CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
ELIAS
Elias paced back and forth, his arms crossed tight over his bare chest, eyes locked on the black screen of his phone where it rested on the counter.
Minutes bled into eternity as he waited, willing the damn thing to just ring, chime, fucking anything to let him know Cadi was alive and somewhere safe.
She could be anywhere. Every instinct screamed at him to go after her, to find her. Only the jagged memory of the terror in her eyes when he had reached for her stopped him.
He was the last person she wanted to see.
A sharp trill cut the silence. Elias lunged for his phone. “Cadi?”
“No, but I’ve got her,” Sera replied.
He let out a shaky breath as a new hollowness settled in his chest. It wasn’t Cadi, but at least she was safe. The stone counter bit against his elbows as he slumped forward and pressed his forehead into his palm.
“Is she okay?” The words scraped out in a ragged whisper.
“No, she isn’t fucking okay,” Sera hissed, her voice low. “Her boyfriend just had a gun to her head. She’s traumatized.”
Elias fisted his hair as a sob broke from his throat. “Fuck, Sera, it wasn’t—you know what she means to me. I could never—”
“I need you to take a breath. I know it wasn’t you, and so does she.”
The air rushed from his lungs, his fist thumping against the counter as he pulled another breath in slowly through his nose.
“Now. Tell me what you saw,” she demanded.
The words poured out: how Oneirios had appeared in his dream, his threats to take Cadi, how Elias had been trapped in his own body when he woke. His voice broke off when he reached the bathroom, the memory of what he had watched himself do still raw and bleeding.
“Elias,” Sera said when he finished, the urgency in her tone making his hair stand on end. “Did he see any of your thoughts? Anything that would compromise you?”
Elias swallowed hard and shook his head. “No. The door held.”
Sera’s sigh sounded in his ears, and he felt a very small piece of himself echo her reaction.
He was suddenly exceedingly grateful that she had insisted on training with him over the years on ways to compartmentalize and protect anything related to their plans or his involvement, just in case Oneirios ever decided to rifle through the sleeping mind of his high priest.
“Sera,” he said, “how was this possible? He’s been in my dreams before. Talked to me. Shown me things. But he’s never been able to fully control me. Not even the binding gives him that much power.”
The line hummed with silence. “I don’t know.”
Elias swore and pushed off the counter, resuming his pacing.
“The logic of it doesn’t make sense,” she continued, “dreams aren’t what we would normally consider sentient, but in a way, they are almost like a type of mythic in their own right. They have rules and limits … the dream would push back at that kind of violation. Even against him.”
Elias’s steps stilled, his eyes snapping up to lock on his own reflection in the tinted window. “I think it did,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
His fingers wove into his hair as he resumed his path through the kitchen. “At the end, right before he woke me up, he seemed … I don’t know, fragile. Weaker. And he was bleeding. Like it was hurting him.”
Sera was quiet for a moment, and Elias forced himself to be patient while she worked things out. “That would make sense. He’s never been able to do this before, so who knows what kind of toll it would take on him. But he’s getting stronger.”
She went quiet again, and Elias was beginning to wonder if the call had dropped when her voice drifted back across the line.
“I can pull something together, but it’ll take time. You need to keep your guard up until you hear from me. We’ll figure this out.”
His stomach dropped.
Time.
They didn’t have time. Oneirios was in his head and Cadi was the target. He needed a fix now.
“What the hell does that even mean?” he snapped.
“It means we’re in uncharted territory, Elias” Sera bit back, “This isn’t something he is supposed to be able to do, so I don’t exactly have something ready-made for this. I’ll let you know when I do.”
His fingers flexed against the cold stone. She was the goddess of witchcraft; there was no way she didn’t have something.
“Your entire place is warded. Can’t you just do that here?” he demanded.
“Wards don’t work like that,” Sera explained, “especially not with your binding. My wards would mask your physical location, but they won’t shield your dreams from his sights.
The two of you will need something that can protect your sleeping states and since those aren’t something I can easily access, that makes things tricky. ”
He squeezed his eyes shut, focusing to control the simmering heat that had begun to rise beneath his skin. Getting hostile with Sera wouldn’t help anything. She was their best shot at getting this mess sorted. Slowly, he dipped his head in a quiet nod to no one. “Okay …”
“I need you to trust me. I’ll keep you posted. And E …” Her voice softened. “Until I call … maybe keep your distance. She knows it wasn’t you, but this isn’t something she can just get over.”
Tears stung the corners of his eyes, spilling over before he could stop them. He scrubbed the heel of his hand against his cheek. “Yeah … keep her safe.”
“Always.”
Three tones sounded in his ear, and the line went dead.
Elias folded into the counter as a raw, broken sound clawed free from his chest. One fist pounded against the cold granite while the other released his phone to clatter against stone …
As the last, fragile piece of him crashed away with it.