Veiled Innocence (Book One, The Soul Cycle) (32 page)

She remembered how scared she used to be all the t
ime, when she encountered Orris
or someone equally intimidating at court. She wondered what had happened to them after the fire, if they had made it out all right or not. Rowan had never mentioned his father the entire time they were together. All of her fears seemed so silly now in comparison
to
what had recently happened. If she could have a second chance at it all, to redo it, she would gladly take i
t and relish every moment she had, taunts and all.

Maybe…  if she could revive her kingdom…

The weight of that monumental task suppressed her like a ton of rocks.

Her heart sank, and she hugged her knees to herself.
What
if they don’t want my help?
I can’t bring back a kingdom by myself. I
don’t know the first thing about
running a country.

It wasn’t so much her fear at being incompetent as it was the fact that the problem felt so
huge
. Overwhelmed,
she let
the tears come, hot and heavy, as
al
l of her pent up sorrow drained
out of her. She never realized how badly she had needed this until now. 

She cried like that for
at least a good half hour
until exhaustion finally took her under. Then she at last found blissful peace in the solace of her dreams.

But she was not alone.

***

THE GIRL WAS FRAIL
and delicate, like snow on a winter morning. 

Soft, golden ringlets framed a cherubic face lit with
a
mischievous
smile
; small, pudgy fingers twirled a single red yeullis playfully back and forth as she lightly skipped in her silver slippers.

She was no more than a child, close to six or seven years old. Innocence and sweetness radiated from her, and Lian found herself drawn like a moth to the flame. She stared at the young girl in wonder, captivated by her simplistic happiness.

Then that little yellow head turned and smiled at her. Lian gasped, equally awed and frightened.  

The girl’s eyes were the same pale green as her own.

Lian knew who this was now; it was herself, as she used to be long before
all of this sadness came to pass
.

The little girl walked up to her and shyly held out the yeullis. She watched beneath dark lashes, and Lian blinked, accepting the gift. Its stem was cold, like it had been sitting in a vase of ice water, and the petals were the same soft velvet she remembered from her dream.
She
couldn’t believe she was holding a re
al yeullis; it had been so long. S
he had to smell it, had to take in that sweet, sharp perfume that belonged only to that flower.

Closing
her
eyes, she
lifted it to her nose, taking in its scent. She sighed deeply; it was more wonderful than she remembered, more so than the smell of fresh cookies or summer rain.

“Do you like it?”

Lian looked up and found the little girl smiling bashfully at her, her fingers twined behind her back. She swayed back and forth, unable to keep still, waiting for an answer.

“Um, yes. It’s beautiful,” mumbled Lian, feeling a bit dazed. “Er, thank you.”

The little girl’s face lit up, and she rushed forward to hug Lian. Lian gasped in surprise as those little arms wrapped around her waist, and she gently rested her hands on the girl’s shoulders. 

Lian thought she would only stay that way for a moment and then let go, but she didn’t. She didn’t seem to want to
stop
hugging her. 

“What are you…” her voice trailed off, lost to the thick white mist that had materialized around them. Something inside her shifted, trying to warn her. Her body felt very heavy, and her voice was barely audible, like all of the sound vanished the moment it left her mouth, swallowed by that dense, shimmering fog.

Wait. Shimmering?

The mist had taken on a luminescent quality, almost like tiny crystals were floating in the air around her. Lian stared wide-eyed at it, not quite sure what to make of it yet. It would almost be pretty if it hadn’t been so strange. But then again, she had seen a lot of strange things lately. 

This can’t be real, but I can’t remember if I
fel
l asleep or not.
It took a while for the thought to form; her mind wasn’t able to process it at full speed. What was happening to her? Had the murdels returned and drugged her again with one of their darts?
This isn’t real. It can’t be.

“Oh, but it is.”

It took
her
a moment to figure out that the voice had come from the little girl, the younger her. She gaped at her, growing a little afraid. “I didn’t say that out loud,” she finally said, staring warily at the innocent girl in her arms.

The air continued to glisten around them
,
and a voice in the back of her head kept nagging at her, telling her she should be connecting it to something but she couldn’t quite figure out what. All she wanted to do was to go to sleep.

All the while, the crystals gleamed in the air, and it suddenly occurred to her where she had seen them before.

“My necklace,” she breathed. “It’s the same gem that’s in my necklace.”

With great effort, she turned her head down just barely enough to see her throat. It was like trying to push open a door with rusty hinges. Her eyes strained to see down far enough, but at last she saw the necklace wasn’t there.

Where was it?
She was certain she’d been wearing it at the time she came to the river. She probably would have started to panic if her body had been capable of producing adrenaline at that point, but all she could think about was how heavy her eyelids felt. If only she could close them for a bit…

Then she noticed something, or rather
someone,
was missing. The little girl had vanished. She wa
s nowhere near her, or at least
from what she could see with her head still turned down. 

