Three Broken Kingdoms-Book 1 of the Lost Continent (Completed)

Chapter Three: Two Small Graves

Talia did not sleep. Her brother, Orion, might laugh about it, say that she crept out at night like a vampire instead, but she only ever slept when she could no longer stand up from exhaustion.

Once she had. Once in a time a lifetime ago, in a life a world away, she had slept each night and well into the morning. Once. She hated that word. It was right up there with if. Once she had had everything she wanted.  But she had run from her fears and she had lost it all.

It had been seven years since the attack. Layla had been too young to remember. Naomi-oh, how her name was still agony-had been five years old, and Elaine two years younger than her. 

And it might have been seven years but still Talia remembered everything in perfect, painful detail. Afterwards was all foggy and distorted, a haze of grief and shock. Staring out at the moon from her balcony, she suddenly realised she hadn't rested in days now. She would need to, and soon.

When she collapsed it felt like drowning, like the moon and her bed and the world of the waking was being torn away.

When she woke-or at least, when she thought she had woken- there was a face. A face more familiar than those of her daughters. She saw it every time she closed her eyes. She tried to say his name, but her words held no sound.

Those stormy grey eyes, with streaks of yellow, stared back at her. Talia watched him. The blue vein in his face that she could actually see, as though it was closer to the skin than the rest. That little flicker of a smile that he had every time he lied.

She tried to say his name again. He tilted his head at her in a way that she knew meant he had heard her. She lunged for him, but her hand did not move. It was her very self that lunged, her will that lunged, as suddenly she became realised that his face was a reflection in the water. That lunge sent ripples through the water and she saw the clear liquid turn red, the blood spreading through the water like ink.

It wasn't him that was bleeding. His face shifted, and then there was more and more blood, until the water was dark red cloud. This face was half Naomi's and half Elaine's, but both sides cried out in agony. The lips that were half Naomi's and half Elaine's called out to her, and she could not answer. There was now so much red in the water that she could no longer see them.

A hand reached up from the water and grabbed her, pulling her in. And she was glad to embrace it, to fall into blood-stained waters at last, even though she had sworn to avenge them, her daughters who's faces had merged.

When Talia woke, she was gasping for air. The same dream, because it was  always the same dream. Sometimes their faces were made of sand, or in the moon, or hewn from rock, but it was always the same. She always drowned, and they always bled. On better days she would fight it-struggle to the surface, gasping for air-but most of the time she embraced the death before it was snatched away.

Standing in the pale moonlight, Talia remembered.

Her story had begun with fear.

Julian Corinth had first come to meet with them after a skirmish with a powerful city-state had sent fear throughout Asriel. Another isle's new Lord was rumoured to be hungry for power. The new Lady was said to equally hungry-for blood. In a world still rebuilding eleven years after the most devastating war in its history, the merest whisper of war was dreaded. Julian Corinth was Lord of a small isle near the more power-hungry ruler's domain, so he had come to Talia's brother for aid.

This was all before Layla was born, the war with the valkyries having ended eleven years before. Their alliance had been secret as they prepared for the possible attack. And Talia had trusted Julian. They all had. He had been a friend through thick and thin, a companion.