Page 85 of Twisting Beauty

Maeve smirked at me. “Get her.”

But it was not Maeve’s voice. It sounded like… like Aoife’s.

They seized my arms, tugging me with urgent strength. I stared at Maeve, but her face kept shifting, my vision unable to hold on to her features properly.

She couldn’t be here. She had no reason to be standing in the Lasair grounds in her asylum dress.

My voice came out flat, like I was reading something off a page. “You can’t be here.”

She smiled and continued dragging me back.

“And you.” I turned to Dervla at my side as she dragged me by the elbow, her grip cold and too strong. “You’re in that cell. How did you get out?”

They didn’t answer me; they just tightened their grip on me, their hands like chains.

“Where are we going? What’s happening?”

Their faces shifted, distending, their skin leaching to red, robes swirling until they were no longer my friends but cloaked wraiths.

The black lake opened its mouth as they dragged me to it.

“No, wait… What are you doing?”

“Bride for the lake,” they chanted, their voices warped. Their nails bit into my skin, too strong, too cold, like iron manacles.

Then I was falling and the cold dark swallowed me.

Water hit like a fist.

The cold drove the air out of my lungs and the world contracted to black and pressure, the surface already gone, no way to tell which direction was up.

Sound reached me distorted, their laughter pulling apart into something high and discordant, a screech of bubbles rising through the water column and color bleeding into the dark.

Around me flashed white and red and the stone gray of the Special Ward.

Fingers slid around my wrists, my waist, under my arms.

I was being dragged down the corridor, kicking and fighting, but my screams couldn’t fight past the thick almost solid icy air trying to rush back into my lungs.

Then heaviness pressed me under, shoving me deeper, deeper into the dark.

My mouth opened, but no scream came out. No sound.

My chest heaved against the pressure, against his body on top of mine, desperate for air, but all I could taste was panic and his salty tang.

His shadow loomed over me as his fingers tore at my clothes. Legs forced apart, the bite of fingers digging into soft flesh, bruising me open.

Soft whispers in the dark, faceless and cruel, vibrating through my bones as he held me down.

“…my unlucky girl.”

My limbs refused to move, a prisoner in my own body, even as I fought inside my head until my mind shattered.

Pieces of him invaded me everywhere. Tearing. Forcing. There was no escape.

I splintered under him, breaking apart piece by piece.

Somewhere very far above me, so distant it was almost nothing, a violin began to play.