The Angel of Elydria (The Dawn Mirror Chronicles Book 1) by A. R. Meyering

teetered between the thin boundary of sleep and the waking world for some time until a sharp instinct shook sleepiness clean away. She sensed that she was no longer alone.
    Penny sat up in bed, her breath uneven. She looked about her room for the intruder, but the darkness was too thick. She wanted so much to call out for her mother, but even with her child’s mind she knew that whatever dark thing sidled among the shadows would get her anyway.
    “W-who’s there?” Her voice was difficult to hear over the sound of the rain pounding on the roof. Then came the flash, and with it the face she would never forget.
    She saw him for an instant: sublime, tall, and with a striking face that was so inhumanly beautiful it drove terror into her heart. His hair was white and draped down the sides of his body like waterfalls of diamond filament. Then the darkness came again.
    Penny scrambled backward until her shoulders collided with the wall. She tried to scream, but could not manage to make a sound. He was coming closer.
    “N-no!” she choked in a strangled plea. The thunder crashed, reverberating about the room and rumbling in her chest. Penny felt his fingers wrapping around her shoulders and pulling her forward. The lightning came again.
    The face, so abominable in its exquisiteness, was mere inches from hers. His eyes were like two great white moons stained with small beads of black that pierced straight through her. As his hand scooped her away, the last thing she saw was a flurry of feathers. Then there was only darkness.
    Penny jerked awake with a gasp, then sunk her face into her hands and gave a great sigh, trying to rid her body of the last vapors of the nightmare. The memory of the most terrifying night of her childhood was still too fresh in her mind, though it had happened over a decade ago. The rain had stopped falling while she slept and left the forest glittering with crystalline beads of moisture.
    Penny glanced over at Hector to see that he was still curled up in blissful sleep. Penny was about to lay her head back down when something moving about in the trees caught her eye. In a surreal moment, a soft glow fluttered out of the ferns and branches, and a human figured emerged into the clearing, radiating an unearthly light. Penny recognized the face of the person and clapped her hands over her mouth.
    “ Mom?” Penny gasped, springing to her feet. Several feet away stood Paulina Fairfax, pale gray in the light of the moon. She was wearing the same set of clothes Penny had last seen her in. Penny began to rush toward her and stopped, digging her heels into the rain-softened soil. Something was not right.
    A look of supreme fright crossed her mother’s face, and Paulina turned and fled into the forest. Still holding the knife, Penny gritted her teeth. She couldn’t let this chance go by.
    She dove into the brush and pursued her mother, calling for her to stop. Penny sensed the danger, but she could not let her mother disappear without at least speaking to her. Deeper and deeper into the trees she went until she burst out of the overgrowth into a small clearing with just enough space between the trunks to move about.
    There, in the center of the clearing, stood an expectant Paulina smiling at Penny. Stepping forward, Penny observed it wasn’t just the moonlight that had blanched her mother’s skin and hair. Paulina’s body had taken on a lustrous white coloring. Penny’s stance turned defensive, her stomach feeling like she’d missed a step on the way down a flight of stairs.
    “Mom! Answer me! How did you get here? Why do you look so…weird?” Penny whispered.
    Paulina smiled again and held her arms open to Penny.
    They stood frozen in their respective places, Penny not daring to break the eerie gaze her mother beamed in her direction. The look was enough to convince her that the specter was not her mother.
    Turning to flee, Penny discovered with heart-wrenching terror that her foot was stuck fast to the