Chapter Twenty
Yun
Darkness engulfed me. I knew it was a nightmare, but that didn’t remove the sting or fear. Even if I knew I’d wake up in a safe bed, even if I knew that there weren’t actually monsters surrounding me, that didn’t stop my physical reaction to a nightmare that felt so real.
I didn’t close my eyes, didn’t hide from it—hiding never helped.
I’d tried it so many years ago. No matter where I’d hidden, it hadn’t changed a thing. Monsters could smell me, were drawn to the scent, to their cure, even if they didn’t know directly that was what it was.
So I stood tall, the world shifting around me as the nightmare changed, some of it a memory, some of it an amalgamation of my own fears. Monsters ran around my feet, snapping their teeth breaths away from me, as though to remind me that they were there, that they could tear me apart if they wished.
Or perhaps it was better to say they would if no one was stopping them.
“My dear.” The voice of the one who had stopped them came to me, my savior and my tormentor all in one.
He was a shadow, as he always was in the dreams, all details obscured.
Sometimes I wondered if I remembered his face at all.
Perhaps it had gone away through the years, drifted to distant memory, then forgotten?
Or maybe I just refused to confront it anymore, too scared and traumatized by it, unable to face it again.
It meant he was just shadows and darkness and that damned voice.
I cowered, no matter if I’d told myself not to flinch, not to run. I couldn’t help it. “You’re not real,” I said again, like a chant.
“Oh, but I am. It’s almost time. I can feel it. I miss how you taste and your screams and your begging. You escaped me once, but it won’t happen again.”
“You’re not real.”
“Are you sure about that? Maybe I’m just a figment of your imagination, nothing but a spark of memory and terror that you replay over and over again.
” He came closer, my feet rooted in place, keeping me still.
He walked around me as he spoke, humor coloring the words.
“Or maybe I planted some bit of me deep inside your brain as I was playing around in there. Maybe it’s still there, whispering to you, just a mirror of me that you can’t ever dig free. ”
That terrified me almost more than anything else, the thought of having any of him inside me, any of him still there, forging a bond between us.
“Or maybe this isn’t a figment or a fragment or anything else. Maybe it’s me, since we’re bonded, and I’m talking to you.”
“That’s not possible,” I said.
“Are you sure? You probably didn’t think anything that happened was possible, but it still all happened.
Maybe we’re bonded across realms, and I’m just reminding you to get ready.
Get your things in order. Do whatever you have to do because you don’t have long before the portal opens again, before I come for you. Make no mistake, Yun, you are mine.”
He reached out, gripping my chin as he’d done before, his fingers like shards of ice that buried themselves inside me.
That old sensation of him slipping into my mind came back to me, the pain of it, the way he’d cracked my brain open and forced his way inside.
It was a violation unlike anything I’d known possible, the way he’d taken over my thoughts, guided them, stole my freewill.
It felt so real, just like back then, when he’d done this so many times.
I cried out at the way corruption forced itself into me.
It wasn’t the way it happened with espers, not the way I’d experienced it so many times since, but the difference between taking a drink of water and drowning.
The pain overwhelmed me, and only his laugh kept me rooted.
The dream collapsed in on itself, disappearing, causing me to bolt upright, gasping, my throat sore.
Had I been screaming?
The dreams were getting worse night by night, taking more of me, going further. Why? Was it the stress of guiding, or perhaps the anxiety as we approached The Pitt opening again?
That made sense, even if it didn’t feel quite right.
The dream had felt so real, like that place had trapped me yet again, like the last decade hadn’t passed.
I swallowed down the sick in my throat, past the roughness there, praying no one had heard me, that I’d gotten through this little tiny meltdown with some privacy. I doubted it, since I was in a house full of espers with heightened senses, but I could hope.
The light poured in from outside, telling me that I’d slept through the night.
I had no idea who put me into bed, and for once, I didn’t give a damn.
They’d risked enough to move me, but at least it had given me a good night’s sleep—minus the nightmare.
I didn’t have to worry about guiding for a while.
I’d guided them fully, ensured that every last bit of corruption was pulled from their bodies.
I wanted to shake off the dream, to forget everything that had happened. Wanting to do it and having it happen, were totally different matters. No matter what I did, that memory clung to me, threatening to drag me back.
Eventually, I gave up hiding. I headed downstairs to see the others. It was unusual for all of them to be in the house at the same time, so it wasn’t a shock that only Carter and Ingram were there.
We had three days until the dungeon opened. Three days before I had to work with another squad. I’d hardly figured out how to deal with these espers, let alone now having to add in extras I didn’t even know.
Still, complaining about it wasn’t going to do a fucking thing. At least that’s what I told myself, since I didn’t see a real way out of it.
“Sleep well?”
“Sure,” I answered.
It wasn’t the truth, but I had a feeling he already knew.
No matter how much I wanted to deny it, there was a good chance that he’d heard me screaming, along with the rest of the house.
During training, I had once heard that there were no secrets among espers, and I understood why they said that now.
At least he didn’t ask me about it. There was no reason to air my dirty laundry or let them see just how fucked up I’d been.
If there was one truth to our world, it was that everyone was fucked up.
We all had our problems, we all had the things that we just couldn’t handle.
I saw no reason to air mine out for their perusal.
It did make me wonder about their past, though.
What exactly had happened that made them the way they were?
I knew the story I’d gotten, but it just didn’t fit well with the men that I’d spent time with so far.
It wasn’t like I thought they were perfect by any means, don’t get me wrong.
They were selfish and self-centered and difficult at the best of times, but the idea that they’d purposely let people die?
That didn’t sound like them. Or maybe I was letting myself get carried away.
There was always a chance that this was nothing more than my reaction because I’d found a place that I sort of liked.
It was like the times women ignored all the red flags they saw in a man just because his ass looked fantastic in a pair of jeans.
The body’s reaction did not warrant an actual fact.
There was no reason for me to think that these men were anything other than what everybody else saw.
The truth was that people saw me a certain way too, and they weren’t entirely wrong. Sure, there might be a reason that I acted the way I did, there might be details that they weren’t privy to, but that didn’t make them wrong.
The entire idea of calling me Blizzard, for example.
It was an apt nickname, no matter how much I hated it.
And when it came down to it, it wasn’t as bad as a lot of the other names they could have used.
They could have called me ice queen or frigid or a million other insults that held some truth.
At least Blizzard sounded a little bad ass.
None of that really mattered at the end of the day.
I was here because I didn’t have a choice. I was here because everything had led me here and this was my last chance. If I thought life sucked now, all I had to do was think about what life would be like without the Guild.
I wouldn’t have a job, no one would want to hire me, rent to me or give me a place to live.
I’d have to take jobs that nobody in their right mind wanted to do.
What did it really matter if I wanted this to happen or not?
What I had to do was accept where I was and keep moving forward. That was all any of us got to do.
So I sat down to have breakfast with the other men.
I ignored all my fears, I ignored the way they stared at me as if they knew something.
We pretended they hadn’t heard me screaming, we pretended that we were one happy little squad, just like the Guild wanted.
At the end of the day, that was all that really mattered.
Just playing the game so you could play for another day.