She's the reason the heart of my family had been torn apart. Because that night, I'd unwittingly chosen her. Now, years later, she's my prey.
[Season 1 'Of Crows and Thorns']
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NELLE:- Cursed by a terrifying dark power, I'm a secret hidden in plai...
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Pain...so much pain I thought I'd not survive.
I lay crumpled and broken like a dead leaf crushed underfoot.
My mother cried my name over and over—a shrill, terrified sound. I felt her trembling hands sweeping across my forehead, cupping my bloodied and swollen face before checking the useless arms that lay awkwardly by my sides. I knew her grassy-green eyes would be shimmering and her cheeks streaked with silver tears.
But all I saw was her.
Beautiful...
Deadly...
Staring down at me with dispassionate golden eyes. As she stepped over my broken legs, the waves of her red hair swayed over shoulders so snowy-pale that it seemed they'd never tasted sunlight.
The Horned God crouched before my mother, capturing her chin between thumb and forefinger, and angled my mother's face toward hers. "Tabitha Crowther...we've been looking for someone like you for a very long time..."
Panic overwhelmed me...
I knew in this dream and in the waking world I'd be clammy with sweat, screaming for my mother. Screaming at the Horned God—Don't you touch her. Don't you fucking touch her!
And I fell deeper and deeper into the nightmare that would greedily feed upon me the entire time I slept.
But...the dark dreamworld shifted and rippled and faded...as if someone caressed the darkness away...
And the dream of the Horned God faded into murkiness...
Peace blanketed me and I fell, fell, fell into blissful nothingness.
I drifted in that space for minutes, hours, an eternity.
Until—
I was jolted from sleep.
Something hard, like a boot, jabbed my gut.
On instinct, I crumpled in on myself, rolling away and tensing for another kick—
That never came.
Blinking blearily, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and winced, shying away from the dim promise of sunlight. A dawn chorus greeted me, as well as the busy hum of insects, and the gentle murmuring from small leaves rustled by a breeze.
What the?
Where am I?
Squinting, Caidan leaned over me, scrunching his nose. "You awake?"
"What do you think?" My voice was rough and scratchy from sleep.
It took a moment, as it always did, to readjust myself to waking, to tear myself from the dark dream of the Horned God who had come for my mother. Except, this time, she'd been soothed from my dreams. And for the first time in years, I didn't awake to the heaviness of guilt and failure pressing upon me, or finding the clothes I'd slept in were stuck to my body with cold sweat and my limbs were shaking.
