“Meaning, come over here. Tonight, I’ll bite. Tomorrow, I’ll mate.”
Chapter 22
Hope settled down in her bed, her head hurting from crying. Libby snuggled next to her, already sound asleep, while Paxton lay in a sleeping bag across the floor. They didn’t have sleepovers much anymore, at least not with Paxton, but his even breathing relieved her. Why hadn’t she known about his dad?
She’d been so dumb. At the very least, she should’ve made Pax tell her the truth. He was a much better liar than she’d thought, and that just made her sad.
It was her job to protect him; to protect everybody. She was the prophet, even though she didn’t know exactly what that meant. She was also the Lock, and sometimes nightmares revealed what that might mean.
For tonight, she needed sleep. So she let herself drift off, keeping a firm hand on her imagination and her mind, knowing tonight was the night. With Libby and Pax in the room she felt safe, and somehow, she was stronger.
Sleep took her, or maybe she took it.
She was soon standing on tall cliffs, watching a gray ocean throw up spray before her. The sky was dark and the water mysterious. She rubbed her hands down her chilled arms and took a step back, her bare feet scraping across rocks. There’d been a change in the air, in her body, the day she’d turned thirteen, and power flowed through her in a new way. She’d figured this would be part of it.
“Hope?”
She partially turned, not surprised to see Drake emerge from a cave in the rock. She blinked, looking up the cliff to high above. Huh. She hadn’t realized she stood on a ledge. The dream world used to include pink sandy beaches and warmth. “Hi.”
Drake looked around, his greenish-purple eyes taking in the area, his body tense. He’d grown, a lot, since she’d last seen him. His hair, all black, was cut shorter to wisp at his shoulders, which had widened considerably. The new play of muscle was nice. Interesting. He was a full Kurjan but his skin wasn’t as pale as most, and his features were more human. Even his eyes could pass for green if one didn’t look too closely. Now that he was a teen, he looked even more human, except for his height. “How are we in a dream world again? Weren’t they destroyed? How did you do this?” he asked, moving closer, his gaze on the ocean below.
“I turned thirteen,” she said, looking way up at his face. He was even taller than Paxton, but he’d filled out with muscle, too. They had met in dream worlds as little kids until the dream worlds had disappeared along with the immortals’ ability to teleport. It was because Quade Kayrs, another greatish uncle of hers, had returned from a world far away—somehow that had screwed everything up. “I didn’t create this dream world, though.” It was too cold. Too scary looking.
Drake watched the water spray up from far below. “Can your people teleport again?”
“No,” she said. “This is different.” She didn’t know how, but she felt the truth in her bones. She looked up, way up, to another cliff and saw the edge of her book. The green one she could never reach but had always been with her.
Drake followed her gaze. “Have you figured out what’s in that weird book?”
“No,” she said quietly. They’d agreed, years ago, not to tell each other the secrets of their people, and that was one of them. The book was for the Lock, and only she could open it. That was all she’d figured out so far.
He looked at her, his eyes filled with a light she’d never seen. “Thirteen, huh? You wear it well.”
She’d heard the expression on a television show, and she blushed, her face heating. Flirting was new to her, and she was a dork about it. Man, he was cute. Like the boys on television but taller and stronger. She kicked a pebble. “You got a lot taller.”
He nodded, sweeping an arm out. His hands had gotten bigger, too. “What do you think this means? That we can meet again?”
“I’m not sure.” For a while, they’d tried to communicate over the internet, but the grownups had found out and shut them down. It had been nearly two years since they’d talked. Were they still friends? Their people were enemies, but they were going to change that someday. Somehow. The wind