Free The Hierophant (Book 1 in The Arcana Series) by Madeline Claire Franklin Page B

sensation of yearning—this eternal moment just before catharsis.
    A shiver runs through me, and I think: What the hell is happening to me?
    I look down at the bottle in my hand, then back, over my shoulder, at the silhouettes moving around the bonfire. Did any of them ever feel this way? Did they ever feel like the very marrow in their bones was trembling with the need to escape?
    Some of the kids by the fire break away, letting the firelight cast farther out towards the creek. In the faint reach of its illumination, I see there is one silhouette standing apart from the crowd, where the water meets the mud. Its star-bright eyes twinkle at me over a row of gleaming white teeth.
    My stomach tightens, realizing that I’ve ventured outside of the circle Kyla and I cast the other night.
    “Go away,” I whisper, and I’m surprised by the weakness of my own voice—but when I blink, the shadow has disappeared. I wait, turning left and right, for it to reappear like it did last night. But there’s nothing. There’s only me, the many things that keep me separate from that crowd around the fire, and more questions than I will ever have answers for.
    And, of course, there is the urgency inside of me, the hunger I can never sate.
    Heart still pounding and body still thrumming, I stare into the dark mouth of the wine bottle and then lift it to my lips. I drink long and deep, until the last drop is gone and my belly sloshes full of wine. It’s sweet and warm, and quick to diffuse its comfort through my bloodstream. It does dull the pain of whatever madness has infused my veins, but it does not for a moment effectively quell the energy burning inside of me.
    When all else fails, I close my eyes, and try hard not to feel. But it doesn’t work.
    It never works.
    Before I know what I’m doing, I cry out in frustration and smash the wine bottle against the trunk of the tree, a surge of anger burning through me. The bottle splits and shatters—not an easy break at the half point, like in the movies—and leaves only half the neck in my hand. The crunch and explosion of glass is satisfying. I hold up the remaining shard of the bottle to the moon and watch the silvery light play across the jagged edges. I can imagine how it would feel slicing across my skin. Worse, I can imagine how it would feel slicing across someone else’s.
    My hand stings. I drop the glass, see blood in my palm where the bottle must have cut me when it split open. It isn’t a lot, at first, but I poke the wound and my blood wells up, pools together, begins to trickle down to my forearm in a thin and steady stream. My heart flutters faster and my stomach churns, because for whatever twisted reason the burn of my own sliced flesh makes me feel giddy.
    Shaken, I sink to the ground, gazing at the dark line of blood trickling across my skin, suddenly dizzy with the motion of the creek beyond my hand. It takes a moment for me to register the silver form suspended just below the surface of the water, looking up at me from the edge of the creek. My hand drops, and I can’t help but stare.
    She’s beautiful, whatever she is. Her face shines up from the water, catching the moonlight on her scales and reflecting it back to the sky. Long white lashes rim huge black eyes, round and endless in their depth. I can see the curve of her neck, the angle of her shoulders, the flow of her arms as she undulates the fin of her lower body to keep herself afloat.
    She begins to rise.
    Her head breaks the surface of the water, hairless and shimmering, and then her shoulders, her arms, her bare chest and the points of her ribs, rising, rising, until she is towering over me, impossibly—unnaturally—huge and real.
    Her lips pull back in a cruel smile, revealing several rows of small, sharp teeth. When she blinks, I can see myself inside her eyes, frail and small and swallowed by their dark depths. But a light begins to radiate from within them, brighter and brighter, until I’m nothing