by Jada Fisher
I groaned and sat up, my body protesting even with all the pain medicine that I had in my system. I felt sick to my stomach, like I had gone on a bender and was now dealing with the repercussions of it.
Then again, I kind of had. Adrenaline and norepinephrine were pretty powerful danger response chemicals, and my body had been dosed with at least a dozen different surges of it in the past forty hours or so. Add to that the other medicines in my system—including whatever Baelfyre had given me—and it certainly made for a heady cocktail my body had to flush out and recover from.
But still, even as exhausted as I was, I still jumped nearly a mile when I looked to my side to see the spirit of death sitting right there.
“What, did you save me just to give me a heart attack?” I hissed, trying not to wake up Mickey or Sokhanya. It was a miracle that Bronn wasn’t in the room as well. He had tried to stay, insisting that he could sleep in the very chair the spirit was in, but Sokhanya had been so uncomfortable at the thought of an unfamiliar dragon watching her sleep that he’d been banished to the couches in the sitting area with Krisjian and Mal.
As for Sokhanya, she was curled up right beside me, an IV in her arm and way more drugs in her system. The report from the doctor hadn’t been great. She was anemic, apparently on the verge of scurvy—which I didn’t even know was a thing anymore—and the rashes were the result of prolonged malnutrition. Her heart was weak, bordering on dangerous edema, and one of her fingernails had fallen right off during the examination. She had just stared dully, like it was something that happened every day for her, and I’d never burned so hotly with rage.
If the prince wasn’t dead, I would have gone and killed him myself. It was in that moment that I had understood exactly how such a tiny little thing that was practically dead had summoned up the energy to slay a dragon.
It would be so easy to kill you, you know, the spirit mused, her empty eyes twinkling in a way that mimicked looking around. A simple bubble in that IV of yours. A pillow over the face. You could even just get sick from all the trauma to your throat and choke on your own vomit.
For such a fragile, faulty people, you’ve certainly got a knack for surviving.
“I don’t think that I’m the best person to say that to. Are you here to kill me now?”
No. Actually.
“Then why are you here?”
You know, I didn’t think it was possible. Thought that everything about this situation was inevitable, but you really did it, didn’t you? You crazy, death-defying seer. You did it.
“I…did what?”
She held out her hand, the faint dark cloud that resembled flesh with the skeleton just underneath it. We’d never really touched for all we had interacted, and I stared at her uncertainly for a moment.
Come on. Our time is limited.
“It always is,” I answered wearily before letting her take my hand.
Surprisingly, I didn’t just drop dead right then and there. No, instead, it felt like I had dunked my hand into a cool mist, swirling around my fingers in a damp sort of haze. I didn’t really like it, considering how much I had been wet in the past day and a half, but I got over it and let her lead me away from the bed.
We walked to the door—which opened by itself, of course—and then into the sitting area. Sure enough, Bronn, Krisjian, and Mal were all sleeping there on cots that had must have been brought up by the hired help. The sight of them jolted me right back to those cold cells for a moment, but the spirit’s hand on mine quickly pulled me out of the moment.
Here.
She led me over to Mal’s pack, which was sitting by the door in a puddle with Krisjian’s. For a moment, I just stared at the bags, trying to figure out what was so important that a literal grim reaper pointed it out to me.
“What?”
Don’t ‘what’ me. Look!
Bending down, which took much more effort than I thought it would, I opened Mal’s pack. That buzzing sounded in the back of my head, and I realized exactly what she was talking about. The book.
I had completely forgotten about the book.
I pulled it out, looking at the cover that had been so encrusted with gunk and decay that it had been completely brown. But the moment I had it flat, all of that crumbled away, leaving a worn leather volume in my hands with the brilliant embroidery of a golden, glittering dragon on it.
“What is this?” I asked, looking to the spirit for answers.
But she was gone, leaving me alone with the book that was suddenly so very pretty.
Clutching it to my chest, I returned to my room. A lot had happened in a very short amount of time. The anti-humanist prince was dead. Baelfyre was captured. Their stronghold outside of the city had been taken down.
And yet, even with all those positives, I could feel in my bones that we weren’t over the hump yet. There was something coming. Something bigger, grander.
Dangerous.
Maybe it was the book in my hands that would be the key to finally having peace.
I could only hope.
Find out what comes next in Visions of Dread.
amazon.com/dp/B086MGRKXX
Visions of Dread
Dragon Oracle, Book 7
1
The Demons in Your Sleep
I was sinking down, down, further into the cold. Further into the black. There was nothing around me—no air, no light. I was going to die.
I’d died before. One would think that it would be less scary the second time around, but no. I was terrified. The cold and the damp leaked into my soul.
I knew what was waiting for me in the dark. The long, freezing fingers that would bite into me and rip apart what I was. And unlike the previous time, I wouldn’t be whisked off to some strange in-between stream that encompassed everything. No, the reaper haunting me had made it quite clear:
My time was up.
