Page 5 of A Bond with the Dark

RESOUNDING SADNESS

SAYAH

Opening my eyes the following day, the first thing that floods my mind is those bright blue eyes.

That fire.

A vampire?

While I know there aren’t vampires in the world, the dream was so fucking real. So real. The ones you wake up from and wonder if part of you crawled out of your skin and entered a new dimension, fell from great heights, or flew around the sky.

Gods, the flying dreams are great!

That’s what this feels like.

I’ve had dreams that I’ve woken up from and they staggered me, my muscles still tense from that crippling fall or my heart still racing from the near drowning in a tsunami.

But this. . .

This is something else entirely.

My skin feels different. It feels like I’ve grown inside of it, stretched it out to be too big and now my existence is smaller somehow. It’s as though I’ve found a new part of me in this other dimension, part of me that clicks right into place like it was always supposed to be here.

Then there’s the pain.

What exquisite torture that fire had been!

One of those agonizing kinds of pain you hate and love—you love it because it makes you feel alive, a tangible force of nature that can bend and break and bleed and come back stronger from every rip, every slice, every burn.

The sting of the fire still scalds my every inch, the invisible blisters lap at the bends of my arms. I hold one out in front of me to check for singes of hair or marks, any indication I’ve been burned.

But there is nothing.

Is there some coincidence between dreaming of being burned alive and the way Mama died?

My mom’s face comes to mind and my chest constricts, breath caught in my throat as the wave of sadness drowns me once more, dousing the fire with a hiss.

The tears take hold and asphyxiate all other thoughts, and I struggle to keep moving, burying my face in the pillow to scream once more. Laying here with only the sound of the fan humming in the background, I picture Mama dying in an agonizing blaze of fire.

Please let there have been no pain.

Please, Freya, tell me you came to take her before she could feel anything at all.

I don’t know what to do now. How to move on. To rise and carry on as though nothing has changed even though my entire existence got upended.

I have to tell my aunts.

And Gauge.

For once, I am thankful for the split custody schedule. Gauge is currently with my ex, Derek. As much as I would love to snuggle my little guy up and hold him, the anguish I’m feeling is too much. It would seep off me and into him, and I don’t want that.

Grabbing my phone from the nightstand by my bed, I find my aunt Hilda’s name in my phone and press the green call button, steeling myself for this conversation.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Aunt Hilda,” I say, though my voice doesn’t sound right. It’s higher than usual and strained.

“Sayah? What is it, what’s wrong?” That’s my aunt Maggie. They’re always together.

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