“What happened,parum anguis?” he asks gently as he studies my face.
I’m covered in a cold sweat, and when I wipe my arm across my forehead, it comes away with a sparkle, as if my magic is leaking from me. The others all watch me expectantly, waiting for an answer.
“Just a nightmare,” I whisper. “Nothing more.”
“Something like that is not just a nightmare,” Grim points out. “Magic was flinging from your fingertips as if you were in a fight.”
Biting my lip, I shift nervously where I sit cradled in Nero’s coils. “I saw them,” I admit.
“Who?” Krug asks, leaning in.
“The old king. Kulmak, and Emelyn. I saw them both in my dream.”
Silence. All of my monsters stare at me with wide eyes.
“Is this the first time you have dreamed of him?” Zetros inquires, worry in his gaze.
I hesitate. I haven’t brought up the dreams before now because they didn’t seem important, but considering the way they are looking at me now, I might have made the wrong call.
With a grimace, I shake my head.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Grim rumbles. He straightens and crosses his arms over his expansive chest, and he looks even more like Kulmak. I wonder again if they are related, or if that slant of the eyes and shape of the nose is common in minotaurs.
“I didn’t want to worry you,” I murmur, looking down to avoid their eyes.
Strong fingers grip my chin and force my gaze up again, making it clash with my kraken’s. “Here, in the Dead Lands, dreams are not just dreams,measma.”
“Then what are they?” I ask, desperate to understand.
“They show the truth,” Bracken replies, and for once, there’s no joking mirth in his tone. His voice resonates with seriousness. “They show the past, future, and sometimes even the present.”
My fingers start to clench and unclench on their own.
You’ll be the death of every last one of them.
“What does it mean?” I rasp out, terrified to think that those words could have been for the future.
“Your magic must be calling it forth,” Krug says, but even with that explanation in the air, I don’t feel any better.
In fact, the worry on their faces only makes me edgier.
The small bites of magic on my fingertips begin to move.
ChapterTwenty-Eight
NERO
“We need to get to the castle as fast as possible,” Krug states, his head tilted back into the wind. “I can feel Cora’s magic in the air, and if I can, then every other monster in the vicinity can too.”
“Looks like you’ll be riding me,” I tell Cora, and I am rewarded with the sight of her blushing. I lean in closer, letting my lips touch the shell of her ear. “Later, maybe I’ll let you ride me another way.”
The flush brightens, and I lean back in amusement, addicted to the effect I have on her.
“Cruel, wicked snake,” she says, but her eyes are bright, unlike how they’d been when she awoke screaming.
Earlier, her eyes had been bright with fear and dread, and she’d been so desperate to get away from whatever was in her mind that it had taken her far too long to understand she was safe. We still haven’t asked exactly what the dream was about, what scene she saw, but it couldn’t have been pretty. That scream was shrill and terrified. I hadn’t had the heart to ask what part of history she saw.
“We keep moving,” Grim commands, taking the lead as he always does. “We don’t stop again unless we have to.”
