Page 18 of Splintered Shadow
It was gorgeous and terrifying.
An endless forest sprawled out in every direction. The house was perched high enough to offer unobstructed views of the rolling hills. A mist settled in the valley. The trees were the deep, verdant green of summer. They appeared familiar yet wrong at the same time.
Immediately surrounding the house was an overgrown, abandoned garden. Thick hedges gave the impression that the garden had once been carefully maintained.
Like a fairytale.
It remained to be seen if this was an “eaten by the Big Bad Wolf” fairy tale or a “sweet, happily ever after with a prince” fairytale.
Considering that she woke up naked and chained to a bed, she didn’t like her odds of a happy ending. No, that wasn’t entirely true. Her mysterious benefactor rescued her and gave her medical care. So, fifty-fifty?
Robert would love this.
She tensed. The thought came unbidden. She expected it to hurt, but it didn’t. Her heart ached, like the way her bad knee did after she fell on an icy sidewalk two years ago. Not terrible, but enough to know that pain would always be her companion.
Tolerable.
Her grief was tolerable. Well, that was something. If she ever got back home and had another appointment with her counselor, they’d call it progress.
Another goal in the action plan.
All at once, she was furious with Robert for leaving her without a chance to say goodbye. How dare he leave her? He was her best friend, and now she was smack dab in the middle of an awesome adventure, and she couldn’t share it with him. It was unfair and made her chest hurt.
Her hands clutched the aging draperies, the fabric crushed in her grip. Tears welled up, blurring her vision. She couldn’t stop crying if she tried. It felt like too much for one person to contain. She fell through a portal, landed on an alien planet, got mauled by a shadow monster, got rescued, and woke up chained—albeit with a tasteful chain—to a bed in a moldering fairy tale palace. Just… what was she supposed to do with all this?
“Okay, okay,” she whispered to herself. Her breath hitched between words. She had a lifetime of stories to guide her on what to do next. People searched for a way home. Dorothy did it. Hell, even Odysseus did it, eventually.
New action plan…
Her mind went blank. She needed more information, which was as good of an action plan as anything. Make an ally, which meant first contact, and that was a whole thing, becausealiens. Get questions answered. Where was she? What the hell happened? How could she get home? Whether or not she wanted to return home to her empty apartment and frustrating bookstore job, Sarah wasn’t going to think too deeply about it. Try to enjoy the adventure.
That felt… all right. The guilt she expected didn’t surface. Robert would love every second of this, and while it sucked he wasn’t there, this was a thing she could do to honor him. And that was almost like a thing they could share.
She spent the last three years hiding from her grief, friends, family, and the world. No more.
Dammit, more tears.
Sarah swiped at her eyes, irritated at how fragile she felt. Physically, she was okay-ish. Yes, naked and chained to a bed. That could have been better. Minus one point. But—and this was a big but—she was not dead. Someone, probably Mr. Sexy Dark Elf, gave her medical care and cleaned her up. Her body hurt, but more like she’d fallen through a portal than someone had drugged her drink. No one took advantage of her body while she was unconscious. One point.
Adventure! It’s sort of meh on the whole.
Even in her mind, the wry tone was too dry to tolerate.
She was too caught up in her pity party to notice a door opening or her rescuer-captor entering the room.
“If you are planning an escape, you will fail,” he said.
Vekele
The female jumped at his words. She clutched at her chest. “Oh!”
She had no right to be so striking, standing at the window in his silk robe, bathed in the afternoon sunlight. It irritated him.
He crossed the room to the table near the windows and set the tray down with unnecessary force. The plate and cutlery rattled.
“What is wrong with your chest?” he asked. “Is your respiration at sufficient levels? How is your cardiac health?”
She blinked at him. One eye. Then the other.
