When she woke next it was to darkness and rain, both of which were trying to swallow her whole. The earth had grown muddy beneath her, and the torrent was so strong, she felt like she was drowning on land. Every time she tried to breathe, she was inundated with water instead; she turned her head to the side, gasping, but that only worked for a little while as a puddle began to form, rising higher and higher until her entire body was nearly underwater, and she had to strain her neck up to breathe.

Did he mean to kill her? If that was his aim, she wished he would do it and be done. What kind of person left someone tied up like this, completely vulnerable, and then disappeared for days at a time?

A madman, that was who. She had heard the rumors the same as everyone else. But calling him insane seemed like a way to excuse his cruelty and all the fear and destruction he had wrought. Yet, nor had she been able to think of him completely as the evil villain. In truth, she’d tried to think of him as little as possible before all of this. Because that meant she had to question her own similarities to him. Was madness the inevitable result of someone who spoke to the spirits more than they spoke to the living? If so, what did that mean for her?

The pound of rain against her body and face kept her alert, and had her blood pumping fast in her veins. It was the most awake and alive she had felt in days, so she directed all that desperation at something worthwhile.

She thought back to the soul who had helped her in the palace, the one who had been bold and strong and honorable. He had not given her much. She knew not who he had been in his life, nor why his spirit had not moved on. But she remembered his fierceness, and she needed that now. So she focused on those memories, on every detail she could remember about the spirit’s presence, and then she called to him, only him.

Aurora called to her soldier soul again and again throughout the night, every time the cold wracked her body, or the fear climbed as high as the water that washed around her, but she heard no answer.

When the rain died down, she slept in fits and starts, but none of it provided any real rest. It was merely her body giving out when it reached the point where not even her misery could keep her awake.