Page 1 of For the Ghastly and Beautiful

Chapter1

Adelaide

DAY TWENTY-FOUR

The steady beep, beep, beep of the heart monitor rouses me from a fitful sleep. I stretch my hand out, patting around for the warmth that’s missing. I can smell the woodsy scent of Connak and the sun-dried leather of Talodus.

But I can’t feel them.

When I squint into the bright light, my lids are as scratchy as the blanket covering my legs. I blink several times, hoping to clear my blurry vision. My heart crashes against my rib cage as I glance around.

This can’t be right.

I was lying between Talodus and Connak before I left them. The tug of the ocean on my soul brought me stumbling through the forest to the water’s edge. There, I found Isolde waiting for me on the bench of the earthly jon boat in the pouring rain.

Now, I’m lying in a hospital bed with an IV taped to my arm. My clothes are gone, replaced by a thin, sage green gown. My skin is dry and cold.

I survey the private room from one side to the other, noticing how bare it looks. The sun shines through a filmy window, the rays highlighting a styrofoam pitcher with a pink plastic lid. I swallow, and my throat is raw, toeing the line of painfully uncomfortable.

My attention snaps to the door as the handle makes a soft clicking noise. The monitors beep faster, signaling my rapidly quickening heart rate. It only serves to strengthen my anxiety.

What the fuck is happening?

“You’re awake,” the nurse gushes before she’s even crossed the threshold.

She turns, shouting at someone behind her, “Sue, call the doctor in. Ms. Storm is awake!”

All pretense of privacy is abandoned as she leaves the door open to rush to my side. She checks the machines, gasping and praising as she says that everything appears good to her.

“Dr. Heart should be here any minute. He was just saying bye to his husband. It’s his first week at Tampa General Hospital, but he’s a lovely doctor,” she spills.

I don’t care.

“Why am I here?” I croak.

The cough that follows makes my entire body ache precisely as it did a month ago when I stumbled onto the shore of Spiran.

But that wasn’t a dream.

I flip my hands over, spying the tiny cuts on my palms that I got from the forest floor last night. I’d tripped over a vine as I followed the call of the water and never had a chance to check my knees for scrapes.

The scar on my right forearm is another glaringly obvious alarm bell. The thickened skin from refusing Imryll’s care stares back at me, and I know in my gut that this isn’t real.

Something is wrong.

“That was a nasty cut when you got here,” the nurse murmurs when she catches me rubbing my fingers across it. “I’m surprised it didn’t scar worse. The edges were jagged, and the doctor did the best he could to stitch it up.”

“Why am I here?” I repeat, agitation heavy in my voice. The emotion weighs me down as my breath saws through my lungs.

“Everything is fine, dear. Just lay back and rest until the doctor gets here. He can answer some of your questions, but we don’t know much. You’ve been in a coma for some time now.”

I sit up quickly, shaking my head to ease the dizziness. As I throw the covers off my legs, the nurse rounds the end of the bed.

“Ms. Storm, you need to slow down. You’ve been injured and immobile since you’ve been here. You’re not thinking clearly.”

I swing my legs over the side of the hospital bed and start picking at the tape on my arm. The nurse tries to pull my hand away, but I swat at her.

“Don’t touch me,” I growl. “I want answers. Now. And I want out of here.”