I’m standing in front of a bathroom mirror, trying to wake up.
Against my will, my eyes look at myself in the mirror and confirm my theory.
A shirtless Darian stares back at me.
Wow.
Either Darian is rewriting history, or he was working out rather vigorously at this point in his life.
“Something is wrong,” Darian thinks inside my—his own—head. “Where is she?”
A wolf howl pierces the air.
“She must be upset,” Darian thinks. “But why—”
The door bursts open, and a naked woman rushes in.
A pregnant naked woman.
Darian looks her over and playfully whistles.
His memory must be playing tricks again, as mere mortals do not look as perfect as this lady. Her flawless skin resembles white chocolate melted over silk. Even her small baby bump somehow looks like it was designed by Leonardo da Vinci.
Darian smiles. “Great. Why bother with pesky clothing?” Then something about her face makes him stop talking.
Despite the fury in her features, as well as their almost supernatural beauty, something about the woman’s face is distantly familiar to me.
Darian clearly knows her intimately, but where have I seen her? On a cover of Maxim magazine, maybe?
“How could you?” she shouts in a melodious voice.
“What’s going on, love?” Darian clears his throat. “Did something happen?”
She slaps him/me on the cheek.
It stings.
“Matilda!” He rubs his cheek. “What is this?”
“So, this is the Matilda you compared me to in the restaurant?” I ask, knowing full well Darian isn’t going to answer. “Why did you say she was fiery?”
“I know,” she says, packing a novel’s worth of meaning into just two words. “Stop the farce.”
“She can’t know,” Darian thinks. “How could she know?”
The fear that accompanies that thought is stronger than any I’ve experienced myself—and I thought I was an expert on this subject after everything that’s happened.
Then again, memory-fear might get stored stronger than when you experience it firsthand. Especially if something horrific is about to happen to burn this episode into Darian’s memory.
“I’m still not following,” he lies.
“I can believe that,” Matilda says, her jaw tensing. “You’ve had trouble ‘following’ me for some time now, haven’t you?”
The fear solidifies into an iceberg in the pit of Darian’s stomach. “You didn’t—”
“I did,” she says. “I asked Chester to shield me from seer eyes.”
“Insane woman,” Darian thinks. “Your husband isn’t stupid. He will guess—”
The look on her face short-circuits Darian’s thoughts.
“You wouldn’t tell me what was wrong,” she grits through her teeth. “So I shielded myself from your power, just long enough to hire a dream walker to find out what you’re hiding.”
Darian’s negative emotions are hard to tell apart at this point.
Distantly, I recall Felix mentioning a dream walker friend who works for the rehab facility where we left Ariel. He said they can enter other people’s dreams and manipulate their surroundings.
Sounds like they can also steal secrets.
“You’re going to trust some charlatan?” Darian says, forcing outrage into his voice, but he knows how desperate he sounds.
“Don’t.” If looks could sever heads, Darian would’ve lost his.
“Did the dream walker tell you why?” Panic creeps into his voice.
“Why?” She spits out the word. “Why you didn’t tell me my baby will die, you mean?”
He cringes as though she slapped him again.
“I can guess,” she says. “You know this is his baby. No doubt you saw a future where I finally stopped our—whatever this was—for the sake of my baby. No doubt you—”
With the speed of light, Darian concentrates in a manner I can’t quite understand, and finds himself instantly in Headspace.
Wow. How did he do it so fast and without any meditation?
He does something else too quickly for me to comprehend—and enters a vision.
Which for me makes it a memory of a vision—which is kind of trippy.
Darian is standing on the edge of a graveyard.
“Lurking and hiding, like a coward,” he thinks to himself through the grief.
Chester and a bunch of other black-clad people are standing near the freshly dug-up grave.
Chester’s usually jolly, satyr-like face is furrowed with deep sorrow.
Sorrow that’s nothing compared to what Darian feels—
The vision is over, and we’re back in the bathroom, with the naked and furious Matilda saying, “—rather the baby died, so you could have me to yourself—”
“The future is changed,” Darian thinks, ignoring her words. “She dies now, unless—”
The scene around us swirls and disintegrates again, replaced by yet another one.