“Nothing,” she bites out, cheeks flushing.
My eyes narrow. “What. Do. You. Know?”
She shoves to a stand. “This was a mistake. Forget I said anything.” My eyes flare as she flips up her hood and makes for the curtain. Looking at me over her shoulder, she says, “I will leave you with your empty mug.”
She goes—her parting words like drips of poison fed to me on a tarnished spoon—leaving the curtain wide open. Allowing me a perfect, unveiled view of the dais. Of the musician perched on the stool beneath an illusion of luminous snowflakes, the vacant seat beside her haunting me to the marrow.
I look at my empty mug, pulling my lungs full.
Holding the breath.
Kyzari’s right, but my mug’s not the only thing that’s empty.
My chest feels pretty fucking hollow, too.
Something bumps against my cheek, ripping me from the fiery clutches of a dream that was melting flesh from my bones in slow, sizzling sweeps. My eyes pop open, a scream sitting in the back of my throat like a welling beast threatening to split the world in two.
I sit up, hissing through clenched teeth, trying to refocus my gaze on the here.
The now.
Nee flutters around me, frantically nuzzling my chest while I scrub my sweat-dappled skin, trying to scour the terror from my flesh.
Unsuccessfully.
I rush to my washroom, fill the stone basin with icy water, and splash my face in laden scoops that do little to douse the burn. “A dream,” I murmur, repeating the motion again.
Again.
Nee continues to dance around me as I dunk a cloth in the water and use it to dab the back of my neck. I dunk it again, pressing my face into the sodden material.
Just a fucking dream.
I lift my head, looking in the small mirror hanging on the wall. My eyes are bloodshot, ice blue standing out in stark contrast against the red scribbles, my cheeks flushed from the rabid heat that chased me to the surface.
Growling, I screw up the cloth and toss it at the wall, scooping my palms full of water again, splashing my face and dragging the wetness back through my hair. I set my hands on the edge of the basin and close my eyes, humming my calming tune while I focus on my fingertips, then my hands, my arms—moving all the way through my body. Slowly loosening each muscle, convincing myself there’s nothing here that wants to hurt me.
To battle me.
Nee nuzzles much too close to my sodden hair, and a warning growl boils up my throat. “Don’t, Nee. You know how I feel about water getting near you.”
With a burst of fluttering motion, she rises above my head instead, circling a safe distance away.
I’m not certain she has waterproof runes, and I’m in no rush to find out the hard way that she was constructed before they were invented.
I press my face into the towel and pour a heavy sigh through the fluffy fabric, untacking the sticky remnants of my terror, a full-body shiver racking through me.
That one felt so real. Too real.
I jump a few times to shake it off, then move back into my sleepsuite, chased by a flutter of parchment wings. My eyes widen at the outside view, the sky clear enough that I can see the aurora already beginning to thread below the western horizon.
Falling. Wow.
I slept the entire dae away …
My stomach growls, clamping down on its aching hollow.
I’ll check on Essi, make us some food if she hasn’t already eaten, then try to get back to sleep. Otherwise, I’ll be out of sorts for cycles.
I make for the stone stairway as a thump sounds from above, like something heavy just fell upon the floor upstairs.
Frowning, I pause, scooping Nee against my chest to stall the sound of her beating wings. “Shh,” I whisper, looking at the ceiling as I listen.
Silence prevails.
Perhaps I imagined it?
Slowly, I tiptoe toward the stairs, pulling the small blade from the sheath at my thigh. I edge close to the trapdoor, pressing my ear to the wood.
A soft whimper stills my heart.
Essi.
I release Nee, nudging her in the direction of my pallet. “Stay here,” I order, shoving the trapdoor open and bursting through, dropping it back down so Nee doesn’t escape.
Essi is coiled on the long seater with her back to me, hiding beneath her woolen blanket that conceals all but her tumble of hair spilling onto the floor. Not unusual since she sometimes can’t be bothered going up the stairs to her sleepsuite and nods off on the seater.
My next inhale is laden with a metallic reek, and my heart lurches, stare slicing around the room, landing on a red hand-shaped smudge on the windowsill. The size of Essi’s hand.