“Because I was with her in my dreamscape,” I snapped at my drunken roommate with frustration seeping out of me. “Not that I have to explain myself to you.”
“She’s a noble. Why would she spend her sleeping nights with someone like us?” His jaw clenched, and his horns extended along with his tail. “Fuck this,” he mumbled and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
I flinched from the sheer force of it, and Gumdrop woke with alarm, jerking awake similarly to how I had.
“Hey, buddy, it’s okay,” I soothed him in a sleepy voice. “It was just the door.”
His frilly gills fluttered with irritation as he scanned his surroundings.
“I know. Hemlock was very inconsiderate,” I agreed with a bob of my head.
With a flick of his tail, he propelled himself forward, gliding through the water and toward the glass. He pressed his tiny hands against the surface, peering at me anxiously.
“I promise, Gumdrop, it’s safe,” I cooed. “Go back to sleep.”
With one last glance at the now-quiet room, Gumdrop settled back into his cozy hiding spot underneath the big gumdrop house within the tank.
Once he was content, I laid back down and found myself thinking about Pandora again.
My magic reserves were overfilling with magical energy from her short visit. Any time I fed off those in my dreamscape, it would take a couple of hours a night to be adequately sustained. But with Pandora, it was only a few minutes.
Assurance rang through me as I reassured myself that Charlotte and Hemlock were both wrong. Pandora didn’t care about my nobility status. She cared for me because of who I was, and that meant more than she could ever know.
17
PANDORA
Agroan tore from my throat as my eyelids pried open like they were led weights. My vision blurred with distortion, and every sound of Dreadful moving on her side of the room felt like a shadow tendril piercing through my skull, amplifying the agonizing throbbing at my temples.
I’d spent the majority of last night on the beach in Reed’s dreamscape. I couldn’t get over the way the waves crashed against the shore. I’d read so much purple prose about the beach, so I expected a lot. It was my guilty pleasure to reread the pretty descriptive lines of the never-ending ocean out of the books I’d gotten from Mother.
I hadn’t expected to see the shorelines in real life. Technically, I still hadn’t since it was adream. But I wasn’t going to get hung up on that technicality. The experience meant a lot to me.
Reed’s cotton candy scent had drenched the air, and I even woke up smelling it. That was the one thing that didn’t make me nauseous.
Blinking away the haze, I winced against the harsh morning light filtering in from the window, temples throbbing with a relentless rhythm that matched the pounding in my skull. “Mmf.”
“Fates,” Dreadful gasped. “What in Kalista happened to you?”
Clutching my temple with one hand, I attempted to push through the haze, sitting up and placing Nebula on my pillow. “Migraine.”
“Migraine?” she parroted, pausing her morning routine to glance at me. “You’re a demon. We don’t get migraines.”
“Unless…” I croaked, prompting her to remember the one time we do, in fact, deal with ailments.
“Our magic reserves are dangerously low or empty,” she finished with a scowl on her lips.
“Yeah.” I sucked in a gasp of air, wishing the pain in my skull would end.
She heaved a heavy sigh before shuffling over toward her bag. “I have a water I haven’t opened if you want it. Your voice sounds worse than usual.”
I swung my legs over my bed, feeling thesoles of my feet hit the rough stone as I stood up. Each movement sent shockwaves of agony coursing through my brain. “You don’t have to.”
“Listen…” She paced over and held out an unopened water from the cafeteria to me, her lips pulled into a thin line. “I’m not used tolivingwith someone, and to be frank, you’re weird.”
I didn’t bother responding to that as I accepted the water and unscrewed the top, taking a greedy drink. The lukewarm water tasted like dry minerals as it trickled down my throat, and I winced before closing it tightly.
Ihatedwarm water. Cold water had become an obsession of mine ever since I’d been rescued from that cellar. It was ironic, though, since lukewarm water had been a respite of mine until I found out about the luxury of howgoodwater could be when it was cold.
