[THIS STORY WILL BE TAKEN DOWN ON SEPTEMBER 30, 2024]
He had hunted me, captured me, and locked me in a tower.
Season 3 'Of Crows and Thorns'
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While in RISING, Tabitha discovers something peculiar that may assist Nelle in her plan to escape the...
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The mysterious Silas Boon. I hadn't mentioned that Silas had arrived at the cottage after I'd killed Danne. I'd only spoken of what Danne had done to me in the limousine, what he'd attempted to do, as I'd wept within Graysen's arms at the cottage in the small utilitarian bedroom flooded with moonlight and lit with candles, with its chipboard walls and mismatched blankets.
Danne Pelan...
A gentle current of air coursed across the lawns and brought with its innocence a hint of molasses that turned sour and foul and toxic as soon as I inhaled. An ugly miasma.
My heart exploded into a racing gait as fast as the beat of dragonfly wings as the insect hovered over the curled leaf of a lilypad.
My awareness blackened at the fringes, then darkness blanketed it as if a raging tempest had erupted from nowhere, casting darkness over the sky, even though I knew the sun still shone in a sky scored with soft innocent clouds.
I didn't hear what surrounded me...
Sage's worried bark...
Peels of laughter...
The rattle and squeak of bike chains and wheels coasting on grass...
"Shit..." And another soft curse...
All that hollowed out my ears were my rapid hitched gasps. Fear and mindless terror locked every inch of my body rigid and trembling. My thoughts turned in on themselves as a wave of dizziness threw my equilibrium off balance—
Danne brought with him a flashflood of memories. I was no longer standing in Tabitha's garden. I was somewhere else, closed in with rich walnut finishes and the scent of expensive leather. Somewhere that rocked and swayed. Greasy uneasy sensations I couldn't scrape from my skin and mind. My cheekbone forced against curved seating. Carpet burning my knees. Gelatinous flesh. A coppery tang seeping across my tongue...
A voice, calm and sounding as if it were coming from a distance. "He's not here. He can't hurt you."
Fingernails gouging skin. A spike of pain across my hips. The sound of shredding cotton. Heavy weight and a crack of flesh hitting flesh. Heinous laughter and spitting curses...
"You're safe, Nelle. You're standing in my mother's garden, her lawns."
I couldn't breathe. Adrenaline injected my heart like nitrous gas—forcing it into fight or flight. Yet there was a third choice—freeze. I was frozen and trapped inside my head. And Danne was there and I couldn't get him out. I couldn't find a way free from the limousine.
"Nelle, take a breath..."
I scrambled to latch onto the voice, the soothing timbre of it, and followed the thread, inching my way back to awareness, breath by breath.
Slowly, so slowly, like color spreading across a Polaroid, sparking life into a black and white photograph, vivid bright colors stained my surroundings. Sound returned. Every day normal sounds of humming insects and birds flying overhead. A soft breeze rustling leaves. Low conversation and children's joyful laughter.
