Читать книгу Waterfell - Amalie Howard - Страница 7

PROLOGUE

Shivers race through my veins like gilded fireworks. The covers are twisted, matted like the hair on my head, and the room is filled with an eerie green glow. For a split second, it feels like I’m still asleep, half out of a leftover nightmare but not quite awake. My fingers are bent and curled like gnarled branches, and the sweat feels clammy against my skin.

The green light flickers, and I blink.

Get up.

Complying with the fierce voice in my head, I shrug off the blankets with a rough kick, and for a minute everything glows in a haze of gold, green and pink, as if the northern lights have just taken up residence in my room. I am no longer sleeping but wide-awake—I can feel myself breathing, hear the night’s sounds outside my window. But the lights are still there, beaming off the walls and every piece of furniture, as if I’m captured in some kind of glittery prism.

Panicked, I throw an arm toward my bedside lamp and freeze.

My hand is glowing.

I look down. My entire body is glowing, like the iridescent scales of some fantastic creature shimmering down my limbs in bands of colored light. All my cells tingle, hearing the call, responding to it just as my people had known I would. Too soon, I think. Too soon. I’d been promised four years. It had been only two.

My confusion spirals as the electricity builds and the room is nearly blindingly gold. Tiny pricks pepper along my spine and the sides of my neck, and I’m thrashing around in bed like a fish out of water. A huge rush of energy slams into me and the light turns into a white-hot dazzling force. Struggling to breathe, I hear the voice. My father’s voice.

Run, Nerissa, run. All is lost. Never return.