Page 105 of Promise of Darkness
“Vi!”
I spit out a mouthful of salt, only to find his fingers have captured my chin and he’s tilting my face to the side. I slap it away, but he holds up bloodied fingers.
“What happened?” he demands.
The prince, as usual, looks like he just sauntered out of a bedroom. No sign of wet clothes, only slightly tousled hair. I’m sure I look like a drowned sailor.
“Did you see her?” I gasp, scraping bedraggled hair out of my face.
He offers me a hand. “See who? And what happened to you? Why are you wet?”
I tell him about the woman who tried to drown me, but his eyebrows merely draw together in a frown. “That’s impossible.”
“What’s impossible?”
He glances at the jagged stones that stand on the rocky beach like solitary sentinels. “She sounds like one of the saltkissed, but they were banished along with the Father of Storms.”
The saltkissed.
“But they’re trapped.” I look around. “Here. They were trapped here.”
I know enough of my history to know where each of the Old Ones was trapped. The Father of Storms made his final stand on this beach before being lured between the standing stones.
Thiago presses his hand against the nearest stone. The tattoos on his throat writhe, so I know he’s using his power, but nothing else manifests.
He shakes his head and lowers his hand. “I can’t sense anything, but this is troubling. The portals take us into the World Between Worlds for the brief moments it takes for us to travel. If one of the saltkissed managed to manifest there, it might mean the prison walls are weakening.”
“Do you think this has anything to do with Angharad?”
“I don’t know.”
We stare at each other.
There are a few too many troubling details coming to light of late. It can’t be coincidence.
First, Angharad starts toying with Mistmere. Then we hear whispers that a child of one of the Old Ones might be walking the world. And now, the Hallow on Stormhaven Isle is reacting weirdly.
I reach out to touch one of the stones and hear the hiss of the saltkissed woman in my ears.
Yanking my hand back, I swallow hard.
“What did you feel?” Thiago’s at my side in an instant, his callused hands capturing mine.
“I heard her again. It’s as though… the Veil between both worlds is thin here. And she’s waiting on the other side for me.”
“Why you?” He searches my face.
“She called memiatha lin.”
Instantly, he frowns. “It’s the language they spoke on this world before we arrived. The language of the Old Ones. ‘Promise of one,’ I think. I haven’t spoken it in several hundred years. Perhaps Kyrian will have a better grasp than I do. He loves to lock himself away up there with his library and his brandies.”
I stare at the stony cliffs that shear into the blue skies. Fierce, winged drakon soar through the skies and hover at cave mouths in the cliffs above us. They distract me for a second, but I’m not here for the fauna.
“What if there’s something wrong with the Hallows?”
It’s a question neither of us have dared broach.
Thiago’s eyes darken. “Then we pray and hope that Maia hears us.”
