POV: Nixie
Darkness didn't take me gently.
Like a riptide, it sucked me under with no warning, no breath, no fighting chance. One second, a massive shadow had been lunging toward me in the forest, golden eyes ablaze; the next, the world folded inward like everything I knew had been snapped shut.
Cold hit first.
A deep cold, scented with iron, that clung to my skin and sank into my bones. I gasped and pressed myself upright, hands scraping over rough stone. My fingers trembled as they searched, tracing grooves and ridges. A wall. A floor. A chamber.
Not the forest.
Not anywhere I recognized.
My heartbeat thudded loud and uneven, echoing within the darkness. My breathing quickened. I forced my shaking legs to move, to stand, to make sense of the shadowed space swallowing me whole.
Th
