The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and Ash 3)

There was a rough chuckle, and I slipped away, only to hear sometime later, “Rest. I will watch over both of you.”

I was gone again, but this time was different. I slept. I slept deeply, where only fragments of words reached me. But in that place, I became…aware that I had parts. A body. There was a warm, damp touch to my brow, my cheek. It was soft. A cloth. It swept over my lips and under them, along the side of my throat and between my breasts. It disappeared, and then there was sound. A trickling of water, and then the cloth returned, gliding over my bare arms and between my fingers. The touch felt nice. It lulled me, letting me slip back into the heavy sleep and fall once more.

I was that child again, grasping at my mother’s bloodied arm. They had gotten inside, just like the man had warned. The screams. There were so many screams, and the shrieks of those things outside the window, scratching and clawing at it.

“You’ve got to let go, baby. You need to hide, Poppy—” Momma stilled and then wrenched her arm free.

Momma reached into the kid leather boots I liked to shuffle around in, pretending that I was older and bigger. She pulled something out, something black as night and slender and sharp. She moved so fast—faster than I’d ever seen her move before, spinning around as she rose, the black spike in her hand.

“How could you do this?” Momma demanded as I scooted to the edge of the cupboard.

And then I was above the colors, in the nothingness once again, but I wasn’t alone.

A woman was there, her hair long and floating around her, the color so pale it was like spun moonlight. Her features were familiar. I’d seen her before in my mind while in the Temple. But now I thought she looked a bit like me. There were freckles across the bridge of her nose and on her cheeks. Her eyes were the color of dew-kissed grass, but behind the pupils, there was a light. A silvery-white glow that seeped out, fracturing the vibrant green.

Her lips moved, and she spoke. Her lashes swept down, and a tear fell from the corner of one eye—a blood-red tear. Her words sent a jolt of icy shock through me. But then she was gone, and so was I.

A pins-and-needles sensation was the first thing I became aware of. It started in my feet and then crawled up my calves to spread over the rest of my body. Heat followed. A fever swept through me, drying my already parched throat. Thirsty. I was so thirsty. I tried to open my mouth, but my lips felt sealed together.

My toes curled, and I didn’t like the feeling at first. It caused the rest of my flesh to become aware of the blanket lying on me and the mattress under me. My skin felt too sensitive, the material too scratchy.

I was so thirsty.

My fingers twitched against my bare stomach. The skin felt jagged, uneven. I concentrated on my mouth, willing my lips to part. If I could open them, I could ask for…for water. No. I didn’t want water. I wanted something else.

I wasn’t thirsty. I was…hungry. Starving. I forced my lips to part, and a shallow breath worked its way in. There were scents. Fresh pine. Something wild. My skin started to tingle and grow tight, becoming even more sensitized. My ears vibrated with sound. A whisper of a breeze. A fan churning lazily. The sound was pleasant, but I was hollow, an empty void.

I was so hungry.

I was so hungry, I ached. The inside of my mouth throbbed, and everything inside me felt as if it were drying out, becoming shriveled and brittle. My muscles cramped as I struggled to open my eyes. They felt sewn shut, but I was hungry, and I needed to open my eyes. What felt like a lifetime passed before I managed to pry my lashes apart.

Everything was a hazy, fuzzy array of shadows and splotches of light. I blinked several times, half-afraid my eyes wouldn’t open again, but they did. My vision cleared. Soft light from a gas lamp flowed across gray walls and an old, worn chair—

A chair that wasn’t empty.

A male was slumped in it, his skin a beige-brown, his dark hair cropped close to the skull. He rubbed at his eyes, and a strange feeling took root in my chest, a sensation I tried to grasp. But whatever it was kept slipping through my fingers. I was too starved to concentrate. I needed…

The male sighed and my muscles tensed. My legs curled up, and the ache in the pit of my stomach and my chest grew and grew. Throat constricting, my heart started to thud heavily against my ribs as the hunger seized me. I wasn’t aware of moving, of sitting up, until hair fell over my shoulders, causing my skin to pinch. The man lowered his hand.