Violent.
Electric.
She was coming.
Reverie was coming for me.
And Torren purred inside my skull,Ours…
I dragged a hand through my hair. “The attacks will begin again. But this time they will be aimed at the resistance.”
Sylvester squeaked from under the table. “Why not here?”
I smiled, teeth bared. “Because she needs to see that insubordination will not go unpunished and the best way to do that is to target the ones she loves.”
Claudia whispered, horrified, “And what happens when she reaches you?”
The shadows coiled around my throat like a lover’s hand. “I stop pretending to be sane.” I smirk, “And everyone learns just how much I’ve been holding back.”
Istalked back into my chambers, bloody and exhausted. I decided to fight with my Cryptfiends and destroyed quite a few of the warriors hoping to find Factions.
Ubel had been pissed, butfuck him. If they were this weak, then we didn’t need them.
I lay back on my bed and closed my eyes. I’d get cleaned up in a moment. The headache had come back and was blinding me with pain.
One instant, I was thinking about my plans to attack the tunnels in Nyberie.
The next?
A blinding flash of white.
Then gold.
Then blood.
Then her. Lilibet. The Queen.
Crowned in starlight, gown rippling like living magic, bare feet on the marble floor of her throne room. She turned toward me slowly, as if she had been waiting for this moment across centuries.
“Kratos,” she whispered.
And the world split open.
My knees nearly buckled. “No… no, don’t call me that?—”
“You were always Torren Kratos,” she said gently. “And you have always come back to me.”
Her voice carried memories?—
Mine.
Hers.
Ours.
A violent pulse cracked through the dream, and the throne room dissolved?—
—becoming a battlefield of shattered marble.
