Page 63 of Snatched By the Sandman

I lift my brows in surprise. Out of the corner of my eye, Hecate swirls her wine in her glass while Phantasos fixes his gaze on me. No one has asked me yet.

“Hmm…it begins with this warm, tingling sensation, like threads of static lightning leaving my fingertips…” I explain.

Ivy’s eyes turn wide as saucers as I extend my palm to weave a small, circular cake into being. “The more I focus, the more the warmth spreads along my arms and into my chest like this cocoon of energy.” I imagine a coating of white fondant as the pulsing heat follows my description.

“The world kind of fades away,” I say while creating icing roses. “The energy feels soft and silky. I feel alive and angelic. Like I’m painting with light and emotion. They all dance, coming together, and it’s like I become a part of something beautiful.”Or someone,I don’t add the last part. Not when I haven’t acknowledged it till now.

I present the special cake just for Ivy—one covered in rainbow-colored roses, sprinkled with glitter, and topped with a gold unicorn horn.

“Oooh, thank you, Zenya! It’s so pretty.”

“Just like you.” I tuck a blonde ringlet behind her ear, that wistful warmth tightening my chest again.

When Phantasos dips his finger in the icing, the little girl smacks his hand, and I’ve never seen him guffaw so much.

She pinches her lips and narrows her eyes. “Manners.”

Removing his hat and pressing it to his chest, Phantasos flutters his hand in a bow to say, “My sincerest apologies, Your Majesty.”

Just after I weave flawless slices of cake for us all to enjoy, shadows engulf the entire throne room. A chill rushes up my spine, triggering my breath to heave and cleave from the eerie tension. My heart pounds in my chest, but it can’t drown out the malevolent whispers echoing all around us.

Every candle and torch in the room is snuffed out.

Hecate rises, stiffer than a ramrod while she whistles, summoning her hounds.

None of us can react before a storm of shadows burst into the room. No, not shadows. Shadows don’t have forms like wraiths. They don’t have eel-like teeth and long, needle-like claws. Shadows don’t scream so loud, they shatter the glasses on the table and bleed my ears.

“Reavers!” Hecate snarls before unleashing her dogs.

Phantasos grabs Ivy close to him, transforms into a mystical cloak that flies right out of the throne room. I don’t blame him one little bit. Ivy is the priority.

Dark waves of panic swallow any relief. Hecate is tangling with a reaver, hissing and surging black fire to consume the creature.

Cold claws sink into my flesh and rip me from the throne room, tearing me into the night. Icy electricity strikes all my nerves. Terror strangles my throat. Not the thrilling terror that comes with adrenaline and endorphins like with Nyxion.

This is sheer, soul-bleeding fear. I struggle, but their grip is unyielding as they fly me into the swirling night and toward a dark vortex. A new temporal storm. And everything in me knows it’s fiercer and blacker.

“You must train the monster, Zenya,”my father’s voice rings in my ear.“Someday, the corpses will rise through the soil and rip through all the flowers you’ve planted.”

The irony. He was far more of a monster than any demons whispering in my mind. If my monster ever ripped through my flowers, I imagine she’d shower me with the petals.

The wind is cruel and cold, lashing at my exposed skin and through my hair. The reavers sink their teeth and claws into my body, cutting me, bleeding me.

“Grow your claws and teeth and kiss the horror within you,”his dark voice echoes.“Train to fight, my flower. Be as strong as the kind that can grow through cement.”

He did train me to fight. To shed blood and break bones. Except…I was more interested in playing and running and climbing—beating the mountain into submission just as Nyxion told me.

“Break the stone before the weaklings throw stones at you.”

He didn’t know until much later how I am one part weakling.

The reavers throw me.

I fall. I fall into the black storm.

And something—no, someone—rises.

More powerful than ever, the first time I’ve ever felt her, my inner monster rises.

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