Year Two: Rebels - Cara Wylde Page 0,70
he felt. Relieved. I’d felt the same when I saw El’s red hair.
“I met our daughter. Since she’s inside my womb and she’s a dream traveler, we can meet in my dreams. Our dreams. Her name is Eliana. She chose it herself. I saw her, and she has your red hair and my blue eyes.”
“Oh my God.” I couldn’t read him. I couldn’t tell whether he was happy or… in shock. Probably both. “Oh my God, I don’t know what to say. I’m going to be a father!”
“Yeah,” I chuckled. “Who would’ve thought?”
He lied next to me and placed a hand on my belly.
“This wasn’t the plan,” he said. “But that’s okay, I can adapt. We can all adapt.”
Seth nodded. I reached over to him and took his hand in mine. I was now lying in bed, naked, with one naked sphinx beside me, and one incubus who was still wearing his clothes. Adrian was pacing the room. I sat up to look at him.
“I saw Gilgamesh.”
He turned to me, looking like I’d just poured acid on him.
“What?!”
“He’s not dead. He never was… dead. How could he have been? There’s no death in that place. Only pure, relentless existence. He’s trapped with many other dream travelers in this tree of horrors. He told me to leave and never return, but you know me,” I chuckled sheepishly. “I can’t abandon those people there. They’ve suffered long enough. I am going to release them.”
“How?” He sat on the edge of the bed, which made Seth get off and look for his clothes. “What did he say?”
“He talked about some kind of monster that devoured them over and over. He was afraid that it might catch me, too.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I will give you his diary. I’ve kept it from you long enough. You should have it. Maybe there’s something in it that will help.”
“You want me to save him, don’t you?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what I want anymore. This whole thing has been… a crazy ride.” He stole a glance at Davien, who was still busy rubbing my belly.
I took Adrian’s hand in mine. “You don’t want to get off it, do you?”
He laughed. “I think it’s too late for that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
I’d had the dream journal for over a week now, and I still couldn’t bring myself to open it. Adrian had told me what it contained. Gilgamesh had written about what had prompted him to look for something that could prolong his life, about how he’d stumbled upon the universe of the Great Old Ones, and what he’d seen and felt when he jumped there the one and only time. He also talked about Yig, of which he knew since he attended Grim Reaper Academy. One of his best friends had been a revenant. Adrian didn’t know if the diary might reveal something that could help me free the dreamers trapped in the tree of horrors, as we now called it. I hoped it did, but at the same time, I was too scared to read it. I had so many things on my mind and so much trouble prioritizing. So, I hid the old notebook at the bottom of a drawer and decided to focus on the field trip to Hell for now. I had the blood of a revenant, the feather of an angel, and soil from the cosmic dimension. The horn of a demon was one of the toughest ingredients to get, along with blood from Yig.
The morning of the field trip, Davien and Seth stopped me in the hallway. I was supposed to meet the rest of the MDC in the courtyard in five minutes.
“I talked to Valac,” Davien said. “He’s going to help you.”
Valac was a demon, and the only guy in the Merciful Death Cabal who was a legit jerk. He’d participated in the bet the year before. He hadn’t gotten any better. He still flirted with me every time he got the chance, and he still took pleasure in pissing me off. Unfortunately, he was the only demon in the MDC, which made sense. In truth, I couldn’t understand how he’d gotten sorted in my cabal. If anything, demons certainly weren’t merciful. Ever.
“I don’t trust him.”
“And you shouldn’t. That’s why you have Corri.” They fist bumped, and I blinked in confusion and disbelief. “Don’t let her out of your sight,” he told Corri.
“No, sir. Never.”
“Since when are you two friends?”
Corri was buzzing around, agitated. “Since you’re pregnant