Drothiker

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She stirred.

Her throat burned, tongue dry as a firewood.

She couldn't breathe, her lungs and heart were coated in darkness. Her mind, her body, her soul—

She couldn't move, couldn't open her eyes.

She was this darkness, this horror. She'd ceased to exist.

"Faolin," someone called her name. The voice so distant ... as if she was underwater and the call had come from the surface.

But she wasn't underwater. Water wasn't meant to me so utterly dark ... it was meant to be freezing. Anything but hard, as the rocky ground beneath her.

"Faolin."

Faolin's eyes cracked open, and roared agony at the onslaught of moon right atop her. They shut again.

"Dim the witchglow, Vurian," demanded a feminine voice.

The light from behind her lids fell. "Sorry," muttered a deep male voice. "Still learning how to control the damn thing."

"Up, girl," snarled the same harsh voice. Familiar—it was too familiar.

Faolin opened her eyes at the pure command and jerked up. The headrush blinded her for moments before her eyes adjusted.

"Thought you wouldn't survive," Levsenn grumbled from where she sat by Faolin's legs.

Standing over her, the Lady of Wolves had a disdained look on her face. "Your task was to live," she groused. "Not to get otherworldly darkness inside yourself, foolish girl."

Faolin rasped, "Survived, didn't I?" Her limbs were the weight of the mountains, darkness coated the edges of her eyes. "What's happening?"

"I found you beside this lad," Prime Raocete said, gesturing to Undesin leaning against the cave wall behind her, shy smile on his lips. "Scrawny little thing." Indeed, the body seemed as if he would shrink any minute now.

"Is she—is she safe?"

Vur frowned scornfully from where he stood cross-armed between Prime Raocete and Levsenn. "No—Syrene fled. We don't know where she went, or what she did in the arena. Levsenn and I woke up in this cave too, an hour ago."

But that's not who Faolin had meant. Still, she looked over to Undesin, hoping for an explanation. The boy's face reddened when everyone's gaze drifted to him. "I—I don't know. One moment she was there and everyone on the platform fell unconscious, and the next, she grabbed you all and hauled you from the arena with ... with an uncanny pace. It was like she disappeared." He shrugged. "I had a good sense to run. Then I found you a few yards from the arena." He jerked his chin to the prime. "She found me there."

Faolin rubbed at her chest. As if doing so will ease the cracks in her. "What happened to ... me?"

It was Levsenn who replied, "Deisn Rainfang transferred her darkness in you to gain some sense of herself, to tell Syrene everything ... and well, to stop Ianov's destruction." The siren's sapphire eyes met Faolin's. "We're not yet aware of the effects it must have had on you, or your mejest."

Faolin's skin went cold.

"Weak lass," the Prime of Wolves growled. "It was easy for her to get that darkness in yourself because you had cracks in yourself. You were not as you should have been." She bared her teeth viciously. "Did you let Jegvr break you?"