I tried to fight to the surface, I really did, but I was just so tired. My limbs felt like lead as I was dragged further into the deep.
Until something else, small and barely there, gripped me. It tried to yank me up, the faintest toothpick of resistance in the overwhelming force dragging me down.
I looked up, and in the pitch-blackness, in the cold, cruel, uncompromising water that was crushing me, I saw a somewhat familiar face illuminated by a blue glow.
Sokhanya.
Both of her little hands were buried in my shirt, her legs kicking as she tried to pull me up. And as her magic flowed through me, I began to realize that I was in a nightmare, and I had dragged her in with me.
…or maybe she had come in to save me. It was hard to say. Either way, I reached up, gripping her wrists and letting her pull me right back into reality.
I sat up with a gasp, breathing hard. I hadn’t realized that I’d fallen asleep in the recliner placed in the corner of Sokhanya’s room. It had been a full week and a half since our escape, and while I had been released from the medical room to return to my normal lodgings down the hall, she had a long, long way to go before she could leave all the monitors around her.
Her eyes were barely cracked, but I could see her expression of concern. Shrugging, I got up and reached for the notebook she kept by her bed.
I have bad dreams a lot.
She took the notebook from me, taking her time to read it over. I could have been wrong, but it seemed like she was able to interpret and understand it more quickly. Maybe because she was hydrated and actually fed for once. Or maybe I just so desperately wanted to be optimistic that I was grabbing at straws.
VISION?
I took it back, licking my lips as I turned the question over in my head. Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Sometimes it’s me meeting with someone I shouldn’t be able to.
LIKE YOU TALK TO ME FIRST TIME?
I nodded. Yeah. Exactly.
CONFUSING.
I couldn’t help but huff a laugh at that, and even though Sokhanya couldn’t hear it, her face slipped into a small but steady grin.
/> I SLEEP TO MUCH
That’s the medicine. Your body needs lots of rest to heal.
REST LATER. WAR NOW. YOU KNOW THIS
My lips pressed into a thin line at that statement. It sounded far too similar to things that I had said and thought, but coming from Sokhanya, I didn’t like the sound of it.
You can’t help if you’re dead. Recover while you can.
WRONG. MANY BE BETTER IF I DEAD LONG TIME AGO
Her head jerked in the direction of my room down the hall, and I didn’t need her to have perfect grammar to know what she meant. If she was dead, then none of the other oracles would have died. Their people wouldn’t be wiped out.
My family would be alive.
But unlike Mallory’s parents, who lived a whole life without paying for their crimes, without even facing a single repercussion for trying to wipe out an entire race, it was clear that Sokhanya carried intense guilt.
But she didn’t have to. Unlike Mallory’s parents, the oracle had no choice. She was tortured, and the still-healing burn on my chest proved that the anti-humanists were quite good at torture. She was starved, beaten, terrorized, and kept isolated from almost the whole world, but she still saw herself as a bad guy.
“Hey,” I said, taking a step forward before remembering that she couldn’t hear a thing I said.
It’s not your fault. You had no choice.
WE ALWAYS HAVE CHOICE
I shook my head. Sometimes we don’t. The important thing is now, after you get out of this bed, you’ll finally have real choices. And that’s what matters.
HOW YOU KNOW?
I shrugged. Sometimes we just get feelings, don’t we?
She nodded, and I thought the conversation was over, but then she started to scribble again.
I NEED YOU TEACH ME 2 READ
I think maybe you should heal first, you’ve got a lot— She must have seen the first couple words of my message because she snatched the notebook back and hastily wrote.
I NEED TO READ THAT BOOK.
I frowned. I’d never been interrupted via text before and was startled that she remembered the book. Living in a manor with a bunch of oracles sure was a different experience altogether.
It’s not in English.
I KNOW. TEACH ME READ ANYWAYS.
Oh boy. I had no idea how to teach someone how to read, let alone to teach a deaf, abused oracle who had been locked in a room for most of her life.
Okay. Whatever you need.
2
Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right, but a Left Hook Can Feel Real Good
I woke up again covered in sweat. Another day had passed. Another day waiting for the other shoe to drop. The fallout from the prince being dead hanging over my head.
There had to be repercussions, right?
I wished I knew more about the dragon’s structure, how they were in the ‘old country’ and the allies that both sides kept talking about. I knew that there were old royals, but there didn’t seem to be any who were pro-human. Only…not quite anti-human. Which didn’t bode well for all of us.
I got out of bed, my chest smarting. I hated being burned. It always made me nauseous, reminding me of that night. A night I kept trying to shove to the back of my mind, but events kept hauling it right back out into the open again.
And it made me so angry!
I was just a normal girl who never even gone to college, and for some reason it seemed that far too much responsibility had been placed on me. The city was still completely cut off from the rest of the world, and what TV stations were up were filled with reports of monstrous beasts and dwindling supplies. I knew that I needed to release my shield, but it was the only thing protecting most of them.
