It was in that moment that, for the second time in my life, I prayed to my gods for someone other than myself.
The dreams always started the same.
I was back in the coven. A young child watching as two people were burned alive with magic in front of her.
The same dream over and over again. It happened almost every single night. When I closed my eyes, the first thing I would see was the pain on my parents’ faces.
I learned that if I concentrated hard enough, I could close my eyes. I could try to drown out the screams. I could pretend like they weren't dying right before my eyes.
I had blocked it out for so long and I wanted to keep it that way. But there was something—or should I saysomeone—forcing me to come to terms with it.
“You have to face it,” the seer, Max, said from somewhere in the room, his voice louder than the screams.
“Stop showing me this,” I asked, my voice hoarse from the effort it took to keep my screams inside me.
“The answers to your future are in your past. If you push this away?—”
“I don't care!”
But it was a mistake because the moment I yelled, my eyes popped open, and I was met with the bodies of my parents engulfed by flames. It hit me like a ton of bricks. My chest twisted, my gut turned, and I felt like I was going to vomit.
My coven leader was right by my side, his hand on my shoulder.
For the first time, Max showed himself in front of me, blocking most of the bodies. Seeing him in his child form brought me back to myself, making me realize that this was a dream. That it couldn't hurt me.
No matter how much I didn't want to look at it, at least it wasn't happening right now.
And that's when I noticed something I hadn’t before.
The runes.
I couldn't make them out, but I could tell that they were different from the ones we originally had on the cathedral floor. And they weren’t just near my parents—they were everywhere, their magic shining just as bright as the flames.
“The coven will burn.“
Max met me with a smile, but it looked twisted, and suddenly his face started morphing. It changed into the face of my coven leader. Then Aurelia’s father. Then her brother, who lunged at me, and?—
I sat up with a gasp, my breathing coming heavy. Sweat dripped down my face, and my heart raced in my chest. There were hands on me, and I quickly tried to push them off.
Fear ate at me as I scrambled to get away from the hands. It felt like they were chasing me, forcing me down.
“Cedar!”
Vesper's voice brought me back. I blinked once, twice, three times. The room started to come into view. It was the same room she and I, and once, Aurelia, had occupied in Atlas’s clan. Familiar territory that calmed my heart.
Vesper’s eyes were turning red as they looked at me, but her expression was pained.
“It was just a dream,” she said in a soothing voice. “I tried to wake you, but I couldn’t.”
I let out a sigh and let my head hang while she rubbed soothing circles over my back.
I tried to push away the images of my parents. But I couldn't. So I kept my mouth shut, unable to tell if the dream I had was the seer trying to get in touch with me or just my fucked-up trauma.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
There was silence and then the shifting of the bedsheets as she got closer.
“They happen almost every night.”
