Page 49 of Beneath the Haunting Sea

Why had her mother never told her this story?

She got up from the chair and paced around the library.

Can’t you hear it?Her mother’s voice echoed in hermind.Can’t you hear it? The Waves are singing.

She ran to the window and wrestled it open, leaning out into the cold wind. She strained her ears and eyes down to the sea, listening with every part of her being.

There it was: the thread of a ghostly melody, out there in the cold waters.

She yanked the window shut again, heart jumping.

It couldn’t be true. Itcouldn’t.

She’d stopped believingin the gods the day her father had died. They’d failed to keep him safe. Her mother’s belief in them had driven her to madness. And now—

Now the old stories were nibbling at the edges of her consciousness. Trying to lure her in. Trying to make her believe what she refused to evenconsider—

She shuddered, trying to shake the images from her head.

All the dead of the sea, drawn to Rahn’s Hallin a glittering net. Talia’s dreams made more sense now—the screaming shadows, the cruel woman laughing on her throne.

If the myths were true—

No. That was impossible.

She wouldn’t let them be true. Shecouldn’t.

But what if they were?

She could hear the music of the sea, even with the window latched tight. It sang to her of danger and sadness, of yearning and incredible, terrible power.Every snatch of unearthly melody sent a new pulse of horror through her heart.

If the myths were true, that meant her mother was down in Rahn’s Hall right now, dancing before the goddess’s throne, enduring a torment Talia couldn’t imagine, though she had felt a sliver of it in her dreams. The memory of it crashed through her again, terror and pain fracturing every part of her.

She clamped herjaw shut to keep from screaming and shoved the dream away.

The dead don’t feel,she told herself stubbornly.The dead know nothing, when they’re gone.

Most people believed in paradise, a place beyond the circles of the world where there was no more sorrow or pain. It was the last remnant of religion in everyday society, and Talia wanted desperately to think of her mother there, at peace.

Butif the stories were true and paradise existed, why not Rahn’s Hall? Why not a place where souls were trapped and tormented by a wicked queen, unable to move on, unable to find rest?

Because it was too awful to think about. Because how could Talia go on, make a new life here, steal kisses with boys in stables if she really, trulybelievedthat? How could she resign her mother to such a fate?

It’s not true, she screamed inside her head.It’s not true, itcan’tbe true!

She forced herself to breathe, in and out, in and out. She couldn’t stop shaking.

She tried to think rationally.

The stories said the Immortal Tree had lain dead on the earth for three hundred years. The inhabitants of Ryn claimed it had beenhere,underneath the very stones of the Ruen-Dahr itself.

Wen had said thechained door under the garden was an old temple to the Tree.

That,at least, she could investigate.

Maybe the myths would stop haunting her, if she could prove once and for all there was no truth to them. Lay all this to rest.

She told herself she didn’t hear the music anymore, spooling up from the sea, twisting into her and not letting go.

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