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Scrambling to her feet, Fey pointed herself to the light on the horizon and ran. Her body was hot and heavy, and something was wrong, very, very wrong. Agony flooded her body as she moved, and the air was thick and far too heavy, impossibly thick in her lungs.
Smoke, she realized.
The world was hot around her, and Fey realized the world around her was burning. She was burning.
She was on fire.
Sounds behind her alerted her to danger a moment before she was attacked, giving her just enough time to dive to the side. The world spun, smoke clouding her gaze, but Fey screamed in rage and desperation and kept running.
This would not be how she died. Not like this, not blinded and running like a coward. She wouldn’t die today, she wouldn’t?—
The ground below her vanished as she reached the edge of the cliff face, and with a scream, Fey tumbled down into the emptiness, down, down, down to the river below.
Part Two
Chapter 28
She was in a dream.
No, Fey thought, panic surging through her. Not again. Please Goddess, no, not again.
The steps to the temple entrance stretched before her, an endless staircase of cold white marble leading up,
up,
up.
She tried to turn around, tried to go back—wherever back was, here—but there were too many people. Too many girls crowding the steps, too many bodies moving upward, pushing her up the stairs. She was caught up in the stream of bodies, unable to move against them, unable to get away.
This isn’t what happened, something inside her was insisting. A voice, her voice from somewhere deep inside herself, but it was distant and growing more distant with each step she was forced to climb. It was fading to a whisper, a plea from somewhere far, far away, until it finally faded to nothing.
When she reached the top of the stairs, the other bodies around her vanished, the stairs at her back vanished, and it was just her and the White Priestess standing in that room, once again.
“Water,” the old woman demanded, extending an aged finger toward her. She said it with a voice full of scorn and anger, a voice completely unlike the one from Fey’s memories.
Fey didn’t understand what she wanted, what she was asking for.
“Water!” the woman shouted, pointing. Her face contorted with rage, her mouth an open sneer revealing age-blackened teeth.
Fey opened her mouth to protest, to beg for some sort of explanation, but no words came out. Instead, water flowed out from between her lips and down her chin, and Fey brought her hands to her mouth, horrified.
She closed her mouth tightly, clasping her fingers across her lips, but the water continued to flow from her, spilling down her front and pooling on the marble floor.
It came from everywhere. Water spilled like tears from her eyes and flowed from her ears, from her nose. It seeped from her very skin, and when she screamed, it was nothing but a strangled gurgling against the flow of water.
Fey’s eyes snapped open, her heart pounding against her ribcage. She tried to sit up, but she couldn’t move her body. She was heavy, far too heavy, and Goddess spare her she hurt.
For several long seconds, there was nothing but the pain. No thoughts, no awareness, nothing but the oppressive, suffocating pain that filled every inch of her body.
Slowly, oh so slowly, she became aware of the world around her.
She was in a bed—she could feel that much. But she couldn’t move her head to look around at her surroundings. Couldn’t move anything at all. Her muscles were heavy and leaden, and just thinking about moving them hurt.
Fey tried to speak, instead, but her throat burned like fire, and all she managed to make was a terrible, strained croaking sound.
Someone was next to her, curled by her side near enough to be touching, and when Fey tried to speak again, the person stirred.
“Fey?” a voice asked, heavy with sleep.
