71. Scarlett
Scarlett
T he dream didn’t start gently.
It yanked me under.
No warning. No mercy.
I was barefoot on stone, cold slickness beneath my feet—wet from something I didn’t want to name. Moonlight spilled across a circular courtyard, white and sharp, like it was trying to cut through the dark. The air smelled of salt and smoke. My breath came in shallow pulls, but I wasn’t afraid.
Not yet.
There were voices. Not quite whispers. Not quite words.
Just… chanting.
Low and rhythmic, buried beneath the wind.
I turned. Slowly.
Figures stood at the edges of the stone—hooded, faceless, unmoving. A ring of silence around me. No one stepped forward. No one spoke. But I knew—knew—they were waiting for me to remember something.
I looked down.
Red.
A circle drawn around me, etched in something that shimmered where the light hit. I tried to step back, but I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
The sky above cracked open—not with lightning, but memory.
A man stood in the center of the circle.
He didn’t speak.
He didn’t need to.
Because I knew him.
Not from my waking life, not really. But something in my spine, in my marrow, bent toward him like it had bowed before. He was tall, sharp-featured, dark eyes rimmed with something ancient. His voice came in through my blood, not my ears.
“It’s in you. It always was.”
He lifted a hand toward me, and on his wrist—a silver band, twin to my own. My heart kicked against my ribs.
I reached for it.
For him.
But my hand burned the moment it crossed the red line.
Pain lanced through me. Fire and static and memory all at once.
A girl running through trees with blood on her hands.
A voice screaming her name—Scarlett—just once, before silence swallowed it whole.
A boy in a circle of sand, saying nothing, but wanting everything.
A page ripped from a book. A blade in water. A kiss never taken. A vow never spoken.
I staggered.
The man’s eyes darkened.
“You are not safe. Not yet.”
The hooded figures began to hum. The air throbbed with something violent.
“What’s happening?” I asked—only it didn’t sound like me.
The man was fading. The courtyard began to split. The stone beneath my feet cracked, bleeding silver light.
“Find the truth before they do,” he said.
And then everything went red.