Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
Considering the way Tia and Riley were talking when they left, I don’t expect her back anytime soon.
Still, I hurry through the familiar steps of my nighttime routine—wash face, brush teeth, sleep shorts, tank top, pillows, headphones, sleep app.
It’s not a perfect solution—as this afternoon’s visit to the dream-beach proved—but it’s the best I’ve got, and I close my eyes as I count each inhale and exhale, focusing on the rhythm rather than the shadows gathering at the edges of my consciousness.
In. Out. In. Out.
A gentle heaviness spreads through my limbs. My thoughts slow, drift. The boundary between wakefulness and sleep grows thin, permeable.
Too much. I need to wake up.
In. Out. In…
Deeper.
No. No, no, no. I need to claw myself back to wakefulness.
Floating. Drifting…
I need—
Without warning, my exhaustion betrays me, and I plummet down, down, down into warm sand. The same beach.
The ball, the little boy with his too-wide smile full of needle teeth.
All so terrifyingly familiar.
I start to take a step, and the sand hardens around my ankles, trapping me as a shadow falls over me, and I look up to see a woman astride a dragon as dark as midnight against the pale blue sky.
Her long black hair whips in the wind, and her silver lasso snaps around my chest before I can even scream, yanking me skyward so fast the breath leaves my lungs.
“Who—” I begin, but my question dissolves into a startled cry as I’m lifted hundreds of feet above the ground.
Wake up! I strain, trying to push myself out of sleep. Dammit, wake up!
But I can’t. I’m trapped in this nightmare, all my attempts to break free accomplishing nothing.
The woman—I know her!—pulls me close, her violet eyes examining me as if I were a stray cat she’d found in her yard.
“You are no threat,” she whispers.
Then she releases me, and I’m falling, my throat raw from my screams—until I land soft as you please at the mouth of that familiar cave carved from obsidian.
Dozens of yellow-eyed creatures that look like red-black chess pieces shaped from molten lava line a worn path, and though their creepy eyes follow me, they make no move to attack.
Somehow, their restraint is more frightening than violence would be.
“Walk,” the woman’s voice commands from somewhere above, the flapping of her dragon’s wings stirring my loose hair.
I do as she says. I don’t really have a choice.
I recognize the small pool at the cave’s entrance.
Beyond it, a tunnel stretches into darkness, lit by flickering torches.
And from that darkness, a man approaches, tall and straight, with a dark coat that seems woven from shadows fluttering behind him with each long stride.
The silver-eyed man from my dreams. And my mother’s.
There’s something hypnotic about him. Something compelling, and I find myself stepping forward without thinking, and when I realize I’m moving, I have to fight not to continue.
The man is charisma personified, every molecule oozing with self-confidence. Even from a distance, I can see the silver of his eyes—eyes that haven’t simply noticed me but have utterly captured me.
And there, on his left cheek, is the scar that’s a perfect mirror image of the one I’ve seen on Golden Eyes.
“Who…” I begin, but the word dies on my lips as he stops inches away, his breath a whisper of heat against my skin.
“I am King Adric,” he says. “And you, Cora, are mine.”
Then he pulls me close and captures me in a kiss so wild and deep that it shatters reason and steals time, until all I know in the world is this man and this touch and a soul-burning need that I’m afraid will render me to ashes before my next breath.
When he finally pulls back, I’m completely undone, my mind a flurry of questions I can’t seem to grasp.
“King?” I repeat, remembering the entry in my mother’s journal. “King of where?”
He silences me with a finger to my lips, his silver eyes hard on mine, full of longing and something that looks strangely like hope.
“I don’t understand. Why am I here?”
His thumb brushes my lower lip. “You must choose my love. Choose rightly, and all the answers will be yours.”
“Choose?”
His expression shifts—frustration, or maybe calculation—flickering across those stunning features. Unlike Golden Eyes’ scar, which seems to reflect the price of many battles, this man wears his like a badge of honor.
I don’t know him, and yet I do. And in that moment, all I want is to turn and run. I want it as much as I want him to pull me into his arms and kiss me again.
Clearly, I’m losing my mind.
His sigh stirs my hair. I should be terrified. Freaked out. At the very least, confused. But all I can feel is the echo of that kiss still burning through me. A kiss that felt far too much like coming home.
Before I can ask what I’m supposed to choose, the woman’s voice cuts through the moment. “My lord, the Hunter’s dragon circles above.”
The king scoffs. “You fear for no reason, Kali. Let him search all he wants. It doesn’t matter now. The time is not right.”
Adric steps back, and while I mourn the distance, I can also breathe again.
“Go back to him, my love, my queen.”
“Queen?” I repeat. “What are you talking about?”
