The images were still there.
I didn’t know if they were true or just a fragment of my imagination—some cruel trick of my mind or something far more ancient and terrifying.
Or a memory? I couldn’t shake them off my mind, it just stuck like glue.
The little girl’s voice. Her blood-stained dress. Her red eyes.
I hugged myself tightly, my arms wrapped around my waist as though that could hold me together.
Kylan’s voice came softly from beside me. “Looking at you, I remember what Mom used to say?”
I looked up at him, my lips parting, but no words came out.
He crouched down to my level, his blue eyes softer than I’d seen them in a while. “She said… you can see things in the water because the water remembers. It holds onto everything. Emotions. Memories. Blood. Magic.”
I hummed. True. Kai said that just now.
His hand hovered over mine before he pulled it back. “And you… Briar, you’re connected to it. To the water. That’s why it’s easier for you to see.”
I stared at the moonlit stream, my
