Chapter Twelve
Yun
Another damned nightmare.
It was easy to tell when they happened because I was always back there.
Knowing it was a dream didn’t change anything. It still felt real. It still inspired honest terror in me, still forced me to face everything I didn’t want to.
Whether it occurred in my mind or out in the real world didn’t change the moment.
The black sky rested above, torn through with streaks of purple that shifted like oil in water. Not the black of the normal night sky, dotted with bright stars or lit by the reflection of the sun on the moon. This was a deeper darkness, one that swallowed up the light everywhere else.
I stood in the forest with the twisted, strange trees surrounding me as they had before. Everything smelled sweet and slightly acidic—the scent that turned my stomach, that made me want to run and hide and curl into the smallest ball possible.
“You belong here,” the rumbling voice whispered, hot breath against my ear, a threatening promise in those words. It wasn’t a human voice, instead deep and dark.
I closed my eyes, trying to shut out this place, this voice. “This isn’t real.”
“It will be. The time is coming, and I’ll get you back.”
I crouched, balancing my weight on my feet, my hands around my head, fingers digging against my scalp, speared through my hair, trying to hold myself together. I shook my head, wanting to deny those words.
“You never really left—you’ll always be back here.”
I trembled, shivering against the chill of this place, the fear that bounced around inside me.
It yanked me back to all the nights I’d curled up and hid, the nights when I’d learned how little hiding did.
The roars of monsters, the foliage crunching beneath their massive feet, it all warped together into a chorus of horror.
“Yun.” That wasn’t the hated voice, and it struck me like a rush of water against a burn.
“You think they’ll save you?” A dark laugh spread that searing heat across my ear, my cheek, so close and vicious that I tried to curl in more.
I wanted to become a smaller target, to shrink until I didn’t exist, until I wasn’t here anymore.
It took me back to there, to how helpless I’d felt back then, when I’d wanted nothing more than to have it all end. I didn’t care how, so long as it stopped.
“Yun!” The shout shook the entire world that time, though I still couldn’t identify who it belonged to. It struck me as familiar, but this place warped my brain so that I couldn’t figure it out, couldn’t work through it.
The dream collapsed in on itself the same way dungeons did, the sky falling, the sides shifting in, all of it shattering apart until my eyes snapped open and I found myself no longer in that dream.
I yanked upright, sudden pain searing through my face.
I covered my throbbing nose with my hands, trying to make sense of, well, everything.
Kenyon’s blue eyes met mine, centering me, at least until I spotted the red mark on his forehead.
“Were you screwing with me while I slept?” My hands muffled my words.
Kenyon shook his head in a quick denial. “You were making noises in your sleep, so I tried to wake you up, but you wouldn’t come to. I leaned closer, and you jerked upright.”
Which explained the pain in my nose, didn’t it? As it turned out, Kenyon’s head was a lot harder than my nose.
Chalk another point up to the espers.
“Move your hands,” he said, reaching for me.
Except the memories inside my brain ran too fresh, the dream having left me too raw even to consider allowing him to touch me.
I shoved myself backward until I struck the headboard, frantic.
He froze, his hulking frame almost comical in the way he hunched forward, seeming to decide how to respond. “I just want to see your nose. I can smell blood.”
Right. I scolded myself for my over-the-top reaction. There was no reason to be extra right now, to behave this way. All it did was prove how unstable I was, that I was weak and afraid.
So I removed my hands, finding that, yeah, blood coated my palms.
“You really do have a hard head,” I muttered to wrest back some sense of control.
He smiled, though it wasn’t as easy as it had been before, almost as though he humored me. “I’ve heard that before. Can’t really deny it. I don’t think you broke it, but it’s going to bruise. Can I?”
I swallowed down the rejection. Saying no would just prove that I was still out of control. “Sure, just…”
“I won’t touch you,” he promised and came a little closer, crouching beside the bed.
I snorted—despite the pain—at that. As if crouching was going to make him look much smaller. When I’d tried to make myself small, it had made sense, but it did little for a hulking esper like Kenyon.
The moment his powers touched me, relief poured through the throbbing space around my nose.
The pain lessened instantly, reminding me that Kenyon wasn’t just a healer, but a high-rank one.
This made a joke of the few low-level healers who had tried to work on me.
Those had felt like someone resetting a bone, but this?
