Page 20 of Amethyst and Iron

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~Velra~

“You belong here.”

“Stay with us.”

“Closer… cross the Veil.”

That certainly wasn’t how my dreams usually went.

Well, mostly they were nightmares.

I hadn’t suffered one in a long time, not since coming to Wraeven Academy. Being with the boys had helped, yes, but it wasn’t only that. I’d started opening up to more in my life—breaking from the trauma, finding small ways to heal, to be happy, to let go of the fear.

Of course!The trauma.

It had happened.

He’d come for me again.

Puritaswas rising once more.

This wasn’t a dream.

This was reality. A confusing and different reality to what I was used to.

But one I had been briefly familiar with.

Because I’d touched it before.

I sucked in a sharp breath. Well, what seemed like a breath in this place.

The Valley of the Dead.

That was why the eerie and aggressively determined voices were telling me I belonged, that I needed to remain.

Sorin had killed me.

Again.

I gritted my teeth.

Things were different now, though.Veryfucking different.

Last time, too much of me had believed I actually belonged here, that I was finished.

I’d wanted to die so badly that I hadn’t even tried to pull the iron blade out, hadn’t called on my Wraith power when I should have. And by the time I’d fought back against what was pulling me toward death it had been too late.

But now I belonged somewhere else.

With my men.

With the life I’d been building, one that was a far cry from gloom and despair. There was more than trauma and pain steering me now.

There washope.

Something to fuckinglivefor.

And that conviction and hope was manifesting physically in the fact that my shadows were swirling all around me, brushing my feet and twisting and sweeping wildly several feet above my head.

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