The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and..

There was a warm, damp touch to my brow, my cheek. It
was soft. A cloth. It swept over my lips and under them,
along the side of my throat and between my breasts. It
disappeared, and then there was sound. A trickling of water,
and then the cloth returned, gliding over my bare arms and
between my fingers. The touch felt nice. It lulled me, letting
me slip back into the heavy sleep and fall once more.
I was that child again, grasping at my mother’s
bloodied arm. They had gotten inside, just like the man had
warned. The screams. There were so many screams, and
the shrieks of those things outside the window, scratching
and clawing at it.
“You’ve got to let go, baby. You need to hide, Poppy—”
Momma stilled and then wrenched her arm free.
Momma reached into the kid leather boots I liked to
shuffle around in, pretending that I was older and bigger.
She pulled something out, something black as night and
slender and sharp. She moved so fast—faster than I’d ever
seen her move before, spinning around as she rose, the
black spike in her hand.
“How could you do this?” Momma demanded as I
scooted to the edge of the cupboard.
And then I was above the colors, in the nothingness
once again, but I wasn’t alone.
A woman was there, her hair long and floating around
her, the color so pale it was like spun moonlight. Her
features were familiar. I’d seen her before in my mind while
in the Temple. But now I thought she looked a bit like me.
There were freckles across the bridge of her nose and on
her cheeks. Her eyes were the color of dew-kissed grass,
but behind the pupils, there was a light. A silvery-white glow
that seeped out, fracturing the vibrant green.
Her lips moved, and she spoke. Her lashes swept down,
and a tear fell from the corner of one eye—a blood-red tear.
Her words sent a jolt of icy shock through me. But then she
was gone, and so was I.