Page 151 of A Dance of Water

The King—her captor, her enemy, and perhaps… something more.

Vale and Caliban were connected. Theyhadto be. But something gave her pause. Caliban was a fae; she had seen his arched ears. So, not fully related—half-brothers, distant relatives?

It did not matter. What she hadseenmattered.

And she had seen Caliban and his relentless ferocity as he forced Enora under the water with his shadows.

It had been Tharen who told Luella he could not find her spirit while she dreamed… It had been Graves who had uttered the dreadful notion of what she was seeing:the past.

And it had been Vale who had told her the dreams were not, in fact, dreams.

Luella had been forced to endure such horrors with her training, she had nearly forgotten that Vale had drugged her—all to watch her sleep and find out where she went. Perhaps the experimentation of her dreams had not been so sinister.

Ifthiswas what she had been dreaming. Shadows and death and…

Trembling, her hands curled in the silken sheets.

The Tenebrae. The word still lingered in the air of her room. She hadseenhim.

She knew what he looked like, every villainous bit of him. Pale skin and black hair. Green eyes tinged with shadows—the only part of him that was reminiscent of Vale.

The soft moment of vulnerability, when his voice had grown tremulous, and he had begged Enora to understand.

Her mind spun to make sense of it all—the way Enora had alluded to a female Prima. Not Tharen, but someone new… different?

In the darkness of her sightlessness, all she could hear was Enora’s haunting screams as the water swallowed her.

Luella’s mind pounded from the weight of it all. She doubted if she’d ever understand. The Umbra, an army of shadowed, stolen beings whose bite turned friend to foe. The Tenebrae, Caliban—one and the same.

Her chest ached from the memory of Tharen’s hands on her, forcing her heart to beat. She could not summon any anger toward him. After all, she had asked for it.

Luella rubbed a hand over her chest, feeling Tharen’s amulet settle over Vale’s Binding mark; she knew bruises would also mar her pale skin from the mage’s punishing touch. Forever undeniable, she was marked by them.

The torturous training had paid off. Vines had grown by her will, even if she had not called them forth intentionally.

Weary victory brought a soft curve to her lips.

For the first time, she noticed, there was no rain.

Bile rose to the back of Luella’s throat.

She heaved as sweat beaded upon her brow, her blindfold absorbing the droplets. Muscles quaked from overuse, but the deeper agony was in her chest, where her magic begged to be free. Only, she did not know how to unleash it.

A hand stroked against her back, iron clinking as Az soothed her. She missed his voice.

"Thank you," she said hoarsely.

Her head thumped on the wet earth, uncaring that dirt and leaves stuck to her. She was too exhausted to care. Her fingers curled in the mud as her breaths evened out.

"Are you done?" Tharen called.

A twig snapped by her side, and Az’s hand tensed against her.

Something hard prodded her ribs; it felt like the tip of a boot. "I said, are you done, or do you want to give up, Princess?" the mage sneered.

Her arms shook as she pushed herself up, swallowing down bile. "I’m not giving up."

She shrugged off Az’s hands. She could no longer be coddled—not if what she had seen in her dreams three nights ago was true. She knew it was.

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