Chapter 23-A Mother's Fear

Rain’s POV

  On the morning of Odett’s flood exercise at the Academy, I stood at her bedroom door and watched the protection marks fade beneath the wood. They would warn me if her power surged or Lorilie disappeared from her reach again. Their silence should have comforted me; instead, I kept picturing her waking to a floor she no longer trusted.

  ‘She woke safely,’ Dosha said with steady reassurance inside my mind.

  ‘She ate, argued with her journal, and left with Joshy. Those are good things,’ she added patiently.

  ‘They are normal things,’ I answered.

  ‘Normal does not explain why something kept Lorilie from reaching her,’ I reminded her uneasily.

  ‘No, but fear does not explain it either,’ Dosha said.

  Dosha sounded like Mom when she wanted me to slow down, and I hated that they were both right. One corner of Odett’s made bed had been lifted where she checked beneath it before dawn. She had survived a war at seven years old. Now she had to convince herself her own room was safe.

  Mom arrived carrying Odett’s warded journal. She offered it to me outside the room, and I took the case without opening it. Odett had agreed to record the dreams so she could understand them, not so every frightened adult around her could read them.

  “She recorded the repeating details from the earlier dreams,” Mom said.

  “The locations changed, but the damaged protections, ash, and unnatural stillness appeared more than once,” she explained carefully.

  “Bodies and children appeared for the first time at Black Claw,” she finished with quiet unease.

  “And Lorilie was blocked for the first time,” I said.

  “Yes,” Mom said.

  “That is the change I find most concerning, but concern is not an explanation,” she added firmly.

  I took the case to Zion’s private office. Jess perched on the couch, and Orian had drawn a chair close to her. Zion stood by the window with his hands braced on the ledge. No reports or maps waited on the table; I had asked him to leave the investigation outside this conversation.

  I needed to speak first as Odett’s mother. We were all responsible for people beyond this family, but I would not let a frightening dream turn my daughter into an object of study before she had even come home from class.

  “I want us to discuss what happened without turning Odett into another source of evidence,” I said.

  “Her nightmare may be nothing more than fear taking a recognizable shape, but I cannot ignore the possibility that it is connected to the attacks,” I continued carefully.

  “What makes you believe there might be a connection?” Orian asked with careful focus.

  “The timing,” I said.

  “The nightmares began long after Sam left, once the attacks were becoming more frequent,” I explained cautiously.

  “At first, she saw empty communities after some kind of destruction,” I continued with growing unease.

  “Now she is seeing bodies, children, and a place she remembers,” I finished quietly.

  “She has also heard enough pieces of worried conversations to build terrible images,” Zion said.

  “Her mind could be using what frightens her most,” he added reluctantly.

  “It could,” I said.

  “That explanation does not account for Lorilie being unable to reach her,” I replied.

  Zion’s jaw tightened. He had listened calmly at breakfast while Odett described the dream, but I knew how much effort that cost him. When one of our children hurt, his first instinct was to stand between them and the cause. There was no one he could face this time.

  “Have you ever seen a nightmare interfere with a wolf bond?” Zion asked.

  “Ordinary nightmares do not usually block an awakened wolf,” Mom said with professional caution.

  “Power can become disordered during sleep, especially when fear causes instinctive magic to rise,” she explained evenly.

  “Odett carries more than one kind of magic, and we do not understand every way those parts interact,” she added.

  “You said you found no foreign spell,” Jess said.

  “I found no foreign spell I could identify,” Mom said.

  “That is not the same as proving nothing touched her,” she clarified firmly.

  “It means her mind and magic carried no trace I recognized after she woke,” she finished carefully.

  Jess rubbed her palms against her trousers. She glanced at the journal, then away. She had loved Odett since before Zion and I knew one another, and she would have searched every kingdom for a way to keep her safe. Even Jess understood that searching Odett’s private thoughts without permission would hurt her.

  “Then we make sure she is protected without making her feel watched,” Jess said.

  “If everyone suddenly follows her through the castle, she will know we are scared,” she added bluntly.

  “She already knows we are concerned,” Zion said.

  “Pretending otherwise would insult her,” he added firmly.

  “Concern is different from turning every room into a guard post,” Jess said.

  “She needs to know she can tell us what happens without losing every piece of privacy she has,” she insisted protectively.

  “Jess is right,” I said.

  “The protections stay around her room, but we do not add guards outside her door or remove her from the Academy,” I decided protectively.

  Zion left the window and crossed his arms. I could see how badly he wanted guards outside Odett’s door. He did not argue, though, and I loved him for making room for a choice that frightened him.

  “What are you asking from us?” Orian asked.

  “I need you and Zion to look at the timing of the attacks without adding Odett’s dreams to the official files,” I said.

  “I need to know whether the nightmares changed near any known increase in activity, but her descriptions do not leave this family unless we find something real,” I added firmly.

  “We can compare dates without recording why,” Orian said.

  “That will tell us whether the timing deserves another conversation,” he explained practically.

  “It will not tell us the dreams came from the attacks,” he warned.

  “That is all I am asking,” I said.

  “It is not all you want,” Zion said.

  Zion knew me too well. I wanted a name and a place I could go to confront whatever had reached our daughter. Without those, I was left asking her to sleep and hoping the wards would wake me if the nightmare came back.

  “I want to know whether something is using my daughter’s sleep to reach her,” I said.

  “I want someone to tell me why children stood among the bodies and why one of them looked familiar,” I continued, unable to hide my worry.