Rebel Faerie

Chapter 9

Nine

VIOLET

Time was a concept that didn’t seem to exist in the ever-changing landscape Violet wandered through. It was a place full of shadows and memories and the dark, fading edges of a vignette. It was a place of terrors, of pain. It was a place she might have lived in for a day or a year, or perhaps a hundred years. She couldn’t tell how many times she’d relived the nightmares.

The only thing she knew was that none of it was real.

She looked around at the distant echo of a cry. The others—the friends who’d tried to rescue her—were here somewhere, trapped in this world of waking nightmares. They came close sometimes. Close enough that she could almost touch them before they were yanked away.

Seeing no one, Violet turned and hurried in the opposite direction. She was in the Guild’s foyer now. The old Guild, the one that had been destroyed. An ache twisted in her chest at the memory of her beloved Guild lying shattered and broken across the forest floor. She ran for the stairs, hoping to leave the memory behind. Hoping to outrun what always came next.

But suddenly she was no longer running. Instead, she found herself on her knees among leaves and twigs, acrid smoke burning the back of her throat. Without having to look, she knew the devastation that filled the scene: a mound of debris, a forest in ruins, and a body crushed beneath a fallen tree. Tora’s body.

Tora had been a mentor first, then a friend, and eventually, she’d felt almost like a sister. And now she was lying dead in front of Violet. And though none of this was real, it hurt just as much as when it had happened. It was a knife stabbing into Violet’s chest, through her heart and through her lungs, so that she couldn’t breathe and the pain radiated from her heart to fill every inch of her being.

She fled from the memory of Tora’s death and found herself in a nursery. A nursery with a crib and a baby that didn’t move.

Another Victoria.

Another death.

Pain and absolute bone-chilling horror.

She couldn’t bear to look, but the nightmare wouldn’t have it any other way. The crib was right in front of her and the baby inside was unnaturally pale, completely still.

But this wasn’t right, Violet reminded herself, finally managing to tear her gaze away. A spark of hope ignited inside her as she remembered the heart-stopping words Em had shouted on Velazar Island. They’re my parents! How could Violet have forgotten those words? How could this nightmare have extinguished a light as bright and warm as the news that her own child was still alive? She shut her eyes, blotting out the image of the crib and the tiny lifeless body within it, trying with all her might to hang onto an image of Emerson.

But the nightmare wouldn’t let Violet go that easily. A heavy weight bore down on her, and when she opened her eyes, she was leaning over the crib. Her hand reached out, and one finger touched the cold skin of the baby’s cheek. That moment—that exact moment when she realized her baby was no longer living—hit Violet square in the chest. She sucked in a desperate breath as her heart shattered and the echoes of her own heartrending scream from that night assaulted her ears over and over again.

She pushed herself away and ran. Into the night. Into the forest. She’d been here before, and here she would stay forever. Running from her father’s death, running from Nate’s betrayal, running from Victoria’s lifeless body. “It isn’t real,” she kept repeating. “It isn’t real. It isn’t real.” But the pain was real. The heartache was real. And try as she might, she couldn’t outrun it.

“Vi!”

She stumbled to a halt at the sound of someone shouting her name. She swung around and saw him coming through the trees toward her. Ryn. She ran for him, reached for him, but as always, she couldn’t get close enough. He was always just a little too far away.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She nodded, though an echo of her pain still pulsed through her body. “I keep seeing … the crib.”

“Me too.” He swallowed. “I keep reminding myself that she’s actually alive, but it does nothing to remove the pain every time I have to relive that moment.”

Violet nodded, looking up at the tangled branches above as she blinked away tears.

“They’ll pull us out of this nightmare eventually,” Ryn said as the forest around them shifted and changed. They were in a different part of it now, where the ancient gargan tree they’d loved as children lay fallen.

“I know,” she said, “but when? I’ve heard they pull people out every few days, but I have no concept of how much time has passed. Sometimes I think I’ve been stuck in here for years.”

Ryn shut his eyes and breathed out a shaky breath. “Soon. It has to be soon, or else … I don’t know how many more times I can go through this.”

Violet’s heart broke for him as much as for everything she’d endured in this nightmare. “You have to, though. We both have to. When they pull us out, they’ll question us. They’ll demand information. And when we refuse to give it to them, they’ll toss us back into this nightmare. They’ll do it over and over again until we give in.”

He opened his eyes. “I’ll never give in. I’ll never give up the people we love.”

“Neither will I.”

“And we’ll be tortured for eternity because of it,” Ryn added quietly. “We’ll never know Victoria. Emerson. We’ll never find her.”

“We will.” Violet reached across the space that seemed so small and yet utterly infinite at the same time. “We’ll find a way out of this,” she said, desperate inner strength finding its way into her voice. “I swear to you we will.”