The salt water.

Something about that doesn’t seem right. I can still taste the remnants on my tongue, or perhaps I’m just scenting it on the coastal air.

But it’s not right. It’s not right at all, and I can’t for the life of me place why.

“I owe you my life,” I say. When I speak, I expect the man to jump, but he shows no signs of being startled.

“Good,” he says, his voice strangely familiar. Like something that triggers a memory, but the type you can’t tell from a dream. “I like the idea of you being indebted to me, Nox.”

I frown, raking my memories for recognition of this male, but I find none. “Do I know you?”

The male laughs, but the lack of humor in his voice chills my bones. “Don’t fret. It’ll come to you eventually. I was confused too, when I first woke. I doubt I’d have been as eager to rescue you otherwise. What do you say? I suppose there’s slim chance you’ll decide to drown yourself on purpose.”

I try to steel my expression. Clearly I’ve found myself at the mercy of a lunatic, and I’d rather not incite him.

Still. I don’t like that he knows me. Especially when I don’t know him.

“Where are we?” I ask, my motivations two-fold. I’m hoping if I can figure out where I am, maybe that will trigger the memory of how I ended up here. And then there’s the added benefit of distracting this stranger from talk of how he should have let me drown.

“How am I to know?” he asks. “I didn’t exactly get to glimpse which tapestry she chose to weave us into.”

“She?”

He lets out an exasperated huff. “Funny how you don’t remember her, when her name was the only word I could mutter the first hour after I woke. Not that I knew what a Blaise was at first.”

Blaise.

Her name is a spark drifting into my ears and triggering a cascade of images.

It hits me then. All of it, and instead of pulling my memories like roots from the ground, they’re felled trees crashing through the ceiling, bursting through floorboards that crackle underneath their weight.

There’s the queen, meeting me and Zora on the road that day. The sound of my new name, Farin, on her cold lips for the first time. There’s me running away and almost freezing to death in the snow, and then I’m clawing at the queen’s face, and she’s holding Zora’s limp body in her arms. Years pass in a blink, and then I’m waking up in a strange village, a strange woman dead on the ground before me, her blood staining my lips. Then there’s Blaise, spread out across that table. Blaise shoving a knife into the back of my hand. Blaise’s laugh ringing in my ears, her hair that smells of jasmine and vanilla. Blaise’s lips upon mine.

My mind stalls to a halt at that thought.

Because of all the memories of Blaise’s kisses, there’s one that doesn’t belong to me.

This isn’t real, Blaise is whispering.

And then it’s Farin’s words ringing in my ears, and I can remember hating how they sounded on my voice, how I could do nothing to stop them.

Does it have to be?

A clatter of a stake upon the floor, and then Blaise is kissing him. Kissing Farin, not me, and she knows it’s not me, and I’m slamming against my own subconscious, begging her to stop, but she doesn’t.

“Ah. Here we go,” says the male, ripping me back to reality, to the cave, but I know now why he seems so familiar, though I’ve never seen his face or heard his voice. “Now you remember.”

“You,” I hiss, jolting to my feet, but he’s just as quick.

In a blink, he’s stepped into the mouth of the cave, where the dawning sunlight is just beginning to creep.

That does nothing to stop me from wrenching a flaming branch from the fire and launching it at him, but it doesn’t strike its mark.

The man maneuvers the remainder of my attempts to skewer him with ease until there’s nothing left in the cave for me to hurl.

“Now, if you’re finished with your little tantrum,” says Farin, a smug grin curling his lips, “I believe you and I have a pretty girl to get back to.”

Thanks for reading this story! To find out what happens next, visit talawrencebooks.myshopify.com and read A Realm of Shattered Lies!

If you loved the book, don’t forget to help other readers find it by leaving a review!

AUTHOR’S NOTE

For anyone who is curious, Blaise’s difficulty reading is a by-product of oculomotor dysfunction, a disorder that causes the eyes to have difficulty coordinating. While often confused with dyslexia, these are separate disorders that each require distinct treatment.

I am not a doctor and cannot offer any medical advice. For more information on oculomotor dysfunction, speak with your local optometrist or ophthalmologist.

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Rumors ripple through Alondria of an avenger of the weak, the innocent, the mistreated.

They say he stalks in the shadows, suffocates his victims with the flicker in his eyes. That, if you're unfortunate enough to catch him lower his hood, his will be the last face you'll ever see. 

Of course, if anyone really knew that for sure, if anyone had ever escaped, they would have known better.

They would have known that the last face my victims ever saw... was a she.

Lydia is used to bringing reproach on the royal family. It's been that way ever since the day the midwife informed her father, the King of Naenden, that his wife had borne, not an heir, but a daughter.

What a shame.

With her father dead, Lydia has better things to do than sit around the palace and wait for her spoiled brother to run their kingdom into the ground. Of course, a princess can't exactly travel alone without earning a reputation.That's fine with Lydia. Because as long as the gossipers stay distracted spreading rumors of her indiscretions, they'll never imagine what she's actually up to.