Chapter 28
TRISTAN
The room was dark, a never-ending abyss of emptiness dragging me into its void.
Dreams like this were becoming more frequent lately, but this one felt…
different. It was as if the shadows were reaching for me, but not in the way that my own power does.
This was someone else’s. They began to latch around my wrists and ankles like shackles, pulling me down as if chains bound my limbs to an invisible floor.
Then, before I had time to react, my entire body was ripped downward.
I fell into an empty, bottomless pit as the shadows crawled over my body, swallowing me. Once they reached my throat, my airway constricted, and I could no longer breathe.
“Wake up!” I heard nearby. The voice was familiar, but they sounded so far away.
The veins in my head were pulsing now as my body fought for air that wasn’t coming. I wanted to claw at my own throat—release the hold that these invisible hands had around it, but I couldn’t move my arms.
“Tristan!” The voice yelled again. “Wake up!”
I woke to the feel of someone holding my head. I was in my bed still, but my body had been turned onto its side. It felt like my limbs were as stiff as iron, but my heart raced too rapidly; I thought it was going to burst.
“It’s okay, Tristan,” Mara whispered from somewhere nearby.
I couldn’t turn my head to see her, but just knowing she was there gave me some level of comfort.
“Breathe… You have to breathe!”
I can’t, is what I wanted to tell her. My mind was panicking as my chest continued to tighten, and I felt my lips begin to tingle.
But as stars danced in my vision, a strange image seemed to flash across my mind.
The black dots almost appeared to take the form of a…
face. It disappeared so fast that I couldn’t tell if it was real or not, but something about the girl nulled the fear that had trapped me.
Then, like a cord snapped apart, I sucked in the most painful breath I had ever experienced. My arms and legs ached with something fierce, and my chest still shook from the aftermath, but I could finally move again.
“Thank the gods,” Mara rasped, forcing me to sit up as she wrapped her arms around me. “You’re okay. You’re alright.”
That was the first time I felt the wrath of my father’s power—his true intent in what he had done to me that night in the tunnels.
I was only half the size of Mara at the time, and the face I saw? I knew who it was now. If these lords thought that they could steal the only salvation I had ever known…
They thought wrong.