AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A small smile slid across her lips as she reached for the knife. “It’s not wise to make a bargain with the fae. They never truly give what they promise.”
“Then you’re lucky I’m half-witch.”
CHAPTER8
ISLA
It was a strange feeling to know that one was dreaming. Conscious enough to be aware it wasn’t real, but still sensing everything as if it were.
Isla’s bare feet took her across a field of ash lilies, and though that meant she was in Io, she was cold. The leather of her warrior’s uniform whispered as she wrapped her arms around herself.
Above, there was no moon. No stars. Only the sky as a rippling void, a shimmer of nothingness so unnervingly…peaceful.
She smelled the sweetness of wine first, then the smoky scent of the lilies, and then the bitterness of utter despair. Hopelessness.
In the distance, there was a girl. For a moment, she’d thought it was a corpse, unmoving, but then came the sobs. Isla moved, the lilies kissing her ankles as she advanced on silent feet. Even without glimpsing the wild blonde hair, the emerald gown, and the near-empty wine bottle, she would’ve known that she was staring at herself and that this skyless abyss was a memory. Her lowest point in a darkness she could not see a way out of. Caged by expectations that she failed to meet, that she never wanted to meet, time and time again, screaming into the nothingness that no one would hear her from.
Escape lay in a distant forest, one she knew she’d walk into and never out of again, but she’d take that over this. Physical danger and trials over a fight against her own mind that she was painfully losing.
“Help me.”
The words she’d uttered to the sky shattered her.
“Give me something. Give me an answer, please. There has to be more. I don’t know what I’m doing.”She just knew she couldn’t make it much longer like this.
The moon, the stars, and the endless night—the goddesses gave no answer. There was no breaking of the heavens, no divine moment when the world cleaved just for her. No one was listening. She was not meant for more.
Or so she’d thought.
In the momentary bliss of wine-soaked oblivion, an ember sparked to life, burning just bright enough for her to notice when she awoke. But it wasn’t planted by the Goddess, by Fate, or by Eternity.
It was her.
Because no deities would save her. No one would save her. Only she could save herself. Pick up and piece together every fragment she’d become and drag herself anew to the heights she wanted to reach, that she’dmake sureshe reached. Because her life washers, and it would be exactly what she wanted.
And in the distance, southward, another ember glimmered, waiting.
Isla stretched out a hand to the weeping girl, but in a blink, she was a wisp of smoke, and Isla’s palms, clothes, hair, and the ground—all of it was coated in blood.
At the metallic stench that was so potent it stirred her insides, her wolf roused for battle. But even here, she could not shift. Isla whipped around, her eyes adjusting to the shadows as the ground shook below her with the heavy beating of drums.
No, not drums. Paws, feet.
Then she was ensconced in a melee of swords and fangs and claws and iron and ash and rot and rubble.
Death. Death was everywhere.
It was icy and unforgiving as the world fell around her. Her scream had no sound as darkness swept over her. As shefell, fell, and fell. And then, at the end, there was…music.
A cry of a violin so familiar it gnawed at her mind, the lilting notes tugging herback, back,andbacktosee, see, see.
Warrior Heart.
An echo from the void.
Isla spun and spun until her feet had wedged into the ground below. Stuck. She was trapped. Here in this…place. A new cage.
Warrior Heart.
