A Curse of Twisted Dreams

9.1 || Unraveling Dreams

A loud creak cut through her dreamless sleep. Her stomach churned uncomfortably, and her head throbbed at the base. She ran her too-thick tongue around her dry mouth.

Once, when she was a child, she and Odella had sneaked a couple mugs of ale to find out what all the adults fussed about. She'd awoken the next day feeling similar to how she did now, but it hadn't made her bed feel so hard. Had she fallen on the floor?

The room almost felt like it swayed beneath her, and she groaned as it worsened the unease in her stomach.

"Odella?"

A familiar voice, quiet as if uncertain it wanted to rouse her. But it did, plunging into the murky water where her consciousness floated and pulling her upward. The closer to the surface she drew, the clearer her thoughts became.

Callum was the speaker. She'd last seen him unconscious on the sandy ground while a man forced strange herbs into her mouth. A strange man with animal-like ears and slit-pupil eyes. A man part of a group of attackers who had murdered Sanford and kidnapped both her and Callum.

She bolted upright, a soundless scream clogging her lungs, but it came out as a groan as the world swam. Slowly, everything righted itself, and her surroundings came into focus.

She was in a rectangular room made entirely of wood. Wooden floorboards, wooden walls, wooden staircase leading up to a wooden doorway. Light stones glowed from their holders in the walls, illuminating the room and making her dire situation very clear. An open hallway led from the staircase to the opposite wall, but the rest of the room was divided into four cells. Metal bars trapped whoever may inhabit their clutches from all sides, allowing full view of everything around them, but no hopes of escape. Aside from a bedroll and a bucket, the two cells across from her were empty.

Air a prisoner in her throat, Ash turned to the cell beside her. As she suspected, it held her fellow kidnappee in it.

Callum's hands curled around the bars separating them. Dark bruises spotted his face and dried blood still darkened his robes from where the man's strange, clawed fingers had pierced him. The injuries didn't look new, though, so he likely hadn't suffered more since the beach.

He leaned his head forward, resting his forehead against the steel, and gave a small, sad smile. It did nothing to clear the worry clouding his eyes. "I'm relieved to see you awake," he finally said. He slid down to his knees, putting him and her closer to eye level. "I was worried when you took so long to wake up that they may have done worse than drug you. I kept telling myself I could see your chest moving, but..."

Her heart broke at the hitch in his voice. She didn't want to imagine what it had been like to watch her, desperately searching for any twitch, listening for any sound, waiting for her to awake, just needing anything to prove she was alright. The light stones provided decent light, but she had been put in the far corner of the cell, allowing the deepest shadows to cling to her. It was as if they'd meant to torment him by making it harder to tell.

She crawled forward, putting herself right on the other side of the bars. Some of the tension left Callum's body. "How long have I been unconscious?" she asked.

He continued to gaze down at her as he shrugged. "I woke up perhaps an hour ago. I don't know how long we were here before that."

Here. She had a horrible feeling she already knew the answer with the sway beneath her and their surroundings, but she had to ask. Closing her eyes and bracing herself, she asked, "Do you know where here is?"

A moment passed, but finally he sighed. "I believe we've been kidnapped by pirates. We're currently on their ship."

It didn't matter that she'd already had a feeling or that she'd tried to be prepared. The words slammed into her gut and forced a sob out of her.