he raised his hands, throwing back the lid of the coffin.
Breathing heavily, he vaulted over the side. It hadn't been a nightmare, after all.
Taking a deep, calming breath, he walked to the door and pounded on it with his fist.
"Hello? Is anyone out there?"
Again and again, he pounded on the door, but there was no response.
He glanced at the windows and saw that it was dark out. He had slept through the day.
And he was hungry, hungry in a way he had never been before. A terrible, searing pain lanced through his whole body. His stomach clenched. He was hungry, so hungry. He felt as if he hadn't eaten in weeks instead of hours.
He prowled the room, his hands roaming over the thick stone, seeking a hidden passage that would lead him out, but there was nothing. Only cold stone walls, and windows that were beyond his reach.
And the hunger, growing stronger, clawing at his belly, until he thought he would go mad from the pain.
He sat on the throne, his legs drawn up to his chest, shivering convulsively.
He was going to die, after all, he thought, not at the hands of the goddess, but of pain and starvation.
Driven by the agony that knifed through his body, he staggered back and forth, his arms wrapped around his body. It was then that he saw it, an iron handle recessed in one of the stones. Thinking it might be a way out, he took hold of the iron ring, lifting the square of stone from the floor.
He stared into the hole, too stunned to move, paralyzed by the sight that met his gaze. For there, piled one upon the other like pieces of firewood, were the skeletons of the men who had been sacrificed to the goddess, their decaying bones gleaming whitely in the darkness.
He swallowed the nausea that rose in his throat as he realized that the pile of bones lying on the top of the grotesque mound was all that was left of his father.
Sickened, he turned away, the horror of what he'd seen smothered by the ever-increasing pain that clawed at his vitals, drugging his senses, making coherent thought all but impossible.
With the coming of dawn, he went to the door again, pounding on the thick wood with all his might, screaming for help, but to no avail. And at last, the burning rays of the dawn drove him to seek the protective darkness of the coffin once more.
He was going mad, he thought as he closed the lid. Surely he had to be mad to think the sun would burn his flesh. Certainly only a madman would crawl into a coffin to hide from the dawn.
And then he felt it again, the creeping lethargy that stole over him. It wasn't the enervation of sleep, he thought as the darkness dragged him down, but the emptiness of death.
He woke at the setting of the sun, the hunger clawing at him. He climbed out of the coffin, then went to sit on the throne of the goddess. He was astonished at the clarity of his vision. Fighting the hunger that raged through him, he stared at the moonlight reflected on the cold stone floor, mesmerized by the beauty of the pale moonbeam, at the rainbow of colors contained in a single ray of light.
He stared up at the windows, at the stars visible through the thick panes of dark glass.
And the hunger gnawed at him.
A quarter of a century, he thought. It would be a quarter of a century before the priests brought the next sacrifice.
A cry was torn from his throat as he imagined the priests bringing his son to this place. His son.
Rage rose up within him, stronger than the hunger.
He bolted to his feet and found himself standing at the door even before he realized that was where he wanted to go. How had he moved so fast, so silently?
Katlaina. He had to see Katlaina.
But how?
He remembered watching Shaylyn dissolve into a mist. Did he also have the power to change his shape?
"Katlaina." Murmuring her name, he closed his eyes and tried to imagine his body transforming into mist.
He felt an odd weightlessness, and when he opened his eyes, his body was gone. Frightened, yet exhilarated, he willed himself to slip under the door. A moment later, he was outside.
He willed himself to materialize in his own form, then knew a moment of fear when he thought he might fail, followed by a surge of relief