Page 106 of The Serpent's Sin
All right was a matter of opinion. He hurt everywhere. His whole body ached. It was a familiar pain—he had experienced it many times in his life as a child. But that didn’t make it any less horrible. Even nearly starving to death didn’t hurt quite like he did at the moment. Feeling his stomach gurgle, he struggled to roll onto his side. She helped him before he retched out the watery contents of his stomach one more time.
The noise he made afterward was hardly dignified. He didn’t particularly care.
She stroked his hair. “I know…trust me, I know.” She’d thrown up all that blood that night. She did have recent experience. “Here. Let’s sit you up a bit. Maybe that will help.”
Carefully, she helped get him up vertical. It did help ease his breathing, even if it did nothing to help his swirling head for a few moments. He clung to her until the world settled its reeling.
Once everything seemed calmer, he took a slow, deep breath, testing his lungs. Good. He didn’t immediately vomit up more water. Or cough. A second breath, and his head felt a little clearer.
Blinking, he finally tried to focus on where he was.
And realized the bottom of the ocean might have been safer.
“Nadi…”
They were sitting on the edge of a lake. But they weren’t outdoors—not precisely. They wereunderground.A great cavern stretched around them in all directions, soaring overhead some hundred or two hundred feet. The rock walls shone in shades of blue and green. Every surface was covered in plants and trees, and the space seemed alive with the movement ofanimals.Even in the air of the great chamber, creatures with wings and feathers flitted from place to place.
The silver coffin was dragged half ashore, the chains sliced off. Nadi sat beside it, her long fish tail draped in the water, a set of bolt cutters in her hand.
Everything in the enormous cavern was illuminated by the glow of gigantic vines. Some of the vines were as thick as trains. And all of them glowed an eerie shade of purple that seemed to set off the world around them in every other color imaginable.
Nadi shifted her tail into legs and stood. She held out a hand to him to help him up. With a smirk, she confirmed his worst fear.
“Welcome to the Wild, Raziel Nostrom.”
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