Page 84 of Beneath the Veil of Tides
She does. She loves me. She just can’t remember.I tried to convince myself, but even I couldn’t let go of the hints of denial.
I spun frantically, out of control.
The voices continued to drift in spirals, circling around me and into every crevice of my mind.
“The gods are scheming against you. Against them all.”
“Your courtdespisesyou.”
“You’ll live eons alone.”
I believed the rest.
The crazed woman appeared, hovering above the tar-like water, flitting closer toward me.
I snarled, my nose scrunching in disgust. If games were being played, I would win them. She stopped before me as I finally trudged back to the land.
“When she screams for life, will you shed a tear like you did for your mother?” Her voice crawled along my spine. Her head cocked nearly perpendicular to her shoulders. “Or will you run away like you abandoned your Bound?”
I hesitated, so she kept going.Let her think she was going to win this.
“The first solstice when she died, you baked your own cherry rhubarb pie. Did it taste like mother’s?” The salty, burnt remnants of that pie lingered in my mouth for days. So many decades ago.
“Where is the ferryman?” I bit out.
She laughed happily, as if entertained by my peril. Then, her skin began to peel back, slowly at first starting at her scalp. It dropped into the swamp, smoke rising as the woman’s flesh hit the water. Like silk unraveling thread by thread, the woman’s skin wept, revealing a suited male.
The ferryman. I was sure of it.
“The ferryman waits where the lost souls stray. His oar will pull your final breath away,” he said, his voice poised and deep. An oar rested against his shoulder as he flipped the Sunder Coin into the air with his opposite hand. It fell perfectly back in his palm. A practiced maneuver—one that became a habit throughout the lonesome years.
“Strange to speak about oneself as if one is not present.”
“Who’s to say I am the one you seek?”
He flipped the Sunder Coin again.
My eyes flitted to the relic. The ferryman snatched the coin from the air and threw his hand behind his back angrily as if attempting to hide it. He leaned in, nose upturned and brows furrowed.
“Do you see me as careless?!” the ferryman screamed, spit flying from his mouth and landing on my face.
Pride filled my chest, a sly grin plastering across my face.
“I do.”
My sword struck from behind, cleaving the ferryman's head clean from his shoulders—delivered by the same swamp waters he once claimed as his chariot, wielding power not earned, but borrowed from my Blood Tie. I’d never felt more powerful in my life, yet fear coiled in my chest, tangled with a fierce, unwilling hope that the coin would actually work.
It landed within my palm as it slipped from the ferryman’s limp hand before his body was lost to theswamp.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
What once laid beautifully down to my waist was gripped in the daggered claws of a monster that wore my father’s face. After the creature agreed to our deal, I drew the blade, freed it from its chest, and brought it down through my hair in a single cut to my shoulders.
It should have felt dreadful. Instead, it was a burden set loose when the weight of my hair drifted clean from my head. That hair suffered beside me, strand by strand. Cutting it was like burying a version of myself that had died long ago.
The creature lurked, inspecting the silvery-white locks hungrily.
“You have paid in half,” its evil, long syllabled tone drifted through the waters as it approached.
