Page 98 of Beneath the Veil of Tides
Everything went dark.
“You don’t have to think that hard, Miss Caelyn.”
I knew that voice. It was young and riddled with grief, yet lively like he knew his life would improve.
Torvryn.
Vast emptiness enveloped me, black void stretching for miles. The young mer approached, swimming—gliding—through the darkness.
“You’ll know what to do when it happens. It’s time.” He spoke as if he knew my fate, but had to speak in riddles to ensure it kept trudging in the right direction.
“I—I can’t, Torvryn,” I croaked, warm blood pooling in my mouth in the icy water.
“I told you that I’m not a seer like my mother,” he continued, voice so comforting even at his young age, “because my powers are so much greater than that. I’m a dream walker.”
He told me he would return to me when the time was right.
“Are you real?”
“I am.”
“I’m dying.”
“I wouldn’t be here right now if you were dead.”
But I would be dead soon.
He came face to face with me and smiled. It was so radiant as if he saw victory in my mutilated body and soul. But my heart broke at the pain the child endured in his short life. I’d live this all over if it meant he could stay free.
“When you brought me to my aunt, you told me to be strong. Now I’m asking you to do the same. It’s going to be the hardest thing you’ve ever done, but my mother told me you’d save us all, remember?”
I reached for the boy's hands, but they fell right through him.
“Yeah, it doesn’t work like that,” he chuckled sadly, looking away. “I’ve tried it so many times with my mother.”
“How do I survive this?”
If he could speak to his seer mother, then maybe she knew—
“I cannot say, or it will change. But you will remember,” Torvryn said. His eyes shot to the side. “I have to go. Auntie is calling.”
The young mer disappeared.
Footsteps approached, halting and uneven. Something dragged behind them, but it didn’t sound like it wanted to be moved.A soft, wet rasp followed each step, lingering a moment too long after the movement stopped.
It took everything I had just to turn my head. But my eyes sharpened, and somewhere beneath the pain, the will to survive flickered back to life.
The male dragged Evelyn, unconscious and barely alive.
“Pl… please…” The plea escaped my lips in a whisper, but I hoped they heard me through the glass.
The uniformed man dropped my sister’s body onto the ground with a dull thump that hollowed something out inside me.It was supposed to beme. I was the one that should have been sacrificed, not her.
“She loses an appendage every time you refuse to fight on our side. Your sister will stay with us until we are triumphant. Once it’s all done, you will both be set free,” Raoku offered, anger lacing his words.
The cursed veins down my face burned, searing agony through my head under the bone helm.
I hesitated, every instinct clawing against the words before I could speak them. I couldn’t let them hurt her. She deserved to live. This wasn’t hers to pay for. It had never been. It was my fault. All of it.
