SOME MEMORIES BITE BACK

Tyra's POV

I woke up choking on a scream, dragging air into my lungs like I had been held underwater.

For a few terrifying seconds, I didn't know where I was. 

The nightmare clung to me in sharp, broken pieces, with blood splattering across white tiles, a cracked moon burning red in the dark and my father's voice calling my name until it dissolved into static.

I sat up so fast my head spun, clutching the sheets to my chest. My skin was slick with cold sweat even though the night air drifting in through the open window was freezing, and my heart was slamming so hard against my ribs that it hurt.

Moonlight spilled across the floor in pale silver stripes. The clock on the nightstand read 3:12 a.m.

"It was just a dream," I whispered to the empty room, pressing a trembling hand to my chest.

But I knew it wasn't.

The symbol in my nightmare was the same one I had seen in the mirror at the rehearsal, swirling out of the chandelier light and burning into my eyes.

Then the realization hit me, and my stomach dropped.

The rehearsal was the last thing I remembered. I remembered the mirror, the forest and the little girl running through the flames, and then pain and Alaric's arms and Osric's voice begging me to focus.

After that, there was nothing at all.

How had I gotten back to my room?

I looked down at myself and found that I was wearing my softest cotton nightdress instead of the dress I had worn to the hall. 

My hair had been brushed and loosely braided, the way my mother used to braid it when I was little, and someone had set a glass of water and two aspirin on my nightstand.

I squeezed my eyes shut as humiliation crashed over me in a hot, suffocating wave.

I had fainted in front of the entire pack.

Ten years ago, I had been the strange, fragile wolfless girl who couldn't handle a crowd. 

I had walked back into this house determined to prove that girl didn't exist anymore, and within two days, I had collapsed on the ballroom floor in front of everyone.

I could already hear the whispers, about how she was still broken and still a defect, and how she would be a disgrace to the Forrests during the inauguration.

A soft knock sounded on the door before I could pull myself together.

"Tyra?" my mother called gently, her voice muffled through the wood.

I hastily wiped my damp face with the back of my hand. "I'm fine, Mom," I called back, but my voice cracked halfway through the lie.

She came in anyway, her silk robe wrapped tightly around her shoulders, her dark hair loose. In the moonlight, her eyes glowed faintly gold, and they softened with worry the moment they landed on me.

"Another nightmare?" she asked quietly, closing the door behind her.

"Yeah," I admitted, nodding as I brushed damp strands of hair off my forehead. "Mom, what happened? How did I get back here?"

"Alaric and Osric carried you back," she replied softly, sitting down on the edge of my bed. "I changed you myself." Her brows drew together as she studied my face. "Do you remember anything?"

The image of the twins carrying me through the house, limp and unconscious in front of everyone, made my cheeks burn all over again. I shook my head.

"Just flashes," I murmured. "I remember feeling this terrible heat, and then I saw a symbol."

My mother's hand, which had been reaching for mine, paused in midair.

"What symbol?" she asked carefully.

I swallowed hard. "The cracked moon," I whispered. "The one I used to draw all the time when I was little. I saw it on the wrist of one of the men at the ice cream shop, Mom, one of the men who killed Papa."

She went completely still.

It was only for a fraction of a second, so brief that if I had blinked, I would have missed it. 

Something flickered across her face, something sharp and frightened, and then it was gone, smoothed away behind the gentle, patient mother mask I had known my whole life.

"Tell me exactly what you saw," she said softly, settling closer to me.

So I told her. I described the mirror and the forest, the little girl running, the flames, the blood in my dream and the symbol twisting in the light. 

My voice shook the whole way through, and I was too lost in the memory to notice how tightly her hands were clenched in her lap until I had finished.

When I stopped talking, she reached out and slowly stroked my hair, the way she used to when I was small and couldn't sleep.

"Dreams are echoes of the past, sweetheart," she said quietly. "Sometimes they're just memories replaying themselves."

I frowned. "But it felt real," I insisted. "It felt like something was calling to me."

She smiled faintly, but it was the kind of smile that never reached her eyes. "You've been under a lot of stress," she said gently. "Being home again, the whole issue with the twins… it's stirring up things you buried a long time ago."

I looked away, hurt prickling in my chest. "So you're saying it's all in my head?"

"I'm saying," she replied softly, her fingers stilling in my hair, "that you should be careful where you let your thoughts linger. Some memories bite back."

The words struck me oddly. They didn't sound like comfort. They sounded like a warning dressed up as advice.

I opened my mouth to ask her what she meant, but she was already standing and tightening the sash of her robe.

"Try to get some rest," she said, leaning down to kiss my forehead. "Lucius will want to talk to you in the morning about what happened."

Then she was gone, and the door clicked softly shut behind her.

I stared at it for a long time.

Even through the thick wood, I could still hear her heartbeat retreating down the hall. It was racing far too fast, like a frightened bird beating against a cage.

My mother was afraid, and she wasn't telling me why.

I touched the loose braid resting over my shoulder. The last person who had braided my hair before I fell asleep, before my mother ever did, had been my father. 

He had been terrible at it, his big hands clumsy and gentle, and he used to make me laugh by pretending the strands were tangling him up on purpose. 

I hadn't let myself think about that in years, and the memory hurt