My stomach growled. Loudly.
I sighed and pushed myself up to a sitting position on the bed. Something glimmered in the sunlight, and I lowered my hand to the scattering of feathers lying upon the pillow. They were Caliel’s deep blue, gleaming in the light.
But as I raised one, I was, again, curiously reluctant to touch the tips. I finally convinced myself to do so and wondered at my surprise that they were soft.
Like a feather.
What did I expect? Why did I keep having this impression that they could cut me?
That dream was odd,I sent to Caliel.
At first, I didn’t think he’d answer. But then he did, in a rather vague tone.You have vivid dreams.
I got the feeling he didn’t want to discuss it. Which only added to my sudden restlessness.
Powder. I needed powder.
I put the feathers on the dresser and got out of bed.
10
Caliel
As Bree rose and headed for the cafeteria, I curled up within her mind—and brooded.
I felt peculiarly disconnected, as though the call I had heeded in the dream continued into our current reality. At the time, I had told myself I had wanted to follow it. But now, I admitted I’d had little choice.
It had hooked into my soul and compelled me.
My chaotic thoughts circled away, and back again. Who was that young man? If it were not for the fact that we had actually seen him in Drosfi, I could write him off as a figment of Bree’s admittedly vivid imagination.
There was no proof that the man we had met in the dream bore any resemblance to the real thing. But the dream had been so peculiar—not your typical misfirings of Bree’s overheated mind. Sex had been part of it, but the entire luring thing was inexplicable.
Especially as it had worked. His power to control me had been impressive.
A dream. It had only been a dream. And I had bigger worries.
With all the excitement of the eruption and saving the Matriarch and her family, I had not had much time to thinkabout it. This partnership with Bree was still so new. And if I were honest, it fulfilled something deep within me.
Perhaps that was the problem. Because since we had begun working as a team, I had experienced a subtle shift. Fighting her had given me a purpose, a single-minded goal that had kept me sane in an insane situation.
Not only sane, butintact.
But in order to form the new partnership, I had to drop the barriers holding me together. And now, it was as though bits of me were leaking away. Becoming part of Bree, rather than of me.
That it feltrightdid not change what was happening. How long would it be before I would cease to exist at all?
Perhaps it was time to ask myself if it mattered.
My body was long gone, and my soul injected into a woman that now meant a lot to me. Yet I could never be more than a mental specter to her. All signs pointed to her having a future with the ex-Dragon. And that young man in her dream…
Regardless, Victor, the eruption, rescuing the Matriarch—what they had all proven to me was that I could never truly protect her.
And maybe that was what the dream had been all about. Proving that I was truly helpless. That despite our new partnership, I was still merely a puppet.
That when she spoke, I would have to listen.
Only now, it was not an involuntary thing. Because she had become something so much more than a body that housed my spirit.
