Living Nightmare

Isadora:

Lucian’s arms are colder than I expect, like stone wrapped in midnight, but the chill seeps into me like a lullaby. The corridor blurs past in gray streaks of torchlight. My head lolls against his chest. I should protest, tell him I can walk, but the thought never reaches my tongue.

The scent of him, iron and something darker, anchors me. I hate that it feels safe.

My door opens without a sound. He lowers me onto the mattress with surprising care, as if I’m spun glass. The room smells of old paper and rain.

“Rest,” he murmurs, a command disguised as kindness.

I mean to thank him. My lips move; no sound comes.

Lucian straightens, already half way to the door, ready to vanish into the night.

That’s when the world fractures.

Flames roar across the ceiling—silent, furious. The stone walls melt into black ruin. Heat slams into me. I choke on smoke that isn’t there.

Wake up.

I try to sit, but my limbs refuse. The nightmare sticks like a second skin.

“Isadora!” Lucian’s voice slices through the roar. Far away. Too far.

I see him across a hallway that no longer exists, his eyes a violent red. He reaches for me, but fire divides us. His mouth moves—another shout—before everything wavers like molten glass.

The bed shakes. Real. Present.

“Isadora, breathe,” he commands.

I can’t. The flames crawl closer, licking at the floor.

Heat floods me from within, molten and merciless. My skin burns so hot I swear I hear it hiss.

Lucian curses—a raw, guttural sound.

The air quivers. He touches my wrist and recoils as though scalded.

“You're burning,” he snarls.

Darkness presses harder. My heartbeat pounds like war drums.

Somewhere beyond the fire, a voice slides into the dream.

Isadora.

Silas. A shadow within shadow.

Come back. His whisper threads through the smoke, cool and low, like midnight rain.

Another echo follows—heavier, ground-shaking.

Boots. Rhett. The sound vibrates through the floorboards even in this phantom inferno.

Hold on, little doe, he growls, a promise and a threat.

Light spills next—golden, aching. It doesn’t banish the dark but makes it shimmer.

Kai. His magic brushes my senses, a desperate attempt to draw me out, but the fire eats it whole.

I am pinned between waking and nightmare, the world bending, collapsing.

Lucian’s face wavers in the heat-haze. He grips my shoulders, his voice a razor.

“Fight it, Isadora. You’re not alone.”

The flames scream back.

I force a breath. Another. Pain arcs through me—white, electric. Something inside me snaps like a bone.

The fire falters.

I crash into the present, gasping. The room swims back: stone walls, moonlight pooling across the floor. Lucian crouches over me, hair damp with sweat, crimson eyes sharp with something I can’t name—fear or hunger.

Footsteps thunder down the hall. The door bursts wide: Rhett, a storm in human form; Silas, a moving shadow; Kai, haloed in gold.

They crowd the threshold, silent for a beat, all of them watching as if the air itself might shatter.

Lucian doesn’t move his hands from my shoulders. “She’s was burning from the inside,” he says, voice low and dangerous. “I couldn't wake her up, she was just... gone.”

The others surge forward, each a force that should comfort but only feeds the dread twisting in my chest.

Because deep in my bones, the fire still smolders.

And I know this was only the beginning.

Moonlight pools across the stone floor like spilt mercury, a cold glow that makes every breath look like smoke. The room still tastes of fire and smoke—ash in the back of my throat, heat thrumming beneath my skin.

They don’t speak. None of them.

Silas claims the window first. Frost blooms beneath his palm, a slow creep of silver veins across the glass. He sits like a sentinel carved from night, one boot braced on the sill, shadow melting into shadow.

Rhett slips behind me on the bed, a wall of quiet heat. I feel his heartbeat through the mattress, steady and low, a predator’s patience. His nearness should be comfort; instead it’s a reminder of teeth.

Kai hovers at the staircase that spirals toward the loft. Halfway up, he leans against the railing, a book already open in his hands, as though words could anchor him. Golden light coils faintly around his fingers, soft enough to be mistaken for candle-glow. He keeps his eyes on the page but I can sense the way his attention flickers—always back to me.

And Lucian—

I tilt my head and find him a story above, perched in the alcove that overlooks us all. He’s undone the top buttons of his shirt, the severe line of his collar loosened. His cape lies discarded beside him, black hair falling unruly across his forehead. From here the moonlight cuts him into sharp planes and soft shadows.

I’ve never seen him look less like a prince of anything.

He watches, silent, crimson eyes dulled to something almost human. Worry clings to him like a scent.

No one trusts the others. I feel it in the air—thin, brittle, ready to splinter. Yet none of them move to leave.

The nightmare still clings to me like smoke. I draw my knees to my chest, fingers trembling despite the heat that still burns in my veins.

“What now?” The words rasp out, barely more than a whisper.

Silas’s gaze drifts from the iced glass to me, winter-cold. “We wait.”

“For what?” My voice steadies even as my pulse jumps.

“For whatever tried to break through you,” Rhett answers, low and rough, the sound almost a growl. “It isn’t finished.”

Kai closes his book without a sound. Gold sparks at the edge of his sleeve before fading. “And until we know what it is,” he says, eyes narrowing at the others, “none of us should be apart.”

Lucian doesn’t speak. He only leans forward, elbows on his knees, eyes locked on me as though the truth might be written in my skin.

I meet his gaze and, for one sharp heartbeat, forget to breathe.

Because for all his polish, all his practiced control, I can see it: the same fear that keeps us all rooted here, strangers bound by something darker than trust.

The fire inside me stirs, answering with a quiet pulse.

Outside, the wind howls against the wards.

None of us moves. None of us dares.

And the night stretches on, endless and watchful.