He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear with heartbreaking gentleness. “Accept your destiny, Cora Lyte. And when you’re ready to embrace true power…” He trails off, his smile devastating. “Well, you know where to find me.”
Before I can process his words—much less everything else—Kali’s hand clamps around my arm, yanking me away so hard it feels like she’ll rip the limb off. “This way. Quickly.”
She drags me through the tunnel, her grip bruising as I stumble to keep up. My lips still burn from the king’s kiss, my mind a torment of wild thoughts and confusion and desperate longing.
The torchlight blurs as we move faster and faster until everything tilts. The tunnel warps around us, the air rippling like heat rising off a sunbaked street. Then Kali’s gone, the cave dissolving into smoke as the ground vanishes beneath me.
I’m falling again. Tumbling through darkness.
A golden rope lashes around my waist, yanking me sideways, and I crash onto soft moss at the base of an enormous redwood, the impact knocking the breath from my lungs.
Golden Eyes stands over me, his expression grim as he coils the rope back to his hip.
“You saved me again,” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “Not yet.”
Before I can ask what he means, a piercing screech splits the air. We both look up to see a silver dragon tearing through the canopy, its breath of flame surging toward us.
Golden Eyes grabs my upper arms, pulling me close enough that I can see flecks of copper in his golden irises.
“Every time,” he says, his voice rough with emotion, “I tell you to forget me. Not this time.”
His palm cups the back of my head, fingers tangling in my hair as he searches my face with desperate intensity. My breath catches as he leans in, his intention clear in the way his gaze drops to my lips.
He’s going to kiss me. And despite everything—the danger, the strangeness, the fact that this is all a dream—I find myself tilting my face upward to meet his.
But the kiss never comes.
“Remember,” he whispers instead, his breath warm against my lips.
Then I’m falling backward, his hands on my shoulders propelling me through a gossamer barrier into swirling mist. As I tumble through endless gray, I catch one last glimpse of him—drawing his sword to face the dragon’s fiery breath alone.
“No!” I cry, reaching uselessly toward him.
Then the flames engulf him, and all I can do is scream as the man who saved me burns before my eyes, his silhouette blackening against the inferno before disappearing altogether.
I’m still screaming when I lurch upright in bed, the sound ripping from my throat and echoing all around me.
Sweat plasters my T-shirt to my body, and my heart hammers so violently I can feel each beat in my fingertips.
For a few seconds, I can’t move, convinced the bed will melt beneath me like the lava in my dream.
It takes several disoriented seconds to register my surroundings—the narrow twin bed, the splash of moonlight coming in through the small window, the faint glow of fairy lights from the other side of the room.
My dorm.
I’m in my room. It had all been a nightmare.
And unlike my mother, I’d once again made it back alive.
“Cora?”
I turn to see Tia, now kneeling on her bed, her eyes wide with concern. “It’s okay. You’re okay. It was just a bad dream.”
“Yeah. I’m okay.” I force the words past the tightness in my throat. “I’m sorry I woke you.” I fight the urge to cringe. We’ve known each other less than a day, and already I’m giving her reasons to regret the roommate lottery. “I’m fine. Really.”
Apparently, she doesn’t believe me, because she hurries to dampen a towel at our in-room sink, then perches on the side of my bed as she lays the cool, damp cloth against my forehead, the sensation feeling a bit like heaven.
“You’re okay,” she whispers, and I nod and breathe, nod and breathe.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I shake my head, then glance at the clock. Three in the morning. “I think I’ll try to sleep again.”
Her brow furrows. “Do you want me to stay awake until you do?”
I blink, reminded of my mother. She used to tell me how Uncle Finn would do that for her. I shake my head. “No, it’s okay. Really. I think I’ll sleep through the rest of the night.”
She doesn’t look convinced, but she nods and goes back to her bed, and I close my eyes as if everything is back on track and I’m doing peachy keen with a scoop of awesome.
I’m not. Something’s off. Something’s different.
And it’s not just that I’m in an unfamiliar place.
Something about the dream had been different.
Not just the intensity or the vivid detail, but them.
Adric, whom I’ve never been that close to before, but who entices me in a way that’s achingly familiar.
And, of course, there’s the weirdness, too. I mean, he called me his queen. His queen! Seriously, what the hell?
And then there’s Golden Eyes, who’d pushed me to safety while he faced certain death. Or did he? Can he die? Is he even real?
Is he Chase?
Did I put the face of my real-life protector from four years ago into my dreams?
Or did the protector in my dreams find me—and save me—in the real world?
Am I really meant to be a queen in some strange nightmare land? And is Golden Eyes trying to keep that from happening?
If so, why?
For that matter, why on earth would I be a queen?
I don’t know the answers. But for the first time, I know the questions.
And now I’m thinking that I should have asked for Chase’s phone number. Because I’m pretty sure that he has the answers I need.