Impatiently, she asks, “What did they say?”
Lamour looks at her for an uncomfortably long time. He knits his thick black brows. “In two months, your debt will be paid.”
THE SNAKE
When I evaluate applications, I look for the dichotomy between grace and ruthlessness. The strongest scholars are those with both heart and teeth.
High Sage Gieffroy Triche
PROTECT ME FROM HIM.
That’s what Odette’s entry says.
From whom? Lamour? Cassius? It has to be one of them, and Claudia is sufficiently tangled with both.
“What do I do, Bishop?” she groans while dangling a dead roach above him. He snatches it and swallows fast.
“You have such a way with words,” she says before kissing him on the head. Slipping off her robe and chemise, she pulls on a nightdress and crawls into bed. The debate is in two days, and she desperately needs a good, long sleep.
But when she opens her eyes to the Realm of Nightmares, she knows she won’t get it.
She doesn’t know why she’s here. Sure, she was anxious, but not truly afraid. She didn’t conjure a Doorway. She has no want or reason to be here tonight.
Standing before a snowy clearing, she sees a shadow stretch out before her. Someone—no,something—approaches from behind. The shadow is not human; it’s massive and angular with unsettling, fluid movements.
Hot air burns at her back. Warmth, and then it’s gone. Over and over, like something is breathing on her.
“You need to wake up, Claudia,” a woman’s voice says. If she didn’t know better, she’d think it was her mother, but she knows it’s not, and that makes it all the more terrifying.
Her heart lurches as fear needles through her veins. Slowly, she looks back over her shoulder, careful not to jump at whatever may be looking back.
She meets a pair of glowing violet eyes, cut with a black slit, unmistakably reptilian and monstrous. The eyes are as big as her head, and it’s too dark to see anything else. Claudia’s blood is freezing solid in her skin, holding her completely still.
The monster is a snake, and it’s at least three times her size.
It’s only a nightmare, but she remembers the marks on her lips from where Dorian kissed her; the bite marks on her neck; the slice along her palm that’s still there. She can get hurt here.
Like Dorian said, she can get killed here.
“Dorian,” she whispers, eyeing the sky. “Help.”
Slowly, she steps back, careful of the crunch beneath her feet. A haunting hiss slides through the snake’s teeth. The trees around her shiver, dropping snow from the branches. The snake leans in and flicks its tongue, sniffing her and releasing a growl that ticks like a bomb. Claudia needs to run, but it’s like she’s forgotten how.
In two steps, her back is turned to the snake. In five steps, she is far enough that she can’t feel its breath anymore. In ten, she canhardly hear its hiss. In twenty, warmth returns to her legs and she remembers how to run. Her feet beat at the path, slamming and sliding across black ice. She collides with dozens of trees but never stops. Never, ever stops.
After running for what feels like an eternity, Claudia reaches what she can only assume is the edge of the entire realm. There’s a steep snowy ledge hanging over a black blur of nothingness. She almost falls, but she catches her balance and steps back, turning just in time to see the snake twist out from the trees. It slithers forward.
Claudia swallows hard when the snake’s violet eyes fall back on her. It angles its head low, ready to charge. This close, the freezing temperature of the air heightens the intensity of the snake’s hot breath.
The snake lurches forward, tearing through the cold air between them. Claudia leaps back just in time to avoid the killing bite. They’re now caught in a tense dance between life and death as they circle the snowy clearing as if it’s an arena. Even from this distance, the heat of its breath makes her sweat. Her eyes dart around, finding no sign of salvation.
The snake cuts through the snow until it passes her. Then it turns, letting the intimidating length of its body circle around Claudia so that she’s trapped before its jaws. Venom drips down its fangs.
Just before the monster takes her into its mouth, the sky makes a shattering sound as if it were made of glass. The darkness cleaves itself in two, exposing a chasm of swirling light. The force of it knocks her backward, and she falls on her back into a heap of snow. Above her, striking greens and lavenders twist into one another and become outstretched arms, reaching down. Warmth washes over Claudia, melting away all memory of the cold that sank into her bones.
Dorian comes from nowhere, appearing suddenly with his back to her. He is all that stands between her and the snake. At hiscommand, the light in the sky reaches forward and wraps around the snake, plucking it from the world as if it never existed at all. As quickly as the snake appeared, it’s gone, and the sky stitches itself back together like lips closing over a bite.
He turns to her. Those green eyes meet hers once again, and her terror becomes a long-distant memory.
