The blind man watched her.
Aesther tried to grasp something, anything, as severe pain throbbed in her head. The scar on her palm burned, and she could not see anything but darkness.
Cold waters rushed in and suffocated her every breath.
The silhouette of a massive dragon, the echo of that mortifying fear that hummed and exploded inside her. She could not move, fragments of that frightful moment crushed her mind.
The cold.
The terror.
And the way excruciating pain exploded in her body when she used the seal, as its symbols and runes gleamed a bright golden and as her blood spread across the water like an unfurling crimson flower.
"What the hell?"
"She was spying on us!"
"Kill her."
Aesther barely heard those words as someone roughly made her sit on her knees and roughly pulled back the hood. There was a sudden silence. She did not hear what was spoken next but things were obvious.
