Chapter Twenty
Aric
Frost covers Rey’s face where I touch it. I jerk back, causing her to fall against the ground a second time.
Damn it. I reach for her again.
She’s still disoriented and mumbling something about the water, but I manage to walk us out of the building and slam the door behind us. I don’t know why, but I turn and look up, my gaze drawn to the phrase etched above the door in ancient Norse.
Where water remembers and blood mourns.
I’m shaking by the time we get back on the path to Endir.
She’s still silent, but at least she seems okay—though I use that term loosely.
Her eyes are glazed, but I don’t think she fell hard enough on her head to be concussed.
The wound would be the mirror’s fault, but the concussion would totally be on me for not catching her that second time.
My back still burns below my neck, right on my spine.
Shit, what did I do? I keep my eyes trained on her.
Reeve gives me a raised eyebrow when we get closer to the group, but I ignore him and angle Rey away. “We’re heading back to the dorms.”
When we get there, I tap my card against the door, hands still shaking. We walk in silence to the elevator. I hit our floor and stand on the opposite side of her. We aren’t touching anymore, but she’s close enough that I can feel her breathe.
“You should really have the school nurse check you out tonight after you clean up that injury. I doubt it’s a concussion, but you never know.” The air feels too thin, the elevator too tight for both of us. I want to ask if she’s okay, but I shouldn’t care. It’s Rey.
She can deal with whatever nightmare she saw while I go into my room and try to prevent myself from completely losing it.
“Yeah, that fall shocked me a bit.” She nods. “But I feel fine now. I’ll be ready for classes after some sleep.” Rey touches the back of her head. “No more blood, so that’s both nice and alarming. At first, I thought I had this huge head wound.”
I think about what happened when I touched her face. Maybe I was mistaken? Maybe she heals fast?
But the frost, the burning sensation… I ignore it. It’s in my head. It has to be.
“Any nausea? Headache?” I ask. I can’t just let her go to sleep if she’s concussed.
“None at all,” she says with a small smile. “Just a bit of blood.”
“Let me see?” I walk over and lift her hair, needing the distraction from my own paranoia, even if it is my parents’ killer giving it to me.
She’s right; there’s fresh blood.
But where there should be a cut from the sharp edge of the mirror…
There’s nothing. Only smooth, soft skin.
My own hand is already healing—not surprising—and she’s too out of it to notice that I’m healing fast.
I drop her hair and step away. “Yeah, you just need to wash the blood off. The cut must be in your hairline or something,” I lie. I have no answers for her, for myself about why that would happen. Best we forget it.
She nods. “I will. Don’t worry about me. I’m no stranger to getting injured.”
What the hell does that mean?
She seems perfectly calm walking into her room and closing her door in my face—while I’m having an internal breakdown in the hallway.
My hands turned to giant mittens of frost and froze on her face, and now she has no wound at all—and neither does my hand. Thank God she didn’t see my reaction, but why now? Why her?
I pace my room, then stare at myself in the mirror. “You’re not losing control. It’s her, the stress, the circumstances—it’s not you.”
And yet, even as I say it, I know something’s wrong.
I flex my back in an attempt to alleviate the pain still dogging me. Did something hit me, too? I peel off my shirt, toss it to the ground, and turn around.
Clear as day, an angry black rune stares back at me, starting just below my neck.
Raido in its simplest of forms.
A warning.
Normally of the journey ahead, but this one may as well be fucking waving back at me.
?
Well. Shit.
And I thought controlling the frost and my emotions was my biggest problem.