What the Ravens Sing by Jacquelyn Benson

Author:Jacquelyn Benson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jacquelyn Benson
Published: 2023-04-01T18:26:08+00:00

FIFTEEN

The dark wood floor ends in a river. The water froths, spring high, brimming at the edges and moving fast. It is broad, too far to leap, and too fast to swim. The room continues on the far side of that barrier, where Robert Ash stands.

Her mentor wears an impeccably tailored charcoal suit, the tone darker than the silver of his hair and beard. His feet are bare.

Lily knows the room. It is the sanctuary of The Refuge, the place Ash retreated to for meditation—and it is not. The sanctuary was distinguished by a clever channel of water that ran through the center of the floor, spilling out into the garden to fuel the fountain that glittered quietly there in the warmer months of the year, not this torrent that rushes past her feet. Nor is it the garden that she sees outside the elegant floor-to-ceiling windows. In fact, they are not windows at all. Instead of clear panes of glass, open space looks out over a landscape of richly forested mountains framed by the curved roof lines of other temples.

Even in the throes of a dream, Lily knows it has been a long time since she has seen the man who changed her world—who broke her open and made her into something new, something she still isn’t sure she understands.

There are so many questions she needs to ask him, so much he left unanswered when he deserted her for death, but in the end, there is only one thing she can say.

“What do you want from me?” she blurts, the words carrying over the incessant hush of the water.

It appears I was mistaken.

Ash’s reply floats to her in a delicate breeze of thought. Across water that churns like a sea, he remains still.

Lily smells salt and mud. Hears the whisper of long grasses in the back of her mind, a sound from another place.

Or perhaps not so very far away.

“Why?” she demands. Her own voice is rough.

There is more to you.

Her head hurts. She knows these words. She has heard them before. She recalls a day of fire, the acrid stench of burning paint.

It has been hiding inside of you, waiting for the right stimulus to emerge.

“No,” Lily protests, hands to her temples. The roar of the water has grown louder. It rushes at her ears. “It’s already happened. You’re talking about the past.”

More words, breathless, humming, relentless.

Call it fate. The Parliament of Stars.

A chase of fear, cold across her skin despite the temperate air of the room. Outside the window, over the impossible mountains, the sky is purple with twilight. It will only ever be twilight here.

“What about it?” Lily cries in response. The pain in her head is growing greater.

Fear the responsibility it entails.

They are nothing but echoes, fragments of history—pieces of her life fallen out of time. Islands in the current of Tottenham Court Road. The whispering quiet of the attic of The Refuge.

The bridge where it all fell apart.

Your charisma has only ever answered to one thing.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.