Page 91 of When Storms Ruin

“I’ll catch up with you later?” he asked, his eyebrow raised.

“Sure,” I agreed, nodding.

Puck helped Nik to his room, though I was sure it was only so they could talk alone. Nik was more than capable of walking across the hall by himself. Tess climbed the ladder and began tossing down any books that had to do with dream magic.

This was going to take all night.

Luckily Zion popped by with coffee for us right before midnight and we drank it as if it were a lifeline. Saanvi and Kenna returned and went straight to bed, exhausted from patrolling. Warrick was still nowhere to be found.

“This is it!” Tess announced, jumping up from her chair.

It ground against the floor with a screech, the sound sending a chill up my spine.

“It’s what?” I asked, peering at her from over my book.

My eyes were bleary, my entire body tired from sitting in the uncomfortable library chairs all night.

“A whole chapter on dream walking!” Tess pushed the book across the table towards me and joined me on the other side.

I blinked back my exhaustion and studied the paragraph she pointed at, running my finger along the words as they threatened to blur together. It was way past the time when I should have gone to bed.

Dream walking is a rare ability for Shades and is thought to be genetically linked. This trait usually manifests within bloodlines. Dream walkers are not only able to see the past, but they are able to see events currently happening, in another place.

My eyes met Tess’. We hadn’t known that. How would I be able to see the past? I kept reading, Tess peering at the text over my shoulder.

Dream walkers can physically touch, remove, and alter physical objects and people when they are in acurrentevent. A dream walker can take an object or a person out of the dream with them.

I could takea personwith me? Like a portal? That could be immeasurably valuable, if only I knew how to do that. When I had taken the grimoire…I hadn’t even realized I had done it.

A dream walker can determine the precise location of the event they walked into by leaving a token either in the location or on a person present, then channeling magicintothat token.

To take objects or people out of a dream one would simply secure the object or person and wake up, but waking up is not always easy as dream walking is not always intentional. Often times adream pulls you into an event on its own, but you can dream walk intentionally.

To wake up from a dream you have been pulled into you need to be self-aware that you are dream walking, or have someone on the outside wake your physical body.

To dream walk intentionally, one needs to draw on their ember of magic, think of the person or place they want to walk with, and recite the dream spell. The only caveat to this is that if another dream walker is present where you walk, they will be able to see you and know that you are there.

When you dream walk, those around you cannot see you except those with the same dream walking ability. If a dream walker is connected to a non-dream walking Shade, that is the only way a person without this ability might be able to see and touch the dream.

You cannot pull another person into the dream with you against their will…

“I’m going to assume the dream spell is somewhere in this text?” Tess asked, her brow furrowed.

“I hope so,” I mused, shaking my head. “This has all the information we have been searching for, this isamazing, Tess.”

Tess grinned down at me, happy to have finally found something useful to us. It had only taken us almost three weeks.

“I’ve got to study this, but I’m too tired to do it now. We need to keep it somewhere safe.”

“Especially since it doesn’t appear to have a mind of its own like the book of shadows,” Tess pointed out.

I nodded. “Yes. In the wrong hands this could be dangerous. My only consolation is that I know Corian isn’t watching us right now, or spying on our council meetings. If he were, I would know he was here.”

“Agreed,” Tess replied. “At least there’s that.”

“To track our location Corian must have left a token at the townhouse.” I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose.

Had I seen anything that appeared out of place when Corian had seen me at the town house? Anything that might have been a token he left behind? If Donika was able to speak with me in the dream, that meant she and Corian were connected somehow.