Chapter Eleven – Of Blood, Dreams, and Almosts

Sierra’s POV

She drifted in a sea of smoke and warmth, darkness curling soft and strange around her body—not cold like night, not cruel like pain, but safe. Familiar. It lapped at her skin like a tide that had been waiting centuries to find her again.

Something pulsed beneath her ribs. Slow. Ancient. A heartbeat that wasn’t quite hers.

The shadows here were different than the ones she commanded in waking life. They weren’t jagged shields or twitching half-formed shapes. They were liquid, velvet, thick with whispers she couldn’t quite catch. Whispers that weren’t in words but in memory. A language that brushed the back of her mind like half-forgotten lullabies.

“You’ve felt him, haven’t you?”

The voice was a woman’s. Low. Smoky. Wrapped in love and tragedy and power that hummed like black fire.

Sierra’s breath stilled. It wasn’t sound that moved through her, but something deeper—like recognition, like bone remembering bone. It stirred a place inside her blood she hadn’t even known was asleep.

She turned in the dream-space, trying to find the speaker, but there was no figure—only soft glimmers of silver light, violet flame flickering at the edges, like something just out of reach.

“The boy with the cursed blood,” the voice continued, rich with something like sorrow. “Born of violence, but not made for it.”

Malick.

The name slammed into her chest. Even here, in this place that wasn’t quite real, her heart clenched at the thought of him. His shadow brushing hers in the training hall. The warmth of his shirt still folded on her desk. The way he looked at her—not like she was fragile, not like she was dangerous, but like she was both.

“He is more like you than he knows,” the voice murmured.

The shadows around her shifted, curling into shapes that bled into one another—great black wings stretching across a stormed sky, a crown of antlers and ash hovering in the dark, a woman cradling a newborn wrapped in dark silk. The images pulsed like living memories.

“There is truth in his eyes, child. And danger. But he will never harm what is his.”

Sierra’s throat cinched tight, as if invisible fingers had closed around it. She stepped forward without meaning to, drawn into the gravity of the words, every nerve in her body trembling like glass about to shatter. Her voice, when it scraped free, was no stronger than a thread—thin, breakable—like the air itself sought to strangle the question before it lived.

“Why is he important? Why now?”

The dark stilled. Then the voice curved, a smile she could not see but could feel, sliding along her ribs and curling, possessive, around her heart.

“All in good time, my gorgeous girl.”

The endearment struck like a blade wrapped in silk. It detonated inside her chest, rattling her bones, echoing in places she had tried to keep locked.

And then—she was falling.

The confirmation struck like thunder rattling her bones, shaking her all the way down to the places she’d buried deepest. For so long she’d told herself not to hope. That whatever had created her had been erased, destroyed, forgotten. But now—

He will never harm what is his.

The words echoed through her.

And Malick’s name came with them.

Her stomach flipped. Her pulse hammered, but not from magic.

This was worse. This was… human. Mortal. Terrifying.

She couldn’t sit still. She threw on her uniform in a blur, braid messy and uneven, cheeks still flushed. Her books clattered into her satchel like they were drunk on her nerves. She needed the distraction of routine—anything to steady the hurricane in her chest.

The hallway outside buzzed with morning chaos. Students shoved past one another, familiars chittered from rafters, and whisperstones repeated the daily announcements in dry, mechanical tones. Sierra barely heard any of it.

Because she felt it.

Before she even saw him.

That pull. That impossible weight. Like gravity—but sharper. Hungrier.

Malick.

He came from the opposite wing, book tucked casually under his arm, moving with that effortless calm that always made her want to scream. His dark eyes scanned the crowd—too casually.

He’s looking for me.

Her heart nearly cracked her ribs.

And then their eyes met.

Gods.

It was worse than she’d imagined. That face—infuriatingly calm, irritatingly handsome, confusing in ways she didn’t have the vocabulary for. She needed to say something. Anything. Something normal. Something cool.

“Hi!”

The word shot out of her mouth like an arrow made of pure humiliation.

He blinked. Slowly. Deliberately. And then—because fate hated her—his mouth curved into a smirk that looked carved by devils.

“You ran off last night.”

Her brain tripped over itself. “I didn’t run…” she lied instantly.

Malick tilted his head, eyebrow arching. He didn’t even need to speak for the disbelief to radiate off him.

He did anyway. “Was Elara that scary, or was it just the idea of me… shirtless?”

Her mouth fell open. Words stumbled out, useless fragments. “I—what—I—”

“Relax,” he murmured, stepping close enough that his shadow brushed hers. It wasn’t an accident. She felt it. A deliberate pull. Her shadows twitched, curling toward his like vines toward sunlight.

“I didn’t want her there either.”

Her chest seized.

On the stone floor, their shadows touched—hesitant at first, then winding together in slow spirals, like they recognized each other. Like they’d been separated too long. The air thickened, charged, hot.

No. Not here. Not now.

Her throat dried, her pulse a frantic rabbit in her veins. She couldn’t let this—whatever this was—swallow her. Not when her dream still rang in her bones. Not when she could still hear her mother’s voice whispering through the dark.

She tore herself back a step, almost tripping. “I have class…” she mumbled, heat flooding her cheeks. Her braid slapped her cheek as she turned too fast.

She didn’t look back. Couldn’t.

But she felt him watching her all the way until she vanished around the corner.

And gods help me—

I couldn’t stop smiling.