Page 71 of Mantle

I knew instinctively—it wasn’t mine.

It was his.

“Who’s hurting you? Where are you?”

“You’re the only one… you take away the cold.”

“Tell me where you are!”

“He won’t… let me.”

“He? One of the True Celestials?”

“No.”

“Then, who? Who in the hell could contain you?”

“I can’t… he won’t let me say. I’m here, Ariana. I’m still here.”

My eyes snappedopen and I panted, finding Nyx right beside me in my bed shaking me gently, his brows knitted with concern.

I pushed up into a sitting position. “What’s… what—” I took in the bed.No.“Kai. Vorzyr. Where are they? Why aren’t they here with us? What’s happened?”

He shuffled closer, and I saw he was wearing one of Vorzyr’s white henleys, the thing rather large on him. “Everything is well, they are well,” he told me softly, as he took my hand and pressed a soft kiss to my knuckles. “Vorzyr got up at the crack of dawn to train with Jaxon, like he’s been doing for the last few days. And Kai’s schedule here is so tight that he’s been pulling all-nighters working with Arcanum Order. We’re all going to meet for breakfast in the Cafeteria before classes in a couple of hours.”

Oh.It took me a moment to focus enough through the panic that the dream had wrought. “Yeah… I knew that… I remember.” I shook my head in dismay at myself. “Sorry.”

“You were screaming, Ariana,” he told me gently, gazing into my eyes, those ice-blue pools of his searching worriedly.

I swallowed hard. “I was?”

He looked around, and even though nobody was there, or anywhere near, he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “Yeah. About Ketheron.”

Son of a bitch.

“What happened?” he pushed.

“He… he was there.” I winced. “Crying out for help. Pleading for it, actually.” I pressed my hand to my chest. “I felt his pain, Nyx. It wasn’t just a dream… it was different. More.”

“It could very well be. He could be trying to reach you. And you ingested his blood, which would explain how a link like this could be formed.” He shifted so that he was sitting cross-legged in front of me.

I adjusted my black tank that was riding up a bit, then brushed down my plaid pajama pants, then I did the same, crossing my legs opposite him and settling in.

He took my hands and held them between us. “Tell me everything you remember from the dream, every little detail that you can recall, even things that seem small. Because you are Celestial, I can’t engage you in dreamwalking. Your power is too intense for me to enter your mind like that. I mean, maybe if you ever wanted to enter a dreamwalking state created by me, it could be possible, but not the reverse… not me enteringyourmind. What I can do, though, is interpret for you.”

I nodded, then recalled what I’d seen. “Everything was dead… I was in Meforian Forest… there was a cracked skull with a twisted spike through it…”

“A spike through a skull is a twisted grave marker. It could be referencing a burial site, a cursed one.”

“Just after he called out to me, a harsh wind whipped around, cold and unsettling.”

“Wind is tied to whispers, secrets, mental invasion. He’s being silenced and this is his way of reaching out to you.”

I cursed, then went on, “There were barbed vines formed into a cage. That one seems obvious… it was him telling me he’s trapped.”

“Not just trapped, but with the way you described it, possibly by ancient magics. Dangerous, twisted magic.”

I finished telling him the rest, and everything that Ketheron and I had said to each other. “Oh, and I was also wearing the armor that Grandfather made for me.”

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