And they needed protection, because the dragons sure were angry about their prince being murdered in a secret infiltration of their castle. I knew without a doubt that they would start picking off and targeting humans just to punish Mickey and I. Or to draw us out.
Yeah, us oracles were definitely enemy number one, and they were never going to be pleased that the humanist dragons now had all of the living oracles on their side.
It was a no-win situation that was only getting worse by the day, and the unrelenting terror wouldn’t let go of my heart. I was just so frustrated, so scared, and I wanted to do something.
And I suppose that was how I found myself in front of Baelfyre’s cell.
I wasn’t supposed to know where it was. Bronn had made it clear after the first day back that his cousin had been moved somewhere secure and private. Someplace only Bronn and a few of his closest advisors knew of.
But all that secrecy didn’t help when wherever they were holding him was so chock full of old magic that it almost set my teeth on edge. It was so easy to follow that I had been able to do it without even thinking about it, my hands wringing themselves as I second-guessed my every decision and burned with anger as I recalled every hurt doled out to the people that I loved.
I knew I shouldn’t be there—there was nothing good that could come of it—and yet I stared into the cell like there were answers in there for me.
There weren’t. The only thing in there was Baelfyre, chained by his wrists, ankles, and neck to several rings of stone that looked like they were carved into the stone itself. He was dirty, his fancy clothes torn, and his hair a mess. It was the roughest that I had ever seen him, and it was only amplified by the slight green glow of the magical runes all around him.
It was impressive, really, the magic flowing through the room. Even from where I was, I could feel the power of it. The overwhelming urge to be still, to behave, and to never try to run.
Binding spells. Maybe it would do me well learn a couple, but it seemed that I was so busy running for my life or learning spells to make insane shields that I didn’t have time for much else.
That would definitely have to change.
“I understand there’s always been something between us, but must you really pine for me outside my prison bars?”
I felt my temper spike as Baelfyre looked up, a smirk on his handsome face. Just seeing him there, with hardly a bruise or a scratch on him, reminded me of how I was treated when I was his prisoner. How he had tried to barter my loyalty for some sort of false protection. How he had made me sit in his lap while he held me, some terrible mockery of affection.
But I shoved that down. I was well aware that he was trying to upset me. His words were the only power he had left, and if I wanted to knock him off kilter, I had to take that away too.
“Just came to see if it was really true. I can’t believe that once I was so afraid of you. Look at you, all huddled up and chained. Helpless really. To think it was your prince that we really had to watch out for, and he’s dead now.”
The man snarled and jerked forward, his face elongating and his teeth going sharp. But then there was a crackle of magic and a faint green glow from within his bonds and he sank right back down onto his haunches again.
“Taunting about the dead?” Baelfyre said instead, licking his teeth. It reminded me of a predator once again, but I wasn’t the simpering prey this time. No, I was on the outside of the bars. I was in control, and he was the one who was trapped. “Is that a road you really want to go down, little orphan girl?”
I just shrugged. “Just stating facts. I have to admit, I faced down your prince in another dimension and couldn’t stop him, so I had to kill myself just to trap him. You really got the raw end of the deal if your prince got brought down by a quill. Talk about the pen being mightier than the sword, am I right?”
Another snarl, another lurch forward, his face trying to shift into a dragon before snapping right back to human. It was interesting to see him get so riled up about his prince. For someone who had tried to work out a deal with me behind the monarch’s back, the dark dragon seemed surprisingly loyal. Strange indeed.
“What’s the matter? Did I push a button?”
But he just tipped his head back and laughed dryly. Not exactl
y what I had been hoping for. “It’s so funny when the self-professed ‘good guys’ show their true colors. You bemoan about our tactics, but look at you, here you are, tormenting a helpless prisoner.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please. You are anything but helpless. And if I recall right, which I absolutely do, your interrogation methods include starvation and pressing a red-hot poker to my chest.”
“Ah yes, that.” His grin just turned that much more wolfish. “Sorry ‘bout it. Want me to kiss it and make it better?” He leaned forward, all smoldering charm, which was almost impressive for someone in shackles, but only pissed me off that much more. “Is that what you need? My cousin is so proper. I bet he keeps his hands to himself and everything like a boy scout. I could—”
“You can nothing,” I hissed, cutting off whatever he was going to say because I knew I certainly didn’t want to hear it. “The only thing you can do is sit there and wait for whatever Bronn decides to do with you.”
“And what do you think your little prince is going to do to me? Your sweet little guy who can’t so much as order an execution. Why do you think he’s sitting here?
“You see, that’s why he’s going to lose in the end. That’s why those that have lowered themselves to your level are weak. See, with our kind, we’re willing to do what needs to be done. Willing to lay down our lives, if we need.”
“More like willing to lay down the lives of others.”
He grinned even wider. “What, you mean like your parents?”
I rolled my eyes. Of course he would go for that. “Low hanging fruit. Are you that desperate to rattle me?”
“How can I be desperate for that when it’s so easy to do?”