Page 23 of Synodic

It took the stranger a moment, but once he realized what I was attempting, a low growl rumbled in my ear and he jerked me to stop, prying my face forward.

I was briefly reawakened to my senses. What in the hell was happening?

We were hidden behind a slight slope of earth, but I could still make out the flowing waterfall and lapping pond. The two figures from earlier now stood exactly where I’d been when I drank from the falls.

Were they the reason I was so rudely torn away from the ambrosian water?

All I wanted was for them to leave so I could drink and drink until I couldn’t consume a drop more. But just as I was growing impatient with their prolonged presence, I shrank back in horror, realizing they were anything but human.

The creatures looked like flat-faced deer walking straight on their hind limbs with hoofed feet and taloned hands. Their fur was completely white and giant bleached-bone antlers sprouted from their skulls, curling pointedly towards the sky. Mossy green hair cascaded down in long ferns and vines around their anthropomorphic bodies, and the little mushrooms that budded around the crowns of their heads matched perfectly with the blood-red color of their eyes.

They sniffed at the air savagely, their crimson-stained mouths curling back over jagged teeth.

If it weren’t for the hand still tightly clamped over my mouth, they would have surely heard my screams, but instead, the noises choked down my throat in lacerating hacks.

My fear was all-consuming, stinging at my skin like a swarm of murderous hornets. I wanted to run fast and far away from here, but the man’s arms held me securely in place, crushing my squirming body against his.

After what seemed like forever, the two buck-like creatures retreated into the forest, scouring the path I’d come from like a pack of jackals on the scent of a wounded gazelle.

Once they were fully out of sight, the man whipped me around by my shoulders and looked me square in the eyes.

10

“Rowen?” I asked, trying to grasp a single thought.

The beauty of his face shocked me all over again but had it always been this severe, this bracketed with panic and fear? His strong sculpted jaw clenched to the point of breaking, and his usually straight eyebrows were mounted harshly over unflinching hemlock eyes.

I briefly wondered how he always knew where to find me, knew exactly where to be at just the right moment, but then his finger moved to my bottom lip and all thought beyond the tip of his touch vanished. I lifted my chin into his caress, breathing him in, wanting more. Needing more.

Something was seriously wrong. I knew I had just seen something frightening, but for the life of me, I couldn’t recall what.

A blood-red memory gnawed at the back of my mind, pleading to be remembered, but I swatted it away. Rowen was touching me now; that was all that mattered. My skin itched and burned and begged for relief. Relief I knew he was capable of giving me.

I could tell I was looking at him through half-lidded eyes, a clear invitation that he could do whatever he pleased with me right here on the forest floor and I wouldn’t object. His finger pushed beyond my lower lip. The earthy taste of his skin was intoxicating, and I opened my mouth wider for him, inviting him in.

I was reveling at his touch, his taste, his scent, and a whimper escaped my lips in anticipation. But before I knew what was happening he plunged his fingers down my throat, choking me. My eyes shot open and I bucked at him savagely, gagging as his fingers descended deeper and deeper into my throat.

“Stop fighting me, Copeland. We have to get that water out of your system.”

This was definitely not where I thought this was going, and for a moment, my ego was severely bruised.

“You drank poison, you are not yourself. Hold still.” He struggled with me as I fought against him like a wild animal.

I managed to land a punch or two on that sharp jaw of his, eliciting curses from that beautiful mouth, but in the end, he was bigger than me, and I was helpless as he easily overpowered me with his massive strength.

“Always drinking things you shouldn’t,” he seemed to mutter to himself as he battled to hold me still, his fingers fixed firmly down my throat.

Then I began to heave.

Rowen lurched me forward, pulling his fingers from my mouth, and coming up right behind him was the water I had swallowed from the pond. It tore its way up my esophagus and retched out of my mouth in violent coughing spasms.

But it wasn’t the water I remembered at all.

What came back up from my stomach was black and inky and tasted like death. Rowen gathered my hair in his hands and held it away from my face as I expelled and spat out every last drop of the acrid liquid. My throat was on fire, and a taste of rotten decay coated my mouth.

“What? How?” I managed to croak as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Look again,” he said with exasperation, rubbing his jaw where I’d rammed my fist into his face.

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