They had changed.
The rune was now displayed on the back of my father’s neck. Or so I assumed. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew very few people with an ice crown and hair as white as his. But I’d never seen that rune on his neck.
I stormed into the library with even more questions.
“Cato!”
“Pr—”
I whipped around, cutting off his greeting and snatching his finger before it tapped me. The expression he gave me suggested my actions were completely undignified.
“Have you ever seen a rune on the back of my father’s neck?”
“No.”
“Me either,” I mused, wondering what it all meant.
“That doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”
I frowned.
He waited. His silence felt like a quiz, one where he expected me to know the answer.
“A Velatus Rune,” I finally said. That was why we wouldn’t have seen anything.
Cato gave me a single nod, and I held back a smile. Hopefully that nod earned me another answer.
I read what it said in his book. I even read his chicken scratch in the margins. But I still needed to ask. “You write that we can’t Somnivado to the dead because they don’t dream. Why?”
“They don’t sleep. Their soul bodies don’t require restoration and healing like the living.”
“You’re sure?”
He stared at me, not even blinking. It was enough to release a bit of tension around my heart. Melanie was for sure alive.
“Fine, you’re sure. But what would cause me to lose almost all sensation in someone’s dream?”
Cato’s white robes shifted as he straightened to his full height and inhaled like he was preparing either a speech or a verbal lashing.
“There are four instances in which sensations can be dulled in Somnivado. The question you asked either pulled you into a dreamer’s mind who is mentally unstable, whose mind is no longer with their body, who’s in isolation, or the answer to your question couldn’t be provided last night, forcing Somnivado to lead you to a nightmare.”
“A nightmare.” I thought back to his book. “Without direction, without an answer, a dream-walker’s mind will be pulled into the in-between where nightmares lurk.” I lifted my eyes to his, hoping I had recited it correctly.
Cato gave me another nod, and I swore I saw pride in his intellectual brown eyes.
This time, I couldn’t help but smile.
So Somnivado might’ve pulled me into a nightmare. The thought had my smile fading. I was glad there was a possibility I hadn’t been in Melanie’s dream, but that meant I still had no answers. Or it was one of the other three instances, which I would not be sharing with Oliver until I knew for certain.
“Did you practice your Intraverso?” Cato asked.
“No. I didn’t?—”
He wacked me on the side of the head, and whatever pride had shone in his eyes vanished.
“What the Heavenly Hell was that for?” I shouted, glaring at the book. He had that hiding the entire time in his billowing sleeve?
“For slacking in your studies.” He skirted around me, his draping robes swishing as he walked back toward the line of dark shelves.