It was more like slipping into a warm, epsom salt bath, the instant relaxation lessening the pain.
I normally avoided healing, having given in only during the few times when it had seemed impossible to refuse it.
Once I had gotten into a minor car crash, just a fender bender that had fucked my neck up.
Another time, an especially bad virus had left me in bed for a few days.
Both times the Guild had sent over a healer, and I hadn’t had a way to say no, and given they weren’t serious injuries, they’d sent bargain-basement-level espers.
If this was how high-rank healers worked, I could see why people enjoyed using them.
The pain lessened until it disappeared, until I wouldn’t have had any idea it had hurt at all. The blood didn’t go away, of course, but at least it no longer ached.
Kenyon let out a long breath, as though relieved, then got up and walked into the bathroom. The water splashed from the sink, and he returned with a damp washcloth. He reached out at first, before stopping and simply holding the cloth to me.
I took it, the water warm, then used it to wipe at my face. I hesitated at first, afraid it would hurt, only to find that there was still no pain. I cleaned my face until no itchiness remained, then wiped my hands as well.
“Better?” I asked.
Kenyon nodded and took the washcloth back, tossing it into the laundry in the bathroom.
When he returned, he seemed unsure of what to do. It was like once we had passed the initial problem, once he wasn’t focused on fixing my issue, he didn’t know what else to say.
Which amused me, given the way he normally spoke.
“Was that a nightmare?” His voice was soft, careful.
I wanted to tell him no, but I saw no point in lying about it. It was pretty obvious, wasn’t it?
“Yeah.”
“Have you talked to anyone about it?”
“What, like a therapist?” I let out a laugh I wasn’t sure actually tricked anyone, that probably screamed, ‘I’m almost hysterical’ rather than, ‘look how casual I am about this,’ like I’d been going for. “Nightmares are normal. They happen to everyone.”
Kenyon stared back, a rare moment of seriousness that I didn’t care for at all from him. “You could see a mentalist. They can sometimes unstick things in the mind.”
“Let an esper root around in my brain? I think fucking not.” The very idea made me recoil.
“The fact that you react the way you do to touch and then have nightmares like that makes me think there’s probably something you need to work through.”
I huffed softly. If even Kenyon figured that much out, it said I wasn’t doing very well, didn’t it? The man had the brains of a golden retriever—and the temperament of one—so if he spotted enough clues to give him that idea, then I’d been shit at keeping myself together.
He rubbed the back of his neck, his gaze lowered. “I know it’s easy to think we can deal with stuff ourselves, but it’s not a problem to ask for help.”
“By letting someone into my brain? No, thanks, that sounds like a horrible idea.”
“It really does help.”
“You would know?” I shot those words out like a challenge. Men, especially espers, sure didn’t like to admit weakness. I’d never heard of any willing to do something like go to therapy, or even the pseudo-therapy of letting another esper help them.
“Yeah, I would. I had some things happen when I first became an esper that I couldn’t seem to get past. They kept showing up in my life, and I had an esper help me.
It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t easy, but it was worth it.
” He shrugged and tucked his hands into the pockets of his pants, looking uncomfortable with the topic but willing to say it.
Which took me entirely by surprise. If he hadn’t given a fuck, it wouldn’t have impressed me as much. It was pretty obvious this wasn’t something he wanted to say, but still chose to.
Still, him putting his wellbeing and gray matter into the hands of an esper didn’t mean shit to me.
Plus, he was an idiot. Maybe the whole fucking with his brain thing was part of the reason?
“I’ve had an esper fuck around in my head once already,” I admitted softly. “It’s not something I will ever allow to happen again, not if I can prevent it.”
Kenyon froze at my words, or rather probably at the venom within them.
Then again, people like Kenyon saw espers as heroes, as the good guys. The idea that anyone might not trust them, or might even actively distrust them, didn’t work well for them. They couldn’t come to terms with that.
And there really was no good reason to keep needling him. He couldn’t help how he saw the world—it was based on his experience, after all. Instead, I pushed forward to change the subject. “Why were you trying to wake me up, anyway? More breakfast?”
He didn’t answer right away, as though weighing the pros and cons of letting me get away with the change of subject. He seemed willing to give in, since he nodded. “No breakfast, at least not here. We’ve got a job.”
And just like that, I wasn’t sure if my day was going to get better or worse…