Chapter 8-Castle Trouble

Odett’s POV

  Some problems reached the castle before we did. Dad spent more evenings behind his office door with Orian and the Royal Guard. At first I assumed they were settling Academy disputes, but messengers began arriving after midnight. Maps disappeared from the office before breakfast, and sealed reports waited beside Dad’s plate when he thought no one was watching.

  I knew Sam’s handwriting before I saw his name on one envelope. His field reports had always come with a note for me, even if it was only a few lines about the weather or a training mistake I would have mocked him for. Lately, there had been no notes.

  I told myself he was busy. He had left on the investigation at least a year before the twins turned eight, and now his work took him across several kingdoms. Still, I caught myself looking for him near the training grounds. I knew he couldn’t come home just because I missed him; that didn’t stop me from checking every unfamiliar envelope.

  ‘I miss him too,’ Lorilie admitted with a quiet whine.

  I missed the way Sam challenged me in training without treating me as fragile. I missed the smile he tried to hide when I made him laugh and even the stubbornness that could make me furious. More than any of that, I wanted to know he was safe.

  Mom asked about our classes at dinner and smiled when Zander exaggerated his latest complaint. Some nights her food went cold before she touched it. When I finally asked what was wrong, she glanced toward Dad’s office and gave me an answer I had heard too often.

  “Your father and the council are looking into a few unusual reports,” Mom said with a reassuring smile.

  “What kind of reports?” I asked.

  “Nothing you need to worry about yet,” Mom answered with practiced calmness.

  The word yet bothered me more than the rest of her answer.

  ‘She is worried,’ Lorilie said with growing unease.

  ‘I know,’ I replied silently.

  Joshy noticed too. As we left the Academy one evening, a black Royal Guard vehicle passed us. Uncle Orian sat in the passenger seat reading a folder, too intent on it to look up when Joshy called his name.

  “He missed combat evaluations today,” Joshy said with a concerned frown.

  “Dad missed the council lecture yesterday,” I added with an uneasy expression.

  “They could be dealing with pack disputes,” Joshy suggested without conviction.

  “They could be,” I agreed quietly.

  Neither of us believed it.

  That evening, I passed Dad’s office and heard Orian speaking through the partly closed door. I should have kept walking, but Sam’s name stopped me.

  “Sam’s last report came from another Alpha King’s territory,” Uncle Orian said with a tense voice.

  “He was supposed to cross the border three days ago,” Uncle Orian continued.

  “If he changed his route, he would have included it in the report,” Dad replied with a serious tone.

  “He has been out there too long,” Mom said.

  “We need to bring him home,” Mom continued.

  I gripped the banister until the wood pressed into my palm. Sam had missed a border crossing, and Mom wanted him brought home. No one on the other side of the door sounded as if they believed the delay was ordinary.

  ‘Something is wrong,’ Lorilie warned as she began pacing inside my mind.

  The floor creaked beneath my foot, and the voices stopped. I walked on before anyone opened the door. Questions crowded my throat, but I was afraid Dad would answer only enough to make me more frightened.

  Sam knew how to get through unfamiliar territories. He had trained with the strongest warriors in our kingdom, and I repeated that to myself while changing for bed. But he wouldn’t miss an arranged crossing without a reason. Lorilie was restless beneath my skin, and I couldn’t settle her when I was just as worried.

  ‘He wouldn’t miss that crossing without a reason,’ Lorilie said, still restless.

  That last thought didn’t help.

  I found one of his old letters in the drawer by my bed. I knew its last line by heart and left the paper folded where it was. Reading it again would not tell me where he was tonight.

  The nightmares had first come two years earlier, far enough apart that I could blame a difficult week and move on. Lately they returned whenever I let myself sleep. That night, exhaustion finally pulled me under after midnight.

  In the dream, I stood in a village I did not recognize. Doors hung from broken hinges, glass covered the street, and claw marks crossed the walls. Blood led toward the trees, but there were no bodies and no voices. A child’s shoe lay beside an overturned table.

  I followed the blood until the street changed beneath me. Stone buildings rose around a coven courtyard, where candles still burned inside a damaged circle. The protection symbols had been torn apart. Whatever had happened here had left its marks, but no one remained to explain them.

  The courtyard gave way to a vampire collective, then a shifter settlement and a place beneath dark water. Each was empty after a struggle. I knew they were different communities, yet in the dream they shared the same silence, as if someone had taken the people and left their homes behind.

  I reached for the wall of the underwater settlement, and the scene folded back into the village. The child’s shoe was still there. I turned it over, looking for a name, while Lorilie pressed close in fear.

  ‘We should not be here,’ Lorilie said with a frightened growl.

  Something moved behind me whenever I stopped, but I never saw it. Then Sam called my name from beyond the houses. I ran toward his voice before I could ask why he was there.

  ‘Odett, wait!’ Lorilie shouted with alarm.

  The ground cracked open, and I woke before I fell. My claws had cut through the blanket and scratched the bed frame. I listened at the door until my breathing slowed, then tucked the torn blanket out of sight and pulled the bedding over the damaged wood.

  ‘That did not feel like a normal nightmare,’ Lorilie said.

  ‘It was only a dream,’ I insisted silently.

  Stress could make a dream feel real. I had heard too little from Sam and too much through Dad’s office door. I could manage my own fear without making Mom worry, I told myself, though I could still see the child’s shoe when I closed my eyes.