“Stop! Don’t!” I yelled, pressing harder, but the blood kept flowing—hot and thick—dripping down my wrist and soaking the velvet cushion. His chest heaved as he gurgled and choked on the blood spilling from his mouth.
This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real.
“Help!” I shrieked. His pulse was fading. “Someone! Please!”
But no one came.
“There are three classes of power in our world—physical, mental, and runes. Which do you suspect this is, daughter?” The king’s voice rebounded off the walls of the sitting room.
I whipped around, searching for him, but he was nowhere to be found. My hair prickled, every strand standing on end as his chilling presence pressed in on me.
“Help him, please,” I begged, turning back to Oliver—and found an empty settee. The floral pattern was undisturbed. Pristine.
I shot to my feet. “What?—”
The room dissolved, shifting into a different nightmare—one I’d already lived.
Cold metal chains pinched my skin, their unforgiving grip splaying me out for Michael’s eyes. He circled me. A grin twisted hislips as he turned his black blade this way and that, eager to press it into my flesh.
The king’s words vanished, replaced by suffocating panic.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head vehemently against the table. “You’re not real.”
My heart pounded, lungs straining as I fought to breathe. Michael’s eyes twinkled with disgusting relief, like he’d finally get to unleash his pent-up sadistic nature.
“You’re not real!” I shouted, my voice trembling. My body betrayed me, trembling harder.
I had to wake myself up. I couldn’t live through this again, nightmare or not.
He laughed in my face, raising the dagger.
I recoiled, twisted in my chains. Uncontrollable tears slipped from my eyes. I wouldn’t beg. I refused. But I knew what happened next.
“Answer the question, Lucille, and it’ll stop,” the king’s voice sliced through the fog of my panic, making the scene waver.
I froze, latching onto the disruption. Something about it tugged at my mind, demanding I remember. The thoughts hovered just beneath the surface—so close I could almost reach them. And then Michael’s dagger glinted.
It plunged toward my arm.
“This isn’t real,” I choked out, losing my moment of clarity. “I need to wake up.”
“You’re right—it’s not real. But if it’s not real, then what is it?” His words were like pebbles dropped into still water, fracturing the nightmare’s surface.
The dagger hovered inches from my skin, the scene blurring again, and with it, everything—Michael, the chains, the dark basement walls—distorted, shifting in and out of focus. For one fleeting moment, I felt the tight grip of confusion.
It’s not real. Shifting in and out of focus. Distorted.
I’d seen those words. I’d read them late last night.
There are three classes of power in our world—physical, mental, and runes. Which do you suspect this is, daughter?
Michael’s dagger solidified, sinking into my skin. The fiery slice tore through my arm. “Mental! Hallucination!” I forced out as Michael dragged the dagger up my arm, sawing apart my flesh. I screamed and screamed, my voice raw. I couldn’t take this. I thought he said it’d stop. I thought answering would make it all end.
But then, just as quickly, it came to an end.
Something—someone—released the hold on my mind, and the hallucination dissolved.
I jolted awake, my body thrumming with the aftermath of the pain.
