Page 53 of Tempest

Ardyn

Rain plinks against the window,the white noise rush of it flowing through my ears and into my dreams.

Rolling to my side, the down comforter wraps around me like a cocoon. I’m warm and safe, drifting through dreamscape images within the healing arms of sleep.

Mila’s hair is wet with blood.

Her neck doesn’t look right—her head at an odd angle.

Footsteps. Unhurried. Black military boots coming to a stop at her shoulder.

What are you doing? Help me. No. Please!

I’m in a chair. Bound. A sack covers my head. My feet don’t touch the floor. They dangle uselessly until I lift them for a kick. Rough laughter follows. I’m grabbed by the ankle and pulled, the chair legs squealing alongside my screams.

I’m smacked across the face.

Behave, and we don’t have to kill you. Be a good girl, and you might like what comes next.

I bolt upright in bed, clutching the covers under my chin. The rain comes harder, the soothing plinks sounding more like smacks against the windowpane like someone is trying to get my attention. To get through.

I scrunch my eyes shut.

Breathe in one, two, three…

After a few agonizing minutes, my labored breaths slow. I’m able to open my eyes, my vision adjusting to the darkness, and to calm myself, I take inventory of my room.

A simple dresser. The twin bed I’m sleeping on. The door. Always locate the exit.

Clover shifts on the other side of the room. She’s on her side, facing the wall and sleeping soundly.

The darkness doesn’t scare her. She covets it, worships it. Even after experiencing the same thing I did, losing the same friend, she’s kept her peace.

My cheek tickles. I swipe at it, my fingers coming away wet. I curl them into my palm, biting my trembling lips and telling myself that our journeys are different. Clover’s experience wasn’t compounded by a past abduction. She was under the protection of unconsciousness a lot longer than I was in that car.

Why can I hear Mila’s screams, and she can’t?

A bang jolts me where I sit. Clutching the covers tighter, I instinctively twist toward the sound coming from the window.

A tree branch. That has to be the sound. Maybe thunder, too. Or someone dropped something next door. Any number of things that don’t involve sinister intent.

I’m in school. Safe in a dorm surrounded by cameras and mountains. Clover’s right beside me.

Clover was also beside me when Mila died.

Moonlight travels through the window’s glass, speckling my white comforter and whiter skin with the raindrops’ black silhouettes. I count them to calm myself—I don’t want to wake Clover and have to explain and make her worry. The last thing I want is for her to wonder, like a lot of other people here, if I can handle the pressures of college. Worse, I don’t want her thinking I can’t tolerate being away from my parents, my bodyguard, my tower.

I count ten before I notice an oddity. An unnatural gap between drops and the odd, jagged rivulets that come after.

I glance back at the window.

Then scream.

Clover shoots up from bed. “What? What?”

With a trembling finger, I point at the wet handprint on our window, being cut into pieces by heavy rivulets of rain.

I swear it’s steaming, the print so hot and evil, it lingers long after it should have dissolved.

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