Page 65 of Faerie Fate
Our gazes met. “Oh, shit.” Her lips thinned into a tense line.
“Please don’t say oh shit,” I blurted out.
“We’ve fallen into a prophecy. The same way I received the one about the shifters.” She erupted out of the chair and walked to the wall with her hands on her hips, studying the water.
“You mean the Faerie Prophecy,” I corrected automatically. My hollow voice reverberated back to me.
The water pushed at me with cooling waves, now up to my knees. It seeped into my clothes, my skin, eager and hungry to consume everything in the room.
“We need to get out of here,” Poppy called. “We can die in a prophecy as well as in life.”
“Wha— Are you kidding?”
The pulsing water made it difficult for her to move. She turned and trudged back toward me, the effort causing a vein to pulse on the side of her head. “Do I look like I’m kidding to you?”
Together, we splashed to a door, the only thing not covered in water, and Poppy pulled on the handle. It stayed locked and immovable. The play of light on water, from a source I didn’t see, cast shadows on the brass knob. White paint cracked along the splits in the panels.
Grinding her teeth, Poppy threw her powers at it, the wood heaving and groaning until the space between it and the water widened.
Unfortunately, as I should have expected, a torrent of water raced inside the room and knocked my legs out from under me.The wave carried me under, rolling me, filling my nostrils in an attempt to invade my lungs.
A memory flashed: a trip to the beach with Uncle Will. I’d been about five years old and eager to play in the waves. I’d turned my back on the ocean, something I wasn’t supposed to do. The foamy whiteness broke over my head and pushed me face first to the sand, beating against my spine to keep me there.
Now, I couldn’t stand under the weight of the water, bearing down harder, stronger, and I was losing air. My arms flailed, searching for purchase, and my knees cracked against the floor, the wave tumbling me in useless circles.
Then Poppy yanked me out. She held me by my hair, the strands clenched in her spidery fingers. Her wide eyes searched my face as I sputtered and coughed up a mouthful of water in her face.
Her hand slipped from my hair to my back and she pounded the last few droplets out of me.
“I shouldn’t have to warn you not to drown.”
I blinked, my eyes burning, but the water was fresh rather than salty. “I’m trying my best.”
She scoffed. “Your best is pretty pitiful. Now, please? Come on,” she grunted.
She jerked her head to the door. I lost my footing immediately and my knees buckled, but I kept myself upright. I refused to die in this prophecy, whatever it meant, whatever Poppy’s visions of the future were trying to tell her with this horrible house of death.
She kept her fingers fisted in my shirt, practically dragging me out, and pushed through the door before we were finally able to leave.
The whole world outside was under water.
My eyes burned as I scrubbed them with my knuckles. “What kind of prophecy is this?” I managed.
“The kind that will only get worse if we can’t manage to navigate it effectively.” Poppy glanced left, right, up.
Here, she looked years older than the witch I sat across from in the real world. Creases lined her lips and forehead as though the burden of seeing aged her.
Not helpful.
We braced ourselves against the current and pressed on, along a short path leading away from the house of water. The tide rose with us until the water reached my hip bones and froze me. A glance behind showed the house, the water rising up into the sky along the curves of its roof and eaves.
Everything became a blur. Looking around, the sickness I’d felt before returned a hundredfold and I doubled over, coughing up more water than I’d inhaled.
The house stood alone in a field of froth. Detritus marked the edges of the foundation and the tree at the front spit of path twisted in a sharp breeze.
The water kept rushing, but outside the property there was nothing but gloom.
Poppy gasped and grabbed my hands. “Hold on.”
