Page 10 of Secrets & Curses of Crimson

“It’s going to feel like a dream. You need to try and remember every detail possible, but it will be hard. Visions do not like to give us a straight answer to anything.”

When I turned to ask him a question, he was gone, and I was standing in a field. There was an arena in front of me filled with loud cheering that pulled my attention toward it. They were chanting my name. Hundreds of fae shouted.Thea! Thea! Thea! But for some reason, I was angry about it. I sucked in a lungful of dust and hot air.

The sun was too hot. I glanced down and saw I was wearing a dark blue dress. There was blood on my hands. The veins in my arms were black. I felt fucking furious. There were so many fae standing by me in the arena, but they were a haze. I couldn’t make out anyone’s face.

I felt nauseous as time faded and blurred my vision. As it came back into focus, I was staring down at my leg as a dagger stuck out from it. My eyes pulsed red.

“Thea!” His voice boomed through all the chaos—deep, peaceful, perfect. It distracted me from the man coming up behind me. “No!” His voice echoed in the space around me. My eyes snapped up to where I heard the deep voice coming from. The man with golden eyes was trying to get to me. His magic was ripping and tearing against a barrier I couldn’t see. Suddenly, his shadows burst from him as someone hit him with something that I could not quite make out through the haze. He fell to his knees, wounded.

Another blade sliced across my back, but I turned and killed the man who was hurting me. Then time faded away again, and when I looked forward, the man with golden eyes was kneeling in the dirt, bleeding still.

A sense of urgency filled me. I needed to get to him. I needed to save him. Nothing else matteredbut him living. But as I took one step closer, he glanced up at me. What I saw in his eyes would haunt me for a lifetime. They were filled with regret, sadness, and longing.

“No!” I released my darkness to shield him.

“I love you,” he called out to me before a man, whose face was blurry, swung a sword and beheaded him. My whole body burst into flames.

I was too late. I was too late.

I ran toward him, desperate. A sharp pain on my wrist caught my attention. I gasped as my crown tattoo broke and shattered on my arm.

“No!” I was frantic. I was devastated. Time faded again before I was standing right where the man died. I couldn’t look at his dead body. I wanted to burn the realm down in my grief. I turned and let all my magic tear through me as a vicious scream tore from my throat—destroying everything in its path.

I gasped for air as my vision pulled away from me, and I was rocking with Brim again. Tears were streaming down my face as I tried desperately to catch my breath.

“What did you see, Thea?”

“He died,” I cried. “The man from my dreams. The one with golden eyes was killed.”

Brim didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t hear the rocking of his chair anymore. When I glanced up at him, he was in shock.

“Are you sure that is what you saw?”

I nodded. I couldn’t breathe.

I glanced at the crown tattoo on my wrist to see it still intact, and the sight brought me comfort. Tears burned and fell from my eyes unrelenting. My chest squeezed so painfully at the man’s haunting golden eyes that I started hyperventilating. I was going to pass out or die.

“That can’t be right.” He stood up and began pacing. “What else do you remember?”

I closed my eyes tightly, trying to remember what I had been doing, but my mind and chest ached with grief.

“I was fighting in an arena. There were lots of fae. I was hurt, and he tried to help me.” I began crying again.

“Why would the stars do this to you?”

I looked up at him as he became furious. He was muttering something about the gods and how I had given enough to the realm that I didn’t deserve to lose him.

“Who is he? Is he real? I thought he was just in my imagination.”

Brim stopped and gave me a look of pity.

“He’s real, and he is going to die.”

Chapter 4

Thea

Iwas crying when I woke up. My vision of the man with gold eyes dying in front of me plagued me. Even if I couldn’t remember his face, his eyes haunted me. The way they were filled with sadness when he looked at me right before he died. I felt an overwhelming sense of devastation. My chest ached so much that I rubbed it with my hand to make sure I wasn’t dying. I could remember everything about Brim, but why couldn’t I remember the man with golden eyes? He was going to die, and it would shatter me.

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