Page 65 of Of Nightmares & Fire
Heat.
Fire.
It engulfs me, burning like a raging inferno. It connects me to her. I feel no pain.
“Seeeennnnkkkkaaaa.” The voice fades and echoes in the distance, and as soon as he is gone, my shadows erupt. They wrap Astraea and pull her to me. I pull so hard we go hurling back, and when we hit the ground, the fire burns white hot. A lightning bolt through our souls.
My eyes jerk open. I am alone in Diemos, looking out over the tarn I have come to so many times before. Everything is the same, but what just happened… Changes everything.
Chapter forty-five
Astraea
Poundinghoofbeatssoundbeneathme, but where before I felt jostled, now I am weightless. The flashing white that usually comes is slow. I can see into the trees, to the darkness that lies between.
It looks back at me.
Waiting.
“Seennnnkkaaa!” The word is hissed sharp like a blade cutting through the mist around me. The cold, blade-like claws curl around my arm, pulling at me, wanting me to turn. I squeeze my eyes shut, but the lasso of heat that sears at my ribs starts, and the rumbling laugh follows. It echoes and tinglesacross my skin. When I open my eyes, I know what I will see. The reaper evading my dreams; the sovereign haunting my nightmares. The difference from every other time he has come is that I know he can harm me just as he did Kyros. I feel it in the way that his claws scrape across my skin, leaving gooseflesh in their wake.
What happens if I seek him out? What happens when I open my eyes and come face-to-face with the monster that hunts me? With my eyes still firmly closed, I grit my teeth before I call back to him.
“What do you want?” My voice doesn’t sound like my own but a reflection of the sound. Far away and lost to the void. He hisses in response like a snake. Nothing but my pounding heart fills the silence, and when I can't take it any longer, my eyes fly open.
I stand face-to-face with the cause of torment every time I close my eyes. The white light from the moon reflects off cracked bone as shadowy tendrils crawl from him like darkened smoke. They reach for me from horns, and his long sharp fangs glint wickedly as he comes impossibly closer. The moonlight casts his long, claw-like fingers eerily in a glow of silver light as they reach between us.
I am frozen in my fear.
I have always sensed him. Seen glimpses of the fast-moving terror, but this slow, harrowing movement brings a sense of consternation that I have never experienced.
One long, blade-like finger at a time, he wraps his large claws around my throat. I feel the probing of his eyes in the darkened sockets of the skull staring down at the column of my neck. The drumming pulse reveals every shred of fear I try to contain. My chest rises on an influx of air as his grip tightens and he begins to liftme. My hands reach out for his arm, and even though he appears to be an apparition, his forearm is solid and burns under my touch. My feet dangle precariously as I try to point my toes in an attempt to reach the ground. I cannot breathe. The lasso of fire at my ribs seems to burn hotter.
It’s everywhere.
The fire consumes me, burns through me—from me.
“Seeeennnnkkkkaaaa,” he says again, his voice like a fading call in the wind, and then I fall. I fall into the shadows, then the light, the burn, the fire; everything falls with me until I hit the ground like a blast of lightning. It shatters everything.
I suck in a gasping breath at the same time I wrench up from bed. My body is soaked with sweat, and a cold chill sends ice to wrap around me, and dread coils around my spine. I feel like I can't get enough breath into my lungs with how raggedly I am trying to pull air in. My throat burns, and when I brush my fingers along the skin on my neck, I wince. The pounding grows louder, and I cover my ears trying to calm myself, drown out the throbbing pain, or stop everything.
A loud crash makes me scramble backward toward the headboard, and a scream rips from my throat so loud I fear I may have ripped something.
“Great divine, did you have to—” Colette freezes when she sees me. I must be a sight because her eyes are wide and her lips part on a silent inhale. “Astraea?” She questions, her hands quickly coming up to cover hermouth.
“Fuck. What happened?!” Viltarin whisper-shouts, raking his hand through his sandy hair; his hazel eyes are wide as they jump around the room and then from my face to my neck, then to my body. “Fuck. Kyros is going to kill me.” He says resolutely and balls his hands into fists as he walks around Cole, who is statue-still in the center of the room. The door I now see is broken and creaks as it barely hangs from the hinge behind them.
“You're bleeding. I wasn't hereagain.” Colette says softly, still unmoving and clearly unsettled.
“Cole, it's ok. I need the balm. Do you have any?” She is shaking her head before I finish the question. My brows furrow as I try to think of what to do.
“Healing balm?” Viltarin asks, looking back at Colette and then to me. “I can get some from Mavros—”
“No!” I say too loudly, and my throat aches from the damage done when I screamed. “I don’t want to alert Kyros of this.” Viltarin looks like he is going to be sick.
“Sorry, Princess, Kyros will know. There will be no hiding that injury when he returns.” He argues.Returns?
“He left?” My voice croaks, but only I know it's from the hurt I feel rather than my throat. They both look at me and then to each other. I don't like feeling like an outsider when it comes to Cole. She has always been the one I can count on to have silent conversations, and seeing her do that with someone who is essentially a stranger to me feels an awful lot like hurt. Something she has never done to me. Colette finally breaks the trance she is in and comes to sit on the bed in front of me.
