Page 49 of Demon of Dreams

Except I didn’t, because the next time Sean advanced, he feinted right, then came at me from the left, which wasn’t what we’d practiced at all. This time, he flipped me down onto my stomach and put a boot on the back of my neck.

All the breath left my lungs. All I could feel was heat, and a dry, rasping sensation that felt like thirst, until I realized I wasn’t thirsty, I was running out of air. Sean’s boot was compressing my trachea. I tried to catch his eye, but all I could see from underneath his boot was the sweaty blue surface of the mat.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I hated being pinned down like this, on my stomach, unable to fight back. I beat my limbs futilely, trying to struggle free, but he wouldn’t budge.

Panic surged through me. Didn’t Sean realize he was choking me? Didn’t he care? Every cell in my body was straining for air, and my vision was starting to go dark around the edges.

I was going to die here, right in the middle of class, because Sean was taking his anger out on me, and the instructor hated me too much to stop it. I was going to die. I was going to—

“That’s enough!” Noah yelled, and suddenly the weight on my neck was gone.

I stared in shock as Noah pulled Sean off me. Not content just to separate us, he put Sean on the ground too, pinning his arms behind his back and holding his legs down with one of his knees. Then he used his free hand to press two fingers into Sean’s neck in a way that made his eyes bulge out of his head.

“You never use a hold like that on another student without instruction. You never deviate from the lesson without permission. The point of this course is to teach you how to keep from killing yourselves, not to act out petty vendettas. If you can’t follow orders, you’re out of my class and out of this school.”

Sean’s eyes glittered with anger, but they weren’t focused on Noah. They were locked on me.

It suddenly seemed like a good time for me to leave, permission or not. The rest of the class had stopped practicing by now and were all staring at Sean. Noah didn’t even seem aware of my existence.

I pushed to my feet, taking one step away, then another. When Noah didn’t react, I turned and ran through the door Felix had pointed out earlier. I saw another door labeledRestroomat the end of the hall, wrenched it open, and collapsed against it once I made it inside.

I was still struggling to breathe. I’d been pinned before, which was unnerving enough, but I’d never been choked. Never even played with a plastic bag over my head as a kid. What Sean had just done was legitimately terrifying—maybe even more than those tenelkiri creatures who’d come after me.

They might be trying to hurt me—Dean Mansur seemed sure of that, anyway—but at least theylookedlike the monsters they were. Sean, on the other hand, looked human.Washuman. And he’d wanted to kill me just the same.

Unless I was overreacting? Maybe he was just mad. Maybe he hadn’t realized how much he was cutting off my air. Maybe it was an accident.

Then again, you don’t put your boot on someone’s neck if you’re trying tohelpthem breathe.

I pushed away from the door and crossed to the sink. I put a hand on the back of my neck. I was pretty sure I could feel the imprint of his boot. I twisted, trying to catch a glimpse of it in the mirror.

I was still peering over my shoulder when the door opened and Sean stormed in.

11

CORY

Ijumped, my heart leaping in my chest. Sean flicked the lock on the door. It sounded way too loud in the silence of that small tiled room. Fuck, why hadn’tIthought to lock it?

“Proud of yourself?” he sneered, taking a step forward.

“Proud of—what?” I asked, genuinely confused. When he’d flipped that lock, I’d braced for another attack, not a question I couldn’t interpret.

“You got what you wanted, didn’t you?”

“Got what I—I’m sorry,what? Do you think I enjoyed being thrown to the mat repeatedly and then suffocated?”

“If that’s what it took to suck up to Noah, yeah, I’d say you did.”

“Suck up to—”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t know exactly what you were doing. Trying to make me look bad in front of the whole class. Trying to lower his opinion of me. I’m onto you.”

“Trying to make you look bad? I was just trying not to lose consciousness,” I protested. “And I wasn’t sucking up. Did you miss the part where he called me completely incompetent like ten times in a row?”

“Easy to fake incompetence if you have strong enough motivation.”

I stared at him, flabbergasted. “Sean, I don’t know what you think is going on here, but I promise you, I wasn’t faking anything. I genuinelyamthat incompetent. And I don’t know what Noah’s opinion of you is, but I’m pretty sure he couldn’t be more disgusted with me.”

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