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“Where is he now?”
“In his cell, apparently. He went there rather willingly.”
“I still don’t trust him wandering. Not with Farryn.”
“I understand. I’ll lock him up now.”
With a pat on Vaszhago’s back, I gave a sharp nod. “Good man.”
50
FARRYN
“Save him.”
I opened my eyes to see a faint light shining over me.
The ward my father had given me dangled over my head from where I’d secured it to my headboard, and swung back and forth as if something had knocked it. The wood sticks creaked as they bent on their own to form a new shape, and I frowned as it morphed before my own eyes into something I didn’t recognize.
The sound of a baby crying had me sitting up in bed, and I looked across my room to find a dark hallway there, lit only by a single lantern, leaving its end shadowed. A glance around showed all of the furniture of my bedroom in its proper place, but for some strange reason, the hallway still stood across from me, where the empty wall would’ve been.
Was I dreaming? I must’ve been.
It wouldn’t have made sense otherwise.
The baby cried again, the sound piercing my heart. A sense of familiarity crawled over me, and even if I’d never had the chance to meet my own baby, had never held it, nor heard it cry, something about the sound compelled me closer.
Pausing as I climbed from the bed, I stared down at the pillow, beneath which hid the dagger Jericho had given me. The one from the Knighthood. After another glance toward the corridor, I slipped it from beneath the pillow, holding it in a trembling hand, as I tiptoed forward.
“Save him,” the detached voice whispered again.
“Who?” I asked. “Who do you want me to save? Is it my baby?”
No one answered.
A dizziness swept over me, the view ahead flickering before my eyes, and I stumbled to the side. A blackness closed in, shrinking the view. As I lifted my arm to rub my temple, I stared down at my hands, one of which still held the dagger, but they didn’t look like my own. They looked like someone else’s–bonier and softer skin with pointier nails. Twisting them in front of me, I felt a sickness stirring in my gut.
“Save him,” the voice said again.
A distraction.
Heavy exhaustion settled over me like a lead blanket, my eyes so drowsy and burning, I couldn’t keep them open.
Blackness.
When I opened them again, I was standing at the entrance of the corridor, staring in on the long hallway ahead. Without much direction from my head, I walked toward it.
As I passed the armoire, a strange tickling danced over my body, and the moment I stepped into the corridor, a chill burrowed deep inside my bones.
Gray walls matched a gray floor, where shadows from the lantern flickered over it.
I looked back to my room and the empty bed there, noticing a small red patch on the sheets.
My baby.
Blackness again.
The sound of an infant crying breached the endless void.
