Page 95 of Their Blood Queen

My stupid, faithful Raven.

“What would you have me do when I reach her?” he asks. His tone is calm, but his dark eyes are wide enough to reflect my fearsome image back at me.

I know the order is wrong. It’s one I’ve never asked of anyone, but this is the only way I can get to Scarlett while chained to my tower. This is the only way to keep her safe.

I lean into my chains, ignoring the blood that trails down my chest at the movement. “I need her to let me in, Bernard. It’s the only way to help her.”

He goes stiff as I give the one command I said I’d never do.

“Make her pray to me.”

CHAPTER 25

CAGE

Screams ring in my ears.

Terror hits me like a wave, but it’s not mine. I can sense those around me forming an ocean of dreams. My chest constricts as if I’m drowning in their fear, their excitement, and their rage. Digging deeper, I know I’m not feeling any of those things.

My emotion is a singular spike that hits me straight through the chest.

Lust.

I can hardly see straight as the world around me goes fuzzy, and the faint taste of peaches has my mouth watering. The dream plane is different in this dimension.

More like a realm than a plane.

This one still overlaps with the real world like I’m used to, but it’s so much larger. It’s like an entirely new place where creatures lurk and dreams are impossibly vibrant.

And filled with blood. Delicious blood in rivers that flow like some sort of Strigoi heaven.

And the screams… dear Gods.

There’s a female’s scream that is a mating call to my senses. Every fiber of my being aches to follow it.

Is that our Sigil?

It has to be.

My throat works on a swallow as I try to orient myself in the moment. If there is a heaven for my kind, I might have thought I found it had I not been in such excruciating pain.

My vision fluctuates with blacks, reds, and flashes of the city street under my cheek. Sabre is only a few feet away, but based on his body writhing in agony, he’s not doing much better than I am.

We’re going to die before we even get a chance to find her.

Traveling through the dimensional portal Maliki had created had a side effect, one that none of us could have predicted.

It drained us on the way here, and neither Sabre nor I had much in the way of reserves to begin with. This Dream Realm is different and requires walls to be put up around my mind before it shreds me into pieces.

Concentrating, I imagine forming bricks and cementing them around myself, one by one, until I’m inside a dark tower and can’t see anything at all. It mutes the delicious screams and makes me feel even more disoriented, but at least I can breathe.

One.

Two.

Three.

I count each long, deep intake of air as I force my body to function. As much as I want to dreamwalk and find my Sigil calling out to me, my physical body needs to be in top shape to endure the drain that requires in this world. Right now, I can’t do both. Not until I drink blood to replenish what the dimensional travel has cost me.

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