The rest of the day and the hours into the early evening had been almost…normal. Bryony had demanded constant attention from both her parents, so they alternated reading her stories, playing games, and including her in their daily chores. They ate supper together, laughing at Bryony’s story about a frog she’d caught after a mad chase along the banks of the pond located just outside the village.

Cora had been tucking Bryony in and singing her a lullaby when Cainan had stepped outside to dispose of the water they’d used for washing their dinner dishes. The evening had a strange lightness to it, the sun seeming to hesitate on the horizon, as though undecided whether it would slip beneath for its nightly slumber. He watched it for a long moment before shrugging and heading back inside. The moment he reentered the warmth of their cozy little home he knew something was wrong.

It was too quiet, for one. And there was a faint breeze wafting through the room, the curtains Cora had spent so much time sewing and installing blowing inward. The window was open. It had definitely not been open before.

Their home wasn’t large, so it took less than a minute for Cainan to search it. He found Bryony fast asleep in her bed, while their own was empty and undisturbed, the covers neatly pulled all the way up to the pillows, just as they’d left it that morning.

By the time he’d returned to the main living space, Cainan had come to only one conclusion: Cora was gone.

“No,” he breathed, remembering snippets of the manic words she’d spouted earlier, words he’d dismissed as the ramblings of a woman teetering on the edge between sanity and madness. A way through…yes…Break the cycle…protect my daughter…it must happen tonight, when the sun refuses to sleep…

He frowned, mind clamping down on that last phrase. “When the sun refuses to sleep,” he murmured to himself. He moved to the open window and peered out. The sun still hadn’t set, hovering on the horizon much later than normal. It should be dark by now. In fact, was it his imagination or had the sun actually moved higher and grown brighter since he last gazed upon it?

“What is happening?” he said to himself. All this time, he’d assumed Cora was slowly going mad, just as Sinna had done, but now…what if he’d been wrong? What if there was more to it all? It wasn’t like his wife could control the movement of the sun, but then how did she know it wouldn’t set?

Rather than immediately going after her, he finally sat at the table and inspected the book he’d ignored earlier. For some reason, just reading its title gave him chills. The Origins of the Blood Tide, by Luxor Glin.

He cracked it open and began to read.