Page 170 of The Stolen Throne
This isn’t Reven…this is the Reverie.
On a yelp, I leap back, but I hesitated too long, and she was too close.
The false Reven’s fingers wrap around my wrist, and his expression changes to raw poison as he clamps down so hard on me, I cry out. I don’t have time to struggle before he jumps and wrenches me over the edge. My mind can’t keep up, oddly latching on to the way the cliff face blurs in the moonlight as I plummet past it.
Together, we fall into the rapids spinning into the Whirlpool.
I hit the icy water hard, knocking the breath I’m trying to hold from my body. Instantly, a current drags me under and keeps dragging me deeper. Or maybe upward? In this black, tumbling world, I’m losing which way is up.
A strong hand catches me by the arm and drags at me until my head breaks through the surface. I try to gasp in air only to swallow a gut full of a wave, sending me into fits of coughing. Then I swim or try to. But which way? My stinging, saltwater-filled eyes have gone blurry, and it’s dark. I could be swimming to the center for all I know. Plus my body is already starting to go numb from the cold.
Where’s Bene? I wave to the skies, hoping like hells he can see me.
Then out of nowhere, the Reverie wraps herself around me—arms and legs pinning me still.
“What are you doing?” I shout. She’s doomed us both. My head goes underwater on a gurgle, and I come up spluttering, but still he doesn’t let go.
She’s letting our bodies go with the current. We are tossed and thrown, dragged under to bob back to the top. Screams want to crawl out of my throat, but I’m fighting to breathe too much to let them. The rush of sound all around me rises to a cacophony, and we crest a wave, giving me my first glimpse of the center.
It’s right there.
Which is when panic slices through everything and hijacks my entire system. Kicking, scratching, biting, I fight like the harpies of the hells are after me. And all the while, the eye of the Whirlpool loops closer and closer.
And my attacker never lets go.
“No!” I scream as we tumble over that spinning edge.
Cain must still be holding it wide with his power because we slide down and down and down a wall of water, in a swirl that makes me nauseous.
We land with such force that it’s all I can do to lay there stunned and not pass out.
Get up.
I’m trying to suck in air, to control my breathing, which is wheezing harshly in and out. Did I snap my neck?
Get up.
She’s going to kill me as I lie here. I know it. I know it, but I can’t make my body work.
Damn it, Meren. Get up and fight.
Sensation comes back to my limbs in a stinging blitz, but I finally manage to struggle to my feet to face the Reverie, who still looks like Reven.
“What do you want?” I yell, but the pounding of water all around us steals the sound from my lips before it reaches even my own ears.
Even so, she offers me a smile that turns my still-rolling stomach sour. Then she bends over and digs a single finger through the sand. Something gold glitters at me, and then the Reverie version of Reven straightens. Dangling from her finger, winking at me as though we’re old friends, are two lightning glass amulets like mine and Trysolde’s and Eidolon’s. One is made of deep green glass, the other a blood red.
The Goddesses Tropikis and Mariana.
The Reverie cocks her head, taunting me, and realization strikes like an arrow to the heart. We gave this Devourer exactly what she wanted. A way to get down here and get the amulets without dying.
Could she hear them? Hear the goddesses, one of them her lover, who were so close and yet unattainable? With another sly smile, she looks up as though she’s expecting something.
Because, like me, she needs a way out. But how?
Almost as though she summoned him to her, Cain drops between us with an oomph and a groan. He’s dry, all except the bottoms of his pants. Like he rode the water down. It takes him a stunned moment before he pushes to all fours, then to his feet.
I grab his arm. “Get us out of here!”
