What aning could it have?
Even as I sat at the long dining table the next morning, staring at the plate before , my thoughts were a thousand miles away. The eggs had gone cold, the bread untouched, but I barely noticed. My mind circled back again and again to the dream. It gnawed at like a persistent thorn under the skin, an itch I couldn’t ignore.
The voice, the mist, the vines, the flowers. My blood.
It wasn’t just a dream. I knew that. Dreams didn’t leave behind wounds that bled.
"It could be telling you sothing," Leika murmured inside .
I froze with my fork halfway to my mouth.
"You think so?" I whispered back, though only in thought.
"Why else would you carry a wound from your dream into the waking world?" my wolf pressed. "Sothing is at play. Dreams are one thing, but this... this is a ssage. Or a warning."
Her certainty made my heart skip. "But why? What is the ssage?"
Leika stirred, restless. I felt her pacing at the edges of my consciousness, her restrained power bristling in agitation. "Maybe because you are not ordinary, Vivien. You’ve known this for a while. You are connected to the Celestial Wolf. You are one of the keys to awaken her. Now your blood awakens dead things in dreams."
"Why, then?" I asked, frustration bubbling in . "Why my blood? Why that voice calling ?"
There was silence for a mont. Then Leika said, "Because blood always has aning. It carries life, strength, ancestry. If the dream was true, then maybe your blood holds more than you realize."
My stomach twisted. I pressed my fork down against the plate, appetite gone.
"Vivien."
The sound of my na snapped out of my spiraling thoughts. My eyes shot up to find Rion watching from across the table.
It was just us this morning. The room felt larger in its emptiness—no Diaval silently eating, no Ares laughing too loudly, no Raye chattering with her endless random stories. The two n hadn’t returned yet since their departure last night, and Raye was with Jeron while Keigan was tending to him.
"What are you doing?" Rion asked, his tone smooth, but I could see the way his eyes sharpened as they flicked to my plate.
"Huh?" I blinked at him.
His gaze dropped to my food. "You’ve barely had three bites. You are zoning out. What is it?"
I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable under his scrutiny. "What is what?"
One eyebrow lifted. "What’s bothering you?"
I hesitated. My first instinct was to brush it off, to say nothing. To bury the dream sowhere inside until I convinced myself it ant nothing. But then I thought of the vines turning green, the flowers blooming bright with only a drop of my blood. Of the whisper echoing in my skull—your blood, your blood.
What if it wasn’t just a dream? What if it tied to the keys, to the Celestial Wolf, to everything that was unraveling around ?
So I decided to tell Rion. Maybe he had better thoughts. I said at last, "I had a strange dream last night."
His head tilted slightly, holding his wineglass near his lips.
"Strange dream?" he echoed with interest. "Do tell."
My mouth went dry. For a mont, I wasn’t sure how to even begin explaining. But his eyes never left , waiting patiently, so I gathered my thoughts.
"I heard sothing calling ," I said, choosing my words carefully. "An unfamiliar woman’s voice. It kept saying my na. I was in the middle of a snowy field, mist all around. There were dead plants—vines with flowers shriveled and gray. I didn’t know where the voice ca from. And then..." I trailed off, swallowing hard.
"And then?" Rion’s tone was soft, urging to continue.
I clenched my hands together. "I got pricked by a thorn. My blood dropped onto one of the flowers. It ca alive. And then the rest followed. All of them blood. And all the while, the voice kept whispering, your blood."
I raised my hand, the small wound still faintly visible on my finger. "When I woke up, I found this. The sa wound from the dream. And it was bleeding."
Rion didn’t interrupt. He stared at intently the whole ti, his ocean eyes sharp and calculative, as if he was absorbing every single word I said.
When I finished, he leaned back in his chair, lowering the wineglass.
His lips parted, and he repeated the words softly, almost reverently. "Your blood."
He went silent then, his gaze unfocused as if his mind had already flown far away, chasing so calculation I couldn’t reach.
My thoughts wouldn’t shut up. They just kept running circles in my head, loud and ssy, tripping over each other while Leika paced restlessly inside . I could almost feel her claws scraping at the walls of my chest, like she was just as unsettled as I was.
If in that dream my blood had made dead flowers bloom—brought life where there was nothing, then maybe... maybe it actually ant sothing. Maybe there’s sothing extraordinary with my blood.
I’d never seen myself as special. Not really. Sure, I had Leika. Sure, I was sohow connected to the Celestial Wolf as one of the keys that could free her. But besides that? I was just . Nothing extraordinary.
But what if this was different?
I looked across the table at Rion, and Jeron’s face flashed in my mind—pale, motionless, poisoned. Keigan had admitted there was nothing he could do against that venom. Nothing at all. The helplessness of that truth had been crushing.
But what if my blood could change that?
Could I really do sothing? Sothing no healer could?
The idea was ridiculous. Unreal. Like one of those wild old stories people told by the fire. Impossible, laughable.
And yet, if there was even the smallest chance it was true...
I licked my lips nervously. "Do you think... there’s sothing in my blood?"
The question trembled out of , uncertain, fragile.
Rion finally tore his gaze from whatever thought held him, and his eyes locked with mine. Slowly, he set his wineglass down. Then, a smirk curved across his lips.
"We won’t know," he said, his voice darkly amused, "if we don’t try."
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