The Darkling Tide Read Online Free

her, but she couldn’t hear her sister. All that she could see was the diminutive face of Daphne, so close to hers. The pixie’s eyes were concerned, her violet skin nearly quivering with power.
    Abagail’s mind went back to the wolf. She’d seen him before in her father’s painting. She didn’t know who he was, or why he was after her, only that in the painting he’d been bound to the Tree at Eget Row by the same gossamer thread she’d been so willing to free him from just now.
    Daphne reached down to her and laid a cold hand on Abagail’s forehead. All thoughts of the wolf and darklings raced from her mind. Daphne’s wyrd raced through Abagail’s body, and her tense muscles seemed to melt into the ground.
    She closed her eyes and just let the sensation sweep over her. In time, what her sister was saying came through the cloud in her ears.
    “What on O were you thinking, Abbie!?” Leona finished.
    “Leo, please, shut up,” Abagail breathed.
    “Leo, let her rest,” Rorick said, his voice quiet. Abagail heard a rustle beside her and she knew that Rorick was sitting down. He waited a while before speaking again.
    “What did you see?” he asked.
    Abagail didn’t open her eyes, just focused on the cool hand of Daphne, pressing on her forehead. She told him what she’d seen, how the wolf had aqua blue eyes, and how it was all white with streaks of silver and grey.
    “There are wolves alright,” he said. “But they aren’t anything as splendid as that.”
    Abagail sat up, Daphne startled higher up into the air. Sure enough, the forest was teeming with wolves, but they weren’t white, they were darklings.

Before them were so many darkling wolves that the foggy day seemed plague by a bank of nighttime. They yipped and howled, raising their malignant music to the crowing birds above.
    “And I was reaching for them?” Abagail asked. She was trying to ignore the wolves, but she was having such a hard time with it. Celeste said if she ignored them then she wouldn’t be tempted by them. She’d been ignoring them, so why had she gotten so ensnared by that vision of the wolf?
    Is he a more powerful darkling? She wondered.
    “It looked like you were trying to bring down the ward,” Leona told her. She still hadn’t settled down, and was pacing back and forth before Abagail and Rorick, her eyes plastered on the darkling wolves.
    Rorick frowned. “I can’t say that it looked like you were trying to bring down the ward, but there was something happening.”
    Abagail checked the work glove over her hand. She’d started wearing it because her afflicted hand seemed to take over at times, and she was also afraid if she accidentally touched someone with her plagued hand that the darkness would spread to them.
    “Did the glove come off?” she asked Rorick. Whenever something strange happened with her hand, something she didn’t precisely want to happen, like the darkling wyrd taking over and vanquishing their enemies, the glove seemed to slip off without her urging.
    “No,” Rorick shook his head.
    Abagail sighed with relief. She checked her arm. The spider web veins of the shadow plague hadn’t moved any since she’d last checked them, so it didn’t seem like she’d worked any kind of wyrd.
    “But the ward did seem to react to your presence,” Rorick said, his eyes following Leona as if he didn’t want to tell Abagail this part.
    “What do you mean?” Abagail glanced up at Rorick.
    “It glowed a little, and when you reached for it, the ward began to shimmer, ripple almost like it was being stressed.” He frowned. “I can’t really explain it.”
    Abagail furrowed her eyebrows. “What do we do about those?” she asked, indicating the darkling wolves.
    “There isn’t much we can do, is there?” Leona asked, turning back to them. Daphne settled on her shoulder.
    “No,” Abagail said, pushing to her feet. “I guess you’re right.”
    “What are we going to do about you ?” Leona asked,