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"That's disgusting." He handed it to her anyway.
Salanca lifted the bottle up as if toasting them and then tipped a mouthful past her lips. Shaking her head, she then poured the remnant into the black glass bowl. That bright sweet scent filled the air. "It isn't really when you consider what this could require." Carefully, she placed the bowl between them and then removed a knife from the sheath on her sash.
Rhea opened her mouth to say something, but the words died on her tongue.
Was she—was she doing what she thought?
Salanca slit a line across her palm, then dripped the dark blood into the bowl. After setting the knife aside, she removed small pouches from the pocket of her dark-blue skirt. She emptied those contents into the bowl as well. Herbs. Hair. Chopped bark.
"What are you doing?" Tiehro's eyes widened. He lifted his hand. "You said this wasn't from the Forbidden Arts."
"Not all of it." Salanca bit her lower lip as she wrung more blood out into the bowl. "Most of it isn't at all. So don't even worry about it. The only reason this little tiny part is forbidden is because of the pain and harm to me, but I'm more than willing to pay it. It isn't nearly as bad as you might think."
Rhea opened her mouth to speak, the hair on the back of her neck prickling up. The Forbidden Arts were forbidden because of how dangerous they were and because they relied on the pain and suffering of others. "Whose suffering is this drawing on?" she said, struggling to form the words.
"Only mine. I know what I'm doing. But do not waste my time with more questions. This is our only opportunity. I'm paying the price regardless. Let's at least have a chance at solving this problem, all right? If you don't do what you're told though, you make it dangerous for all of us."
Tiehro's eyes flashed with confusion, anger, and fear. Reaching over, he gripped Rhea's hand and squeezed it tight.
The edges of her vision had already started to blur, and an intense humming filled her ears, strong enough it was as if it wanted to drag her into the floor and down into the earth below.
Vaguely she heard him say something. The words danced around her consciousness. The dryness of her mouth and the cotton sensation in her ears absorbed so much of her focus, she scarcely felt Salanca take her hand. A vague panic rose within her. The colors intensified around her, bleeding out into a pool of inky black that absorbed the entirety of her vision.
Strings danced in front of her face, plucking and going taut. Wind stirred, then swept faster around her. It tugged at her hair, nearly pulling it free from its clasp.
She was floating in darkness, but those strings plucked. They sang with little cries and muted whispers. Water surged and trickled and splashed somewhere in the distance, at once as loud as if she stood in the tidal path of the ocean and then somehow as quiet as if a small creek chuckled beyond the forest and over a hill.
Nothing held her hands now. She floated freely through the air, blinking and trying to focus. Though she could not see, she knew she was moving. Somehow. Somewhere.
Glass shattered somewhere to her right. Rocks snapped and cracked. She spun around, her hair whipping into her face. Energy sparked, and thunder boomed. Something like lightning tore through the air, lighting up an enormous cave.
The air changed, turning cold for a breath.
Purple light shimmered around her, brilliant and undulating. A more intense shade as the puffs of fog that appeared over Tiehro and Salanca when the nightmares trapped them.
Something pulled her away, out from the open air and onto black stone. Veins of the same purple light branched out across the walls and ceiling, brimming and pulsing with jagged energy.
Was this what had caused the attacks? The plague? The curse?
As she moved farther away from it, it looked like an actual tear in the air itself. Purple light enflamed with blue and silver veins that arced and stretched at intervals like a dying heartbeat and a raging lightning storm at once. Beneath it was a mass of purple light with amethyst and silver streaks bubbling and churning.
Where even was this? What defining features were within this cave that she could even recall?
She stretched her hand out and opened her mouth to call Tiehro and Salanca. But her voice stuck in her throat. They were close, but she had moved beyond them somehow. The veil they’d mentioned—whatever that was—it was thick. The air had gone thicker too, all the sound and energy fuzzing in her ears as if there were thousands of bees clustered around her head.
But she wasn’t alone. The air clung to her, crackling with energy and tension.
This had to be the source. Was there also a solution?
A perpetrator—she fell back.
Wait. No.
He stood—well, not exactly. He was half snake. Really more than half by the length of those coils. From the waist up, he looked like a man. He held a long-handled weapon of some sort as he swayed back and forth, his features blurred in a mass of indigo, turquoise, green, and cerulean. A naga? He lunged at something in the shadows with a snarl.
Then everything went black.
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