“Are you looking for this?”

That high-pitched chirp made her eyes dart up
,
and her head slowly followed to find the little Lian a few feet in front of her, dangling the necklace above her head in a teasing fashion. 

Lian took a step forward. “Careful with that,” she started to say, but her groggy mind was too preoccupied with how weighed down her legs felt. They might as well have been made
of
marble; she could barely lift them. Her eyebrows furrowed together in concentration as she tried once again to make herself move. 

“Don’t worry,” chimed the little girl. “I’ll take good care of it.”

“Give it back!” Lian tried to shout, halfway raising her arm before it dropped back to her side. Her head felt so woozy that it was almost making her dizzy.
She couldn’t think straight. H
er thoughts were all jumble
d
, and she felt sleep coiling itself around her like a snake. 

Her knees buckled, her body finally succumbing to the phantom wei
ght that had been put upon it. But her mind did not bend to its will
.
If
I
could hold out a bit longer…

Lian swayed on her knees, her eyes fluttering with each wave of sleep that rolled over her. 

Across from her, the little girl raised a finger and
tsked
it back and forth at her. “You shouldn’t wear yourself too thin,” she said in a chiding
,
sing-song voice. “Maybe you should rest.”

There was something wrong with the w
ay she had said that last word.
It was more like an order than a mere suggestion from a young girl. 

“No,” Lian protested weakly, swaying too hard and crashing to her side. Her arm was pinned beneath her, but she could not bring herself to move enough to free it. She rested her head on the ground, breathing in the moist richness of the damp soil. Her mouth hung open
,
and
as
her eyes began to los
e focus
,
the angelic girl faded
in and out of her vision. 

“Rest now,” purred the young girl. “
Rest
…”

She knew she should be doing something. There was something she needed to take back, but at the moment, she couldn’t remember what.
It m
ust not have been very important.
All that mattered now was that she…

“
Sleep.
”

Yes, that’s it.
It seemed like the most wonderful idea in the whole world. 

No longer able to fight the weariness,
she
closed her eyes and fell into a deep, dreamless slumber.

River

WHEN LIAN CAME TO
, she was still by the river.

Or rather, she was
in
the river. Half of her lay on the shore while the other half lay submerged below the surface. Thankfully, it was shallow at
that part, and she was only in up to her waist
. 

That was as mu
ch as she could assess at first. H
er mind was far too groggy to try to analyze what had just happened. 

What
had
just happened?

With sand plastered to the side of her face, Lian tried lifting her head and promptly set it back down as a wave of nausea hit her.

Come on
.
Think!

She had wandered through the wood
s
because she couldn’t sleep, and by chance had come upon the river, a welcome savior to her unquenchable thirst. But then what? She closed her eyes as her stomach turned, fighting back the bile rising in her throat. Why did she feel so sick? Was it something in the water? She had always believed running water to be about the purest out there, but then again
,
she knew next to nothing of surviving in the wilderness. 

“
I shall take good care
of it.”

It was as if she had been zapped by a bolt of lightning. There had been
a
voice, syrupy sweet. “There was something I wanted back,” Lian mumbled in broken syllables.

It was difficult to form a coherent thought, let alone voice what she was thinking. Both her body and mind felt incredibly exhausted, and all she wanted to do was to go back to sleep to that dreamy melody weaving through the air.

Her eyes popped open.

Someone was singing to her, a familiar tune she had heard only in her dreams when she was a child. It was soft and flowing, its gentle melody weaving through the sleepy trees and then back again, wrapping itself around her senses and beckoning them to return to slumber.

Warning bells went off in the back of her head.
“
This isn’t right
,
”
said the dream voice.
“
You must stay fast if you are to keep what is rightfully yours. Do not give in!
”

Something black and shiny flashed out of the corner of her eye. Lian slowly turned her chin downward, and her eyes widened.

Protruding from the water was a single blue-green ha
nd with long glossy black nails. I
ts fingers
were
wrapped around the teardrop.

The jewel began to pulse white, almost as if it was agitated at being touched, but it did not strike out as she thought it would have.

Rowan said it burned the murdel. Why isn’t it burning this creature?

Bewildered, Lian clumsily scrambled
away
as fast as she could manage in her drugged state, snatching the teardrop away from those awful, webbed fingers. She crawled backward along the shore until only her feet were in the water. She tried unsuccessfully to stand, losing her balance several times as the world spun around her.

The moment she regained her footing, another scaly hand reached out of the water and dug its nails into her ankle. She yelped in surprise, falling on her back as it yanked her forward.

What the –

The thought stopped short
,
and she cried out in shock when she looked up.  

There was a person in the river, or at least the shape of a person. Its skin was shiny and wet
like a fish. F
rom what she could tell, its upper body wa
s shaped like that of a human, o
nly it had two small slits for a nose and broad gills where ears should have been.

“What do you want?” Lian asked, not taking her eyes off it.