Page 85 of Snatched By the Sandman

She says nothing, but I know she’s dying a little inside. She thought—I thought I could take back my power. But he stole it from me, implanting the images in my mind. I never stopped running from them.

He leans closer, his eyes gleaming with a dark satisfaction. “You think you can transform your pain into something beautiful, but you will always carry the scars I left on your soul. You are a weapon of my creation, carved from my violence like one of my lovely bones, sharpened by my hands. Every time you look in the mirror, you will see me staring back at you.”

Zenya takes a deep breath, her eyes locked onto his with unyielding strength. “I may be iron, but I will forge myself into something new, something better. I will shape myowndestiny, and I won’t let the nightmares you created rule me. Like you always taught me: grow your claws and teeth and kiss the horror within you,” she repeats his lessons.

“Who do you think grew those claws for you?” He winks.

“Train to fight,” she goes on while defeat ices my veins. Nyxion and Morpheus become my touchstones, shadows and bones surrounding me. “Be as strong as the kind that can grow through cement. Break the stone before the weaklings throw stones at you.” She blows furious wind through her nostrils, a storm brewing in her eyes, turning them into a dark ocean. “How does it feel to be the stone I break?”

“Poor little girl. You are an adorable stone. And I…” His eyes turn black with malevolence, ready to proclaim the words that sealed my fate for the next ten years—“am the mountain.”

She turns her back to him so he cannot see her eyes weakening, her spirit crushed beneath the gravity of hisoppression. His laughter echoes in the cold, sterile room. “You can run, Zenya. But you cannot hide. You are and always will be a product of my making.”

I dig my fingers into the skin of Morpheus’s chest and grip Nyxion’s phalanges so much, one snaps. He stiffens but says nothing, leaning closer in offering.

My past self walks away, the sound of Zachariah Myre’s laughter fading behind her.

I follow her. I want to hold her, talk to her somehow, and show how far she will rise, how high she will climb.

We became more than the sum of our broken pieces. How that fire burned those pieces to ash, giving us the ability to rise from them and burn with unbreakable wings.

Visiting hours end, and past Zenya storms out in a huff, trying to shake off the feeling of her failed meeting.

Just outside the door, Hecate touches my shoulder and nods to me. “Let her go, sweet dreamer. You won’t find what you need there.” She gestures to my father being led back to his cell.

With the three of them remaining close, my heart pounds with anger and sorrow. I follow him, my invisibility granting me the advantage as I trail him until the guard opens his cell door. I slip in before it closes.

“Mmm…” Zachariah muses while lying on his cot and folding his hands behind his head. “Daddy’s little girl all grown up. Chip off the ol’ block. Like father like daughter. So proud.”

Retribution rips through me, igniting a fuse to a great powder keg of violence.

“What are you doing, Zenya?” Hecate asks as I approach my father’s bedside, staring over him as his unseeing eyes close with his satisfaction.

“It would be so simple,” I remark, balling one hand into a fist. “End it here and now. Make it seem like he died in his sleep. And she can leave and know his wretched ghost won’t be breathingover her shoulder for the next ten years. She could believe her visit drove him to a fast death.”

No, Zenya, Nyxion says in a deep voice, approaching me from behind.Don’t let him turn you into a monster.

“I already am one,” I hiss.

He coils a skeletal hand around my neck and leans in to breathe a cold web along my cheek.You are a beautiful monster. Do not let him ruin your beauty.

“You already call me a killer,” I mutter, spitting out the words.

Not. A. Murderer.

Tears burn in my eyes as I gaze up at him.

Zenya…he whispers and lowers his skull to my brow.Do not let him claim that power over you. He is not worthy of your dreams or nightmares. He does not belong there.

Morpheus appears at my side, swirling his shadows all around me while my breath grows heavier. “Every time you took another breath, another step up that mountain, you conquered him.”

Zachariah chuckles darkly and shakes his head in disbelief. “My little killer.”

I snap.

Shoving aside the Gods, I weave a nightmare all around the cell, forming shadows and a subtle glow behind me until I become a silhouette. I grow claws. And sharp teeth. My hair turns wild and ragged.

And I force the monster in my blood to open his eyes…and see me. He does. And his eyes widen with shock.

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