My mother used to say lightning signaled the dead.

She told me, in that lilting, raspy voice of hers that each strike was a message to the corpses and roaming spirits stumbling amongst living flesh and blood.

Then again, I had learned to take every thing my mother told me with a grain of salt. She was what most people would call “demented.”

Disturbed.

Delusional.

Crazy.

But watching the lightning rage and slash across the sky made me think she could be right. That the cracking light streaking across black was sending some sort of coded message. 

God speaking to the damned and the dead.

Because the girl standing before me, clothed in nothing but a silk dressing gown and her own wine-red blood, certainly looked like a ghoul come to drag me to hell with her.

She had just appeared. Like a specter from the cutting rain and winding mist that swept across my tattered black skirts. I had been forced to skid to a sudden stop from my breakneck speed, the slick sand making me nearly slip and fall into a heap at her feet.

And now…

I didn’t know what to do.

My breath, storming out of my lungs from running across the beach, became shallow and uncertain as I stared at her pale face.

She was like a creature come to life from my mother’s broken mind: Tall and pale, with pale eyes clouded over with something I couldn’t name, her dark, rain drenched hair hanging in rivulets of night down her back.

And the blood…

I felt sick staring at the streaks of red marking her moonlit flesh.

I took a step back, my eyes darting down to her feet which were also bloodied and covered in sand. My mind screamed at me to run, but she was standing in the way, her gaze turned toward the thrashing sea off to our right. 

Twelve minutes.

That was all I had left to get there.

Though my body told me not to, I took a hesitant step toward the girl, trying not to stare at her drenched and bloodied nightgown clinging to her rounded curves.

“M-Miss?”

Her head suddenly snapped in my direction just as another slash of lightning flared across the sky, striking the sea.

My body recoiled from her instantly as her attention settled wholly on me. So intense I felt as though her fingers were tracing every inch of me.

This specter tilted her head, feet inching forward in the sand, “They’re all around you.” She hissed, studying the empty space around me.

My whole body, drenched with sweat and rain, went cold. All breath in my lungs turned to ice.

She sounded like my mother.

“I-I don’t know what you mean,” I said, voice raised to be heard over the crashing wind and rain. “D-Do you need some help?”

She pursed her pale lips and wrapped her arms around herself, eyelashes fluttering, “I guess we all got lost.”

The asylum, I realized, she must have come from the asylum. But how had she gotten all the way down to the beach without getting caught by the plethora of guards lining that wicked place?

My twelve minutes, so precious and short, were running out.

She looked harmless, though she was bloodied and confused, I could pass her. Leave her for the next person to stumble across.

But…

I knew what it was like to be lost.

With tentative and cold fingers, I carefully pulled the red cloak wrapped around my body off of my shoulders and stepped towards the girl. She lowered her head, staring at me through her dark hair as I carefully draped the cloak over her shoulders.

“You should come with me,” I told her, sliding my fingers down from the cloak and reaching for her wrists.

I would take her with me. Williams wouldn’t mind, and Maggie could help her. Of course, we would have to take her back to the asylum, but what was I supposed to do until𑁋?

The sudden pounding coming from behind me cut my thoughts off. The girl, shaking, suddenly went rigid, her wide eyes snapping up to stare at something behind me.

The ground shook, the lightning and thunder pausing momentarily to highlight the pound of horse hooves against the beach.

The girl suddenly shoved me aside and took off towards the sea, all the while screaming and screaming.

Asylum guards.

They must be.

I quickly shoved myself to my feet, my golden hair, skin, and clothes now gritty with sand. She was running for the sea.

In a lightning storm.

I let out a shout and raced towards her, arms stretched in front of me to stop her. All I could see was my mother, her eyes clear and focused.

Pitching herself off a cliff as I watched.

“Stop! STOP!” I screamed, ready to fling myself forward to keep her from losing herself to the sea.

But something large and black suddenly reared out of the darkness, knocking me to the ground again. I let out a scream, something sharp slicing against my collarbone as I fell onto my back.

A sword.

Asylum guards only carried bludgeons.

I rolled onto my side from my back, peering through rain and mist to see the girl shrieking and fighting against a man covered in black save for the white band tied around his bicep.

I braced my hands, fingers curling against sand, ready to do something, anything, but suddenly there was a sharp blade pressed against my throat.

My eyes widened, fear pressing in on all of my senses as I looked up and to my right. A man was standing over me, his gaze sharp.

“W-What… What’s going on?” I hissed, confused and dazed, uncertain of who I should be helping. Myself or the girl who was suddenly being wrestled to the sand beside me.

The man ignored me and instead jerked his head.

A sudden pair of hands took hold of my arms, trapping them behind me, as I was pulled roughly to my feet, the blade still leveled against my neck.

All I could taste was sea salt and my own fear. Twelve minutes were over, but I couldn’t even think of that. I was trapped against a blade now. And, peering off to my right, about a dozen men on horses, swords drawn.

And for what? A woman escaped from the asylum?

No. Something else was happening.

My breath wobbled out of me as, slowly, the man at my side removed the sword from against my neck and marched over to the girl still fighting against her attacker, sand flying in all directions.

He knelt in front of her, grabbing her wrists and forcing her to look at him, “Arabella, it’s time to go home.”

The girl immediately stopped fighting, her eyes wide and suddenly clear. Her shoulders dropped and she sagged against the sand and the man holding her against the beach.

The man with the sword carefully lifted her into his arms, cradling her like one would a prized possession.

I tugged against whoever was holding me, staring on in a confused state. I was deeply, deeply frightened.

“What about her?” The person holding my arms behind me asked, his fingers pressing hard against my wrists. 

The man holding the girl raked his gaze over me, “What’s your name?” He spat, his tone so at odds with the way he was cradling the girl against his chest.

I pressed my lips thin to cease their shaking and then slowly answered, voice low and halting, “E-Eramey Grave, S-Sir.”

“Bring her,” the man barked, shoving past me and my captor, “she was seen chasing Princess Arabella.”

Lightning suddenly sparked across the sky as my mind registered two things: His use of “Princess” and the white band circling his right bicep.

Something only palace guards wore.

Which meant that…

Which meant that girl, covered in blood and rain, was Princess Arabella Selaine last and only heir to the throne of the dying Kingdom of Athaitia. My home.

And I had just been seen chasing her into the sea.