely mine, the cloud of blood-red hair drifting about my face unmistakable. I wasn’t staring into my own dark eyes, but I was staring into the face of death all the same. It was a rippling surface, moonlight touching water, brief flickers of light that would never again touch my skin.
I had stared into the Darkness and found only death.
It was exactly as it had claimed to be—the dark side of our deeds, our dark fates. It was every death I had caused, and it was my own end, waiting with a deep, watery embrace.
I clawed and kicked, screaming again and again, flurries of bubbles streaming from my mouth, until eventually … it all simply stopped. I was standing on the dock, the sun now high in the sky. My chest heaved, my face soaked with tears. Calder was nowhere to be found. The sectorians and stewards had all fled. I was alone. I swayed, my vision becoming blurry. I barely managed to turn so that I would fall backwards before my knees buckled and I pitched toward the ground.
I dreamt of a wild fray of unceasing beasts riding endlessly through the worlds, merciless warriors tearing souls from the bodies of mortals and carrying them away on the tips of their spears.
I dreamt of death. It tasted of dirt, sounded like thunder, felt like drowning, and smelled of ash washing away in the rain. It looked like the exact almond shape of my eyes, familiar pupils etched from coal, sparked to life by an infernal match.
I dreamt of death … and the face it wore was my own.
When I awoke again, the sun warmed my back. A sjogul landed on one of the posts along the front of the dock. The white and black bird had a cry that I associated with the sea. It tipped its head to the side, orange beak opening.
“How long has she been like this?” A pair of legs rounded my head, scaring the sjogul off.
Frey knelt before me, a frown on her face.
“Since this morning.” I recognised the voice. One of the stewards from the night before. “After the Captain disappeared, she just collapsed.”
“Ven.” She reached out, hesitating a moment before catching my hand. Like most other Sinn, she wasn’t big on touching people. “What happened?”
“She’s awake?” Bjern appeared on Frey’s other side, crouching down. As soon as he saw my face, he reached out, brushing my hair off my cheek and neck, those dark slashes either side of his eyes crinkled as he searched me for injuries.
“You were bleeding from the nose, ears, and mouth,” he concluded, his thumb rubbing at a spot beneath my ear. “What in the name of the undead king, Ven? They said the Captain attacked you?”
I tried to shake my head, but it wouldn’t move. I blinked, and it felt like my lids were filled with concrete. I released a pained groan instead of answering, and Frey immediately released me.
“She needs the infirmary,” she ordered someone I couldn’t see.
Hands gently rolled me to my back, and I blinked at Sig and Herra as they helped a medicine woman position me on a stretcher. The sectorians and stewards had gathered along the dock again, and I spotted a few cloaks bundled onto the wooden planks where I had slept. Several stewards stepped forward to carry the stretcher, the medicine woman striding off ahead to lead the way. I tried to lift my head, but as soon as I did, darkness descended again, pulling me under.
Twelve