Page 18 of When Storms Ruin

Donika used her shadows to turn the head of the man closest to her. “Speak.”

He opened his mouth, but no words came forth. He shook his head violently, as if trying to speak, his hand clawing at his throat.

“Cat got your tongue?” Donika laughed, crossing her arms over her chest.

“My Queen, we have nothing to do with the resistance. We are loyal to you, and you alone,” another woman spoke from the crowd.

Donika’s gaze turned, her expression cold.

“Was I speaking to you?” she asked, her shadows slithering out, suffocating the woman in a matter of moments.

I staggered forwards and knelt by the woman’s side, my hand across her throat to check for a pulse, but she was already gone. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. I wanted, desperately, to intervene, but I was alone in this dream. I hadn’t touched or felt my magic in months, and I wasn’t sure I evencouldaffect this reality from my dreaming state.

“Zion, can you hear me?” My voice sounded small…far away. “Zion! You need to do something!” My voice was cracked anddesperate.

Zion blinked hard, once, as if maybe he had heard me, but his face remained unchanged.

“Zion, if you can hear me, you need to do something. She is going to kill these innocent people! You cannot stand by!” my voice was hoarse from screaming.

Zion remained unchanged.

“If you all plan to lie to your queen as Sir Bansent did, you will suffer the same fate.” Donika spoke with a smile on her face.

She was enjoying this. She was an insufferable monster, and I couldn’t watch.

I needed to wake up.

I tried to concentrate on my sleeping form back in my room in Prins, but I still felt the pull to this dream too loudly. I closed my eyes and shook my head back and forth, desperate to sever the link.

Donika’s shadows crawled out of her fingertips and surrounded the crowd of people. Their screams were soft at first, quickly growing into a suffocating cacophony of pain.

“Stop!” I screamed, clawing at the sides of my face with my nails. “Please, make it stop!”

My cries went unanswered. When Donika’s shadows retreated, my eyes fell on the pile of dead bodies, pools of blood gathering on the marble floor. Their lifeless eyes stared back at me.

“Youmonster!” I cried, moving forwards.

Would Donika feel it if I threw her to the floor along with her innocent victims? Would she feel my boot on her neck as I pressed down, crushing her windpipe…

I woke with a start, shooting up in bed. My hair was plastered to the back of my neck, a fine sheen of sweat coating my arms and chest. I was back in my room in Prins, the bedsheetstangled around my waist. It wasn’t Tess who sat beside me on the bed, but Nik. I immediately recoiled, hitting the glass window behind me with enough force that I thought it might shatter, cracking my head against it painfully. I winced, but the glass did not break.

“Diana, it’s ok. It was just a dream.” Nik’s voice came out as a hushed whisper in the darkness of the room.

Where was Tess? How long had I been asleep? My eyes darted to the doorway wildly, calculating if I could make it around him and out of the room without him catching me. But if Nik had wanted to hurt me, he already would have. What was he doing here?

“What did you see?” he asked, his eyes a glimmering blue in the light of the flickering candles.

“How do you know I saw anything?” I asked tersely.

Nik’s eyes moved to my shaking hands, and he paused before answering. “You were screaming.”

A shudder ran through me.

Despite the sweat coating my skin, I was freezing cold. I pulled the blankets against my chest, digging my fingers into the material.

Should I tell him what I saw? I wasn’t fool enough to think he could be trusted, but hehadhelped me escape Donika’s prison. There was nothing for him to gain from that. He forever fell from Donika’s good graces when he made the decision to help me and Tess. Whatever his motivations were, he was no longer on her side of this war. That much was abundantly clear.

I stayed curled in the corner of the bed against the windows, as far from him as I could get. I pulled the mess of blankets up to my shoulders to cover my bare skin despite the sweat.

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