Silent Hall by NS Dolkart Read Free Book Online Page B

wrong?
    The water kept coming, kept bursting out of his mouth, and he felt himself slipping away into blackness. In his final, delirious moment, he saw Hunter on his boat, sailing away to safety. He died with Hunter’s name on his lips.
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    G alanea spent the hour after Criton’s departure trying to compose her thoughts and decide what she would say when her husband came home. But her mind was blank, and she knew it didn’t especially matter what she said – he wouldn’t be listening to her anyway. What would he do to her when he found out?
    She knew she should have left here with Criton years ago. If she had only been strong enough, she could have left this prison of a house, this prison of an island, and started over again. It would have been better for Criton. It probably would have been better for her.
    Tears came flooding into her eyes again. Letting Criton go meant admitting that she had been living all these years in a prison of her own creation, that she could have walked out the door any time she wanted to and never come back. Whatever her husband did to her, she thought she might deserve it. How many times had she let him beat their son, let him torture their beautiful boy with the golden scales? She could have protected him, but she hadn’t, and she had failed to act out of the worst kind of selfishness – the kind that made your life worse instead of better.
    She had stayed out of fear, prioritized that fear over her son’s safety and her own. There was no excuse for what her husband had done, but she had excused him in her mind because it was easier than admitting she could have done something about it.
    She could have changed her appearance again, to something completely different and new. She could have left years ago, walked right past him on the street with Criton swaddled tight, and he would never have known. But she had been too afraid of change, and too afraid of her own magic. And she had foolishly thought she deserved to suffer for what she was, and for escaping her family’s fate and surviving when the rest of her people had died.
    Her lungs filled with cold water so suddenly that she fell straight to the floor, coughing and convulsing. As she struggled to breathe, her body rebelled against years of control and went back to its hereditary deformities. Yet where was the fire that had always terrified her? The fire that had caused her so much pain and suffering when Criton was still in the house, and that she had thought for years would doom her? It was dead, extinguished. After years of wishing she could put it out, now she coughed up water and wished that it still burned inside her, anything rather than this terrible sloshing portal to the sea.
    Her claws scraped against the floor where she lay drowning, but her breath had been stolen by the water that poured from her mouth. In her final moments she thought back to the way her husband had held Criton’s head in that bucket, punishing him just for being himself and being sick.
    Was this her punishment?
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    N arky’s father had almost drowned once, as a boy. It had haunted his nightmares his entire life, that feeling of breathing thick heavy water instead of air. He had moved away from the sea, surrounded himself with pasture lands, and now here he was, drowning in the village square. But this was impossible, it was ridiculous! You’re dreaming again, his mind scolded him. Wake up.
    The flames of Karassa’s sacrifice died on the altar, while all about it the bodies of the villagers were strewn here and there, all gaping in horror at this impossible thing that was happening to them. Wake up! If you don’t wake up, you may die in real life!
    Why wouldn’t he wake? It usually didn’t last this long, not to the point where his bowels and bladder gave up, where his head began to cloud and he forgot who he was. It never lasted this long.
    Wake up! his mind screamed.

7
    Narky
    N arky was