Page 3 of Beast of Blood and Ash
“Reika, hey.” Kira’s voice. Human. Familiar. Small and gentle around its edges, nothing like the guttural thunder of mynightmares. “It’s all right. You’re safe. I’m right here.” Her words were a tentative balm, and this wasn’t the first night she’d had to utter them. “It’s all right.”
Safe. Such a goddamn lie.
At least I’d only woken her. Kira had her own nightmares to keep her awake.
Whole-body shudders knocked my teeth together, breath coming in ragged, tearing gasps. My terror ricocheted inside me, refusing to be silenced. The world pressed in, stone on one side, Kira’s presence a fragile barrier on the other.
I was burning. I was frozen. Veins flooded with icy pain and scorching memory.
I jammed my fist against my mouth, swallowing back more noise. I didn’t dare call it a sob. If they heard, if anyone heard …
Oh god, they’d send me back.
Kira’s hand found my shoulder, warm against the clammy skin above my collarbone. She didn’t squeeze. Just settled, light, present, patient. I flinched, a purely instinctual recoil, then froze.
Guilt, hot and sharp, burned up through the panic. Touch used to mean pain. Always pain. But I wasn’t there anymore. Kira was my friend. She wouldn’t hurt me.
“It’s just me.” She shifted closer, her small warmth pressing near. “You’re in Scalvaris. Your room. You’re with us.”
For a moment, her words were just sounds, bouncing off the inside of my skull without sticking. My body screamed otherwise, every nerve ending, every muscle fiber wired for flight, for hiding, for the snap of teeth coming through the dark.
I stared at her hands—broad, callused fingers, nails chewed to the quick. Human hands. They brushed tangled, sweat-damp hair off my brow. Her skin, dry and warm. Not slick with scales. Not carrying the old copper stench of Drakarn blood.
“It was just a nightmare. That’s all.”
Just a nightmare. As if the line between dreams and memories meant a damn thing anymore. As if old pain didn’t keep scoring new, deeper grooves inside me, making it impossible to breathe.
I blinked, forced breath into my chest. Choked on it. The room pressed in, all dark stone and the lingering tang of sulfur, the sick-yellow glow of the heat crystal casting monstrous, dancing shadows.
I tried to see it as refuge, not cage. Failed. Miserably.
My legs jerked in a frantic attempt to twist free of the sheets. Kira’s hand dropped away. “Hey.” Her voice, a soft anchor. “You’re okay. Nothing’s going to hurt you here.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and willed the demons away. The panic ebbed. Barely. I managed a nod, and Kira backed off.
That was good. I didn’t need to bother her with my craziness.
The dream clung to me. Sticky and too bright. I could still smell the phantom scent of blood on stone. Still tasted metal, coppery and foul, on the back of my tongue. My knee throbbed where it had slammed into rock. I brushed a trembling hand along my leg, only to find smooth, unbroken skin. No blood. Only a ghost of an old pain, a deep ache shadowed by memory.
The old terror flared, sharp and biting: What ifthiswas the dream andthatwas real? What if I woke up somewhere worse, chains, blades, that deep, knowing laughter in the endless dark? Any of them could walk in. Drakarn, with their slow, predatory gazes, with claws that could pin you like a beetle to the stone, dissecting your fear. If you made noise, drew attention— No. No. No, no, no.
I hugged my knees tight to my chest and pressed my mouth hard into the silky fabric of the blanket, fighting back new tears, new screams that clawed at my throat. The dream skittered at the edges of my vision. Every time I blinked, every time the darkness in the room thickened, it tried to wrap itself aroundme. I tasted fear, metallic and thick, a bitter poison all the way to my toes.
You’re safe. You’re here. You’re safe.
But safety was always an illusion. A cruel, fragile thing. And I’d learned the hard way, what happened when illusions broke. So I stayed curled in on myself, holding back the storm that raged inside, begging my body and my fractured mind to believe the lie just for one more night.
2
OMVAR
I slicedthrough the throng like a shard of broken glass. Direct. Cutting. An unwelcome intruder. The River Market’s towering ceiling somehow pressed down, trapping a miasma of sulfur, sharp and metallic. Sweat, acrid and foreign.
A thousand unnamable scents clung beneath it all. Heat crystals flickered overhead, their soft light an oily pulse on scaled bodies, a quicksilver flash off blades arrayed on merchants' tables. Everything gleamed wet. Everything echoed.
And every eye tracked me. Their stares weighed on me.
My wings stayed folded tight. It was a conscious, burning effort of will. To spread them here would be to shove, to assert a dominance I hadn’t earned in this hostile city. I wouldn’t give them another reason to spew their hate.
