Page 4 of Silver Lining (The Diamond Trilogy 3)
“Where am I?” Her thumb traces a lazy circle on the back of my hand.
“You’re in hell, sweetheart. Welcome back.”
2
Holly
Some people wish they were mermaids. Some wish they weren’t. But it’s not the being that’s the problem. It’s the becoming that kills you. The transition, when flesh tears apart and reforms, when electricity runs through the invisible seams in your body. White-hot pain scorches me, and I twist my body in the fire. It might only last seconds or it might be an eternity in the roiling, beating, panting ache. The ache is relentless.
The pain becomes a constellation. Small pinpricks of hurt in the black sky of my body. Hanging there with sharp metal pins that dig in and hold tight.
They’re too far out of my reach to touch.
The stars turn to embers, sizzling at the dark fabric behind them. It’s too late to put them out, and then all of them light up at once in a roar of fire and flame. A dragon—it must be a dragon. It’s as reasonable as becoming a mermaid, and I can feel him there, his hulking presence taking up all the space in my mind.
I can’t get away. Can’t move my legs, can’t move my arms. You need muscles to sit up and mine won’t engage. Even my own body won’t save me from the danger. The threat is here. The threat is me. Somehow, I set this into motion, I thought this dragon into being, and now—
The dragon breathes again.
Fire consumes the stars and bleeds out into everything that’s left of me.
It’s a hot, obliterating pain, and sweat beads on my skin, on what remains of my skin. If I could open my mouth I would scream but the scream is burned away in a rush of wet heat. My body tries to get away, it tries so hard, but I’m too close to the dragon. I’d give anything for water. Cool water on my scales, on my legs, water to put it out, put it out.
I pray for the cool spray of the ocean. For rain.
Rain doesn’t come.
Instead, I sink down into fire. A strangled animal noise comes from somewhere above me, beyond me, and it sounds familiar. Like my voice. But it can’t be, because I don’t have a voice anymore. I don’t have anything but the pain.
The pain is everything. I’m nothing, nothing, nothing.
Nothing for a long time. Long enough that I hear a jagged drumbeat. The dragon’s heart?
My heart.
It takes an eternity to think of my heart. My heart, which beats. My lungs, which draw air into my body. A new source of pain locates itself in my jaw. Well, that’s what you get for gritting your teeth. In the still-dark of my mind I peek out the corner of my eye for signs of the dragon. No new flames light the space, only the hazy-red glow of the burned places.
The red gets brighter, and brighter, and brighter until finally I recognize the shade as light through my own eyelids. It adjusts itself off to the side of me.
Curiosity seeps in at the margins. A lamp to light someone’s way? Maybe. Maybe not.
I’m sure I’m not moving. I’m sure now that I’m not a mermaid, not in the water, not even upright. Lying down. Lying back. How I got here is a mystery. Is this how a mermaid feels after she’s made the change, the sand rough on her newly formed feet?
Fingers brush my chest, leaving trails of sparks in their wake.
The room resolves into a familiar place. I recognize the bars and the walls, and most of all, the man with his head bowed over me, green eyes shadowed. He’s tending to me. Working at something on my side. White gauze and sterile tape. Whatever he’s doing hurts and an echo of the pain reminds me not to grit my teeth so hard.
“We keep meeting this way.” His eyes flick up to my face, widening at my dry, raspy voice. Relief flashes there, but it’s as quick as lightning. “In dark basements. Behind bars.”
There’s a sound in my throat. A soft whimper of recognition.
“Starting to feel like home, isn’t it?” The corner of his mouth twists. “Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe you wish you’d wake up somewhere else. Sorry about this next part.”
What next part? Then he’s doing something to raw flesh, and I sob at the newly cutting pain.
“Shh,” he murmurs, sympathy thick in his voice. “I’ll be quick.”
I wish I could sink into the cot, but no matter how hard I press against it, it doesn’t open up and swallow me whole. Maybe that dragon was real. Maybe it’s breathing again, because sweat beads along my hairline and my eyes burn. A tear slips out along my teeth and now Elijah curses, his face dark with fury and guilt.
