Taking a deep breath, I held that thought in my mind and dream-walked.
I ended up in a thick, unsuspecting green forest. Unruly shrubs reached my shoulders, and plush green vines strangled every tree within sight.
I expected chirping birds and movement in the brush. Instead, my ears rang with eerie silence.
Peering through the minimal gaps in the foliage, I spotted a quaint stone cottage.
I moved toward it, pushing through the brush, then jerked my hands back with a hiss.
Small cuts lined my palms.
I gave the brush around me a closer look and found hidden thorns beneath the leaves of every shrub and even the vines on the trees.
Heavenly Hell, what was with me dream-walking to forests that sought to hurt me?
Coating my exposed extremities and uniform in Glory, I stepped out of the carnivorous brush, then froze.
A figure swathed in a dark maroon cloak peeked through a side window.
I shifted my weight, about to move back into the forest, when I paused.
The color of the cloak hooked me.
Maroon?
It wasn’t like it was an unusual color, but I’d seen something similar once before.
The female who had given my mom my necklace had worn that color cloak.
I stepped toward her, and the dream changed.
Somehow, I stood inside the stone cottage looking out at the cloaked figure.
She pressed her hands to the lattice window, most of her face obscured, only the faint line of her lips and the slope of her nose visible through the gaps.
Nothing distinctive. Nothing I should’ve recognized.
And yet… something about her felt familiar.
Except, I never saw the face of the cloaked female my mother had met.
“Your little adversary has finally found me,” a female taunted inside the cottage.
I whipped my head to the side.
Heavenly Shit.
I ducked behind the freestanding kitchen counter and peered around the corner.
Lilith, wearing a sensual long dress, and a female I’d never seen before gazed out the window where the cloaked female had been.
Was it Melanie?
The straight, inky black hair falling over her chest and the olive hue beneath her sharp cheekbones matched what I remembered from my dream-walk to Oliver.
But that was all I had to go on.
She stood as tall and imposing as Lilith. She even wore the same dress, except red instead of mauve.
