Page 76 of The Incendiary

Fading torchlight flickered off shallow puddles where the walls met the floor, but I couldn’t tell where the water was coming from. I heard no dripping, only the echo of my own presence, the swell of my lungs as I breathed and the quickening thump of my pulse in my ears.

I didn’t know which way to go, but something about this place felt familiar.

Heat began to shimmer on one end of the hall, to my left. A faint, white light filled with laughter. A woman’s, I thought, and then with it… a man’s? His unwavering calm swirled in contrast to her bright light, a soothing mix of tranquility and warmth. I saw the flutter of a bird’s blue wings and heard the gentle, soothing ding of a single coin landing on a stone floor and decided that way. I wanted to go that way. I turned left.

“I can teach you…”

I froze and looked around but was unable to find the source of the whisper. Somewhere far, far away from here. Not inside the hallway or even this castle. I turned in circles, searching for it, able to move unlike I usually was in dreams.

Was I… really here?

“I can teach you…”

It was a little louder this time, everywhere and nowhere all at once.

“Where are you?” I demanded.

“I can… teach you…”

“Who are you?” I shouted again. My voice reverberated back and forth down the hallway. “Answer me!”

Something invisible cracked and split around me. I felt a veil—thick enough to protect me and keep out whatever or whoever this was—disappear. Long, cold fingers curled around my neck. I reached up to fight them to no avail as frigid lips touched my ear. And then a sharp, dissonant scream in an airless, lifeless silence.

“Stop!” I begged. “Please, stop!”

“I can teach you more than he can!”

I tried to gasp myself awake and failed. My feet were now plastered to cobblestone as fingers like flesh-coated ice tightened around my neck.

Real. Too real.

The bridge between my dream and reality stuttered, like a door caught on a hinge that wouldn’t budge. When I tried to scream, no sound escaped. I jerked and thrashed, kicked my feet against the castle walls as they closed in.

“Don’t close me in,” I begged as if the walls would listen. “Don’t close⁠—”

“Breathe.”

My body snapped to attention and obeyed. Hallucination or not, the sound of his voice—deep, controlled, soothing—was enough. By the grace of the gods, my eyes shot open while I sucked in fresh air. I searched for his eyes, for his anchoring hands, scarred and strong and home. Instead of finding him, I heard a match strike. A small burst of light from a nearby lamp glowed brightly enough to reveal sixteen pairs of eyes peering back at me.

It took me a moment to remember that I was Fera from Brinnea in Elias Winterton’s Barracks, and I’d just woken up my entire cabin of cadets. Some of them looked angry, others annoyed. Only Mavic and Mina looked concerned.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, scanning the walls and corners of the room until I’d looked at each person. “It was a nightmare.” I cleared my tight, aching throat. “I’m sorry.”

It had to be exhaustion playing tricks on my mind. At least, that was what I told myself. Stress had induced wild dreams in me before. I’d considered that the fingers around my throat might be Molochai’s, but his hands, chilled, taloned, and greedy, belonged to a human man.

This was something different. This felt… inhuman.

While the other cadets eagerly settled back into rest, my mind and body didn’t. I lay awake, eyes fixed on the ceiling, unable to let go of the feel of icy hands and that dark, unearthly voice in my ear.

I was starting to wonder if I’d ever sleep in peace again. The nightmares kept getting worse, and sharing a bed with Gavin for two nights, his protective body at my back, had ruined me. No matter how I propped up pillows, it felt wrong, and it wasn’t warm enough.

To soothe myself, I headed to the showers. I had to pass the window of Elias’s quarters to get there. Bright light filtered through the drawn curtains from inside.

“It’s not safe until we know who did it,” Valda’s voice came through the window.

“I know.” Elias’s voice was strained.

Intent on hearing more, I leaned against the building beside the window, relieved that nothing unsavory was happening inside this time.