Chapter 21-Unwritten Truths

Odett’s POV

  The next night passed without a dream. Grandma’s wards stayed quiet, and Lorilie slept close enough for me to feel her. I still woke before sunrise and checked beneath the bed for cracks before I could stop myself.

  ‘You checked twice already,’ Lorilie said with sleepy patience inside my mind.

  ‘I know,’ I answered.

  ‘I am making sure it did not change,’ I added defensively.

  ‘Floors usually announce when they split open,’ Lorilie said.

  I checked once more and got dressed. The glass had been cleared and the books returned to their shelves. Only the new marks by the window and door showed that something more than fear had torn through my room.

  Mom waited for me in the smaller breakfast room instead of joining the rest of the family. Dad had already left for his office, and the twins’ voices traveled faintly from the main dining room. Mom placed a plate in front of me before setting Grandma’s journal beside it.

  “Your grandmother wants you to record the earlier nightmares while you still remember them,” Mom said.

  “Take your time, and stop if writing them starts to affect your magic,” she added.

  “There were a lot of them,” I said.

  “Most of the places looked different, but the silence was always the same,” I continued uneasily.

  “Then begin with the details that repeated,” Mom said.

  “You are recording what you experienced, not trying to explain it,” she reminded me gently.

  The rule sounded easy until I wrote the first dream down. I had seen damaged houses and found no one inside them. My hand moved toward the word taken before Mom touched the margin and made me pause.

  “Did you see someone take them?” Mom asked.

  “No, but they were gone,” I said.

  “Write that no residents were present,” Mom said.

  “Taken describes how they disappeared, and you do not know that yet,” she explained evenly.

  I had been separating facts from guesses in Dad’s office for weeks. It was harder with a dream I had carried alone. I changed the word and found three other places where I had given the silence an answer it had never offered.

  ‘She is right,’ Lorilie said with reluctant agreement.

  ‘You are supposed to support me,’ I replied with quiet betrayal.

  ‘I support you knowing the difference between what frightened us and what happened,’ Lorilie said.

  I wrote about the open doors of the vampire collective and the lanterns still lit in the fairy settlement. Ash and damaged protections appeared in later dreams. Until Black Claw, there had never been bodies.

  The children were new too. I recorded the crimson in their eyes and the way they had turned together. Beside the blonde girl, I wrote down her braid and the blue beads near her ear, leaving her name blank rather than guessing.

  “That is enough for this morning,” Mom said with quiet concern after watching my hand begin to shake.

  “I can finish another one,” I said.

  “You can, but you are not going to,” Mom said.

  “Control also means stopping before your power forces you to stop,” she added.

  I closed the journal even though several pages remained blank. Mom stored it inside a small warded case that recognized my magic, hers, Dad’s, and Grandma’s. The record remained private, and no copy entered the investigation files.

  At the Academy, no one knew what I had written over breakfast. Our instructor sent the fifth-years into the supply hall to prepare for a simulated flood. Crates of food, medicine, blankets, and shelter materials waited for us. I welcomed the work until I saw how easily I could make a mistake while tired.

  Joshy and I joined Nolan and Cassian, and I received command first because the instructor rotated leadership. Marked crates represented our supplies, while sealed cards described changing roads and injuries. The arrangement looked simple until the exercise began.

  “We should count everything before we begin loading,” Joshy said.

  “The inventory is already attached to the wall,” I said.

  “Nolan can check the eastern route while Cassian divides the medicine,” I directed briskly.

  Joshy followed my directions, though I saw him glance at the posted inventory. I moved between the crates and the route board, trying to hold every number in my head. For several minutes, I did not think of Black Claw.

  The eastern bridge had failed. Nolan redirected the supply route through a forest road, Cassian requested additional warming potions for the longer trip, and Joshy asked how many carts remained light enough for the narrow path. I answered too quickly and gave him the number from the wall inventory.

  “That count includes the damaged cart,” Joshy said.

  “The damaged cart was removed yesterday,” I said.

  “It is still behind the last row of crates,” Joshy said.

  “I asked to count everything before we started,” he reminded me cautiously.

  A red marker hung from a cart behind the crates. The inventory had been correct when someone posted it, but the cart was unusable now. I had treated the page as if it could not grow old, and our plan depended on supplies we could no longer move.

  “Then move the blankets onto the medicine carts and divide the food between the remaining two,” I said.

  “Nolan can adjust the arrival order while Cassian checks the weight limits,” I instructed, forcing myself to focus.

  “That delays the shelter materials,” Cassian said with concerned hesitation.

  “Only if we insist on moving everything together,” Joshy said.

  “Send the first two carts now and use the repaired bridge supports as sled runners for the shelter load,” he suggested confidently.

  I wanted to reject Joshy’s solution because he had caught my mistake in front of everyone. The feeling embarrassed me more than the mistake itself. He was my Beta, and I needed him to speak when I missed something.

  “Do it,” I said.

  “Joshy, take the first carts,” I ordered with renewed focus.

  “Nolan and Cassian can prepare the shelter load while I correct the route schedule,” I continued decisively.

  We finished six minutes behind the fastest team but kept every simulated resident supplied. The instructor waited until the other students left before addressing the mistake. She stood beside the damaged cart while the four of us returned the wooden markers.

  “What failed first?” the instructor asked.

  “The inventory,” I said.

  “The inventory was accurate when it was written,” the instructor said.

  “What failed was your decision to treat an old fact as a current one,” she explained firmly.

  I thought of the morning Mom confirmed Black Claw was safe. That was true when she checked. It could not promise what would happen tomorrow, any more than an old inventory could repair a cart.