A few hours ago.

Viola had woken up not feeling any better than she did the night before, the sadness and regret were still lodged in her chest along with a very bad hangover headache that felt like her skull was about to split clean in two. She found herself tucked inside Sebastian’s embrace as she attempted to move, but stopped herself so she wouldn’t wake him with a sudden movement.

She stared at his handsome sleeping face, where every sharp feature had softened in sleep, giving him a boyish and almost innocent look that she had never seen on him while he was awake. She recalled how he had stayed with her all through yesterday, every moment of it, and a lump rose quietly to her throat.

She stared at him for a while longer than she intended to before she slowly and carefully began to move away from his hold, easing herself out of his arms one inch at a time. She sat at the edge of the bed for a moment, her feet on the cold floor, letting the quiet of the room settle around her, and then she let out a long sigh and got up.

She needed time alone to think about her life from here on, because going back to Silver no longer felt like an option she could stomach. She didn’t want to live a life of luxury among werewolves who didn’t want her there anyway, inside a marriage that was bound to end terribly for her.

She needed to think and search for ways to find out what happened to her sister while she had been enjoying life. So she got up, looked at Sebastian one last time where he slept, and quietly made her way out of the hotel.

This part of Nightshade was unfamiliar to her but she walked around to the back of the small hotel and into the forest side, the morning dew still damp beneath her feet. The sky was barely bright, sitting somewhere between night and proper morning.

As she walked with no particular destination in mind, Viola found some peace in the sound of the birdsong and the cool scent of earth around her.

She even bent down at one point and plucked a honeysuckle from the side bushes and brought it up to her nose. This used to be her sister’s favorite flower.

The thought of her sister sent a sharp pain straight into her chest and she felt the familiar burn rising at the back of her eyes. She wiped it away quickly before the tears could fall and looked up at the muted morning sky, swallowing with difficulty.

"Where are you, Ivy? What have they done to you?" She whispered to no one in particular, but never in a million years did she expect a reply from anyone until she had it and her soul almost jump out of her body when it came.

"Come forward if you want to know, little girl." Said a voice that didn’t seem to come from any particular direction and yet was unmistakably there, and Viola jerked backwards in shock. Had someone just spoken to her?!

"Who are you?" She demanded, stepping back from where she had been standing and looking around with wide disbelieving eyes.

The voice laughed softly. "Curious, are we? Don’t worry. Follow my lead and I will show you who I am and where your sister is."

Viola pinched herself to check if she was dreaming but the sting was real and sharp on her skin that she grimaced In pain. She was very much awake and very much hearing a voice coming from nowhere. How did that make any sense? Even as the thought ran through her head and something deep inside her screamed danger, her legs began moving in the direction the voice seemed to be pulling from.

"How do you know my sister? What have you done to her?" Viola demanded.

"No questions. Just walk, little girl."

Viola stopped walking. No matter how consumed she was by her pain and regret, something about this voice sat deeply wrong with her, and the fact that she was hearing it at all made the hairs on the back of her neck rise. She looked around carefully, scanning the trees for any sign of someone hiding among them trying to trick her, but apart from the swaying branches she was completely alone.

She belatedly realized that even the lovely bird songs had stopped. Everything had become unsettlingly silent, like the silence before a storm. The only noise was her heartbeat pounding in her ears and her growing unease, as she sensed she was prey to this unseen being. Alarm bells were already ringing loudly in her mind.

Before she could decide to follow her instinct and run, she saw something moving toward her from ahead. Her eyes went wide, and her heart lurched.

Water. Moving water, completely separate from any river or stream, forming itself into something long and fluid and entirely impossible as it moved across the ground toward her. The sight of it was so unbelievable that she stood frozen in pure shock, and by the time her mind caught up and told her legs to run it was already too late. The water wrapped itself around her body and locked her arms against her sides, holding her completely trapped.

"Ha, ha, ha. I have you now, girl. Come to me." Said the voice, and before Viola could even process the idea of fighting against something made entirely of water, she felt her feet leave the ground and she was pulled forward through the air.

In no time at all she found herself at the edge of a cliff with a vast river running far below. Viola’s eyes locked onto her worst nightmare and her insides dropped completely.

"No, no, no, not open water! Let go of me!" She struggled and twisted against the water’s hold but nothing she did loosened it by even a fraction.

How could water hold a person imprisoned like this? What was this thing?

"Come on now, jump in!" The voice said cheerfully, but Viola shook her head hard. She would have to be completely out of her mind to go into that river when she didn’t even know how to swim.

As she fought and struggled she heard her name being called and she turned to find her husband standing at the tree line, and the wave of relief that hit her was so intense she almost cried. But the pull of the water was already too strong and she couldn’t get more than two words out before it took her.

"Help me!"

And then she was falling.

The water hit her like a solid wall slamming into her face and body all at once. Terror unlike anything she had ever felt gripped her chest and squeezed. She couldn’t move her limbs properly as she was dragged downward with a speed and force that left no room to fight back.

She looked down and saw nothing but deep darkness pulling at her from below and her lungs began to burn immediately as she struggled desperately for breath. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

The air was leaving her faster than she could hold onto it, and the dread of what was waiting for her in that darkness below was almost worse than the drowning itself. The feeling she had lived through so many times in her nightmares was happening to her in real time, pulling her down exactly as it always had in her sleep.

She was drowning faster than should have been possible, like something was actively pulling her under rather than just the current, and her body began to shut down in response. She opened her mouth in a desperate attempt to breathe and water flooded into her lungs instead.

She was going to die. That was the last clear thought she had before something grabbed her hand with a fierce and unyielding grip and yanked her upward with a force that matched everything pulling her down.

When she thought she couldn’t hold on a single second longer, her head broke through the surface and she choked and coughed violently, clutching onto her rescuer with every bit of strength she had left in her body.

She didn’t know exactly when she was pulled fully out of the water, but when her burning eyes cleared enough to focus she found her husband’s drenched and rage filled face directly in front of her as she gasped and coughed and tried desperately to clear her lungs.

"What the hell were you thinking?!" Sebastian rebuked, his voice raw and shaking underneath the anger, certain she had thrown herself into that river without knowing how to swim. He hadn’t seen anything drag her there. "You scared the fucking hell out of me!"

Even as he raged and cursed he was on his knees behind her, one large hand patting firmly at her back as she coughed and tried to speak at the same time.

"So-something...pulled me in...I didn’t fall by myself..." She managed to get out between ragged, broken breaths.