Page 5 of Secrets & Curses of Crimson

He leaned forward and kissed me softly before hugging me.

“I love you,” he whispered.

As I leaned back to see his handsome face, my dream shifted to something more sinister. It didn’t feel like a dream anymore. I lifted my hands and saw them coated in blood. My heart pounded as I glanced around the hot spring, only to realize the water was red. When I looked at my golden-eyed man, his eyes were black and vacant. Then the large wound on his neck caught my attention.

He was dead.

Ifell off him and tried to crawl out of the hot spring, but his hand grabbed my ankle at the last moment, and he dragged me back toward him.

“Are you going to let me die, my love?” he asked with blood seeping down him. I closed my eyes tightly, wanting to wake up from this nightmare.

?????

When I tried to breathe, water filled my lungs. Panic settled into me as I tried to find the surface of the water. Dark shadows wrapped around me and pulled me up as I gasped for air.

I looked around for the man, but he wasn’t there. I was in the creek of Exile again, and it made confusion crash into my mind. I crawled onto the shoreline and tried to catch my breath. My mind flashed to my dream, but the more I tried to remember what the man looked like, the less I could see.

There was nothing about the dream I could remember except the man dying. It was as if I could see his face but not see any of the details. My chest ached painfully as flashes of blood coating my hands hit me.

Are you going to let me die, my love?

My dreams had never done that. I could never remember what he said to me when I woke. So why could I remember this one line? I shook away the overwhelmingsense of grief that was taking over my chest. It was just a nightmare.

I frowned at the starless sky above me before rolling over and getting dressed, then heading home. That feeling of missing something overtook me again, but it was worse than before I fell asleep.

I frowned slightly as I stepped into the small house that belonged to Sybil and I. The twins were there, and I greeted them with a small smile.

“We were getting worried about you,” Kaz said with a frown.

“I went for a swim, sorry.”

They all looked over me oddly, but whatever they were questioning was never spoken out loud. I picked up a piece of bread and ate it slowly to not upset my stomach. We did not have a lot of supplies left in the small town we were trapped in. Soon we would all die from starvation or sickness.

“We should walk the border tomorrow and see if anything has changed,” Kai said toward me. His demeanor and tone were odd, but I agreed. My eyes lingered on the blackbird elite magic mark he had.

“Sounds good. We’ll meet at nightfall, so others don’t see us.” I paused for a moment, wondering if I should bother asking questions. “What elite magic do you have?”

“We shift into ravens,” Kaz said. Interesting.

He shared a look with his twin and Sybil.

“Were you two the only kids in your family?” I asked.

“No, we had a sister.” Kaz frowned like he didn’t like this line of questioning. Shouldn’t any of this be familiar? I should know these things, but they didn’t ask me why I was asking about things that I should already know.

“She didn’t have elite magic?”

“No, she did.” Kaz stared at me oddly. “She died, though.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

My eyes drifted to each one of them to see their reactions. It was clear by the way they glanced at each other that they thought something was wrong with me. I wanted to ask what it was, but something told me they wouldn’t share. Every time I asked why we were trapped here, I was met with an awkward silence. At one point someone said the Crimson kingdom was at fault, but Sybil was quick to shut that theory down. She didn’t give an alternative explanation. She said she just knew that it wasn’t Crimson, and I believed her.

Although I did not know the names of the kingdoms or who they were, so why would it matter to me? I didn’t remember anything, but no one else seemed to remember much either. After I ate, I excused myself to my room. Icould hear the harsh whispers coming from the three of them as I left, but I kept going. My room was so small, but something like comfort filled me when I was alone in there.

I stripped off my clothes and lay on the makeshift bed. My eyes glanced up at the crack in the roof. The mud was falling apart, and it would need to be fixed soon. My eyes drifted shut as I tried to recall anything about the man I dreamed of.

Chapter 3

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