Page 12 of The Reaping Rose

Feathers of shadow fly into the air, becoming small bugs that circle us. Nipping at any exposed skin. Leaving welts on my neck. It stings. It burns.

“Nothing can kill it.” I carve my daggers into where a heart should be, but as I pull them free, nothing but an empty hole in its chest stares back.

Filmy skin twines back together as the beast lowers to the ground.

“Back,” Greer says, shoving her arm in front of me as she moves back a step. “We need to get back.”

“What is it doing?”

“I don’t know.”

Before I can turn or blink, the creature curls. All around is pitch black, like it gulped the light from the realm. It draws inward and then bursts like an explosion in the darkness. There is nothing that keeps my feet on the ground.

A flood of darkness barrels at us, sending Greer and I through the air until my head strikes a tree, and my vision goes black.

“Do you hear that, Father?” I whirl toward the prison, nearly slipping on a boulder.

Father’s hands catch me, pulling me down to the sand before I topple into the sea. Waves crash against the boulders, reaching for me.

“Careful.” He helps me find my footing. “Your excitement almost sent you floating out to sea.”

I frown at the worry in Father’s eyes. Worry he tries to mask with a smile but fails.

He brushes my hair off my face, tucking a strand beneath the braid to hide the blue tint that grows a little higher each year. While that soulful hum that snagged my attention gets louder.

“What is it?” Father asks, his face pinching when he sees me staring at the prison.

He doesn’t like when I stare too long, much less go near there. Once, he caught me picking morning glories at the prison gates, and he refused to let me leave the village for nearly a full turn of the moon. I don’t know what he fears from those walls when nothing can get out.

“You don’t hear the song?” I ask as the tone changes to something more somber.

The wistful hope that once led the chorus is more haunting now.

He shakes his head, even as the song is so crisp. So clear.

“Tell me what you’re hearing.”

My eyes close, and I try to make out the words, but it’s as if I’m in a dream. I know them, but I can’t quite understand them.

“Someone sad. Someone who lost something, maybe. I can’t understand it.”

Focusing harder, I latch onto the words that don’t make sense until I am no longer in the darkness of my mind but in an open space that reflects back at me. Where the walls are endless, and I am not the one hearing the tune but singing it. Listening to the echo of it against a pitch-black room.

My eyebrows crinkle as I blink them open and find my father shaking my shoulders.

“There you are.” Relief floods his face. “You weren’t answering me.”

“I thought I saw—” My head hammers as I try to remember the face in the reflection. “I don’t know what it was. It’s like I was somewhere else.”

Worry fills his gaze as he looks up and down the beach. “We should get home. The shadows are moving.”

I glance around at the shadows cast by the prison. They change direction at all times of day, without warning. Unlike the shadow of a tree, shifting with the sun or the moon, the prison’s darkness does not move with the light; it does what it wishes. And right now, it’s like it’s reaching for me.

Father grabs the fish we caught and leads the way back to the village. But even as we leave those shadows behind, something in them follows. A song with words I don’t know, but my throat hums.

“Elorie, wake up.” Greer’s voice pierces through the music in my memory.

My eyes fly open, and I find her crouched in front of me.