There was no pain here. No heavy sensation of Evie’s affinity suffocating her own power. No gleeful laughter as the Diaforaté, Andras, beat her into submission.
The saint liked to vary her methods. She played with Aya, no better than a bored cat with a mouse caught between its claws. She’d let her awaken, that vise grip still locked around her power. She’d force water into Aya’s mouth, would threaten to drown her from the inside out if she did not swallow.
Aya considered letting her.
Because yes, perhaps unconsciousness was a blessing, but perhaps death would be even more so.
Yet Evie wouldn’t allow it. That undeniable power would seep through the remains of her shattered shield until it was controlling Aya’s very body.
Sip.
Swallow.
Sip.
Swallow.
Live.
And then, when Evie was satisfied, back under Aya would go. She never knew how it would happen. Evie’s power. Andras’s fists. All she knew is that it would come: a touch of affinity that slowed her pulse or swept air from her lungs until she fainted, a fist cuffing her face, a foot cracking her ribs, fingers strangling her throat.
She welcomed it. If not death, then at least this darkness was its own sort of solace.
But then the nightmares began.
The awkward bulge of Tova’s neck, broken and twisting her head at an unnatural angle, swam across her vision no matter the dream.
Aya was in her room, carving a fresh block of wood as her mother’s voice carried a song from the kitchen, and—
There.
Tova, in the corner, mouth open in a lost scream, skin ashen in death.
She was running through the woods with Tyr, the cold air of the Malas stinging her cheeks, a grin on her face as she accelerated. Her foot caught on a branch, and she stumbled and—
There.
Tova, dead at her feet.
She was in Will’s bed, moaning in pleasure and lost in the feeling of his hands, euphoric as she finished. She drifted off, warm and sated, only to awake sometime later, hand searching the space beside her for Will, and—
There.
Tova, head unnaturally cocked on the pillow, staring unseeingly at her in the dark.
There.
There.
There.
It was the tenth time, it was the hundredth time, when Lena’s eyes appeared, glinting across the darkness of her mind.
“It’s your fault, you know,” her fellow Dyminara’s voice echoed somewhere in the recesses of her dreams.
Of course she knew.
“Tova…it’s going to be okay…tell me you won’t use your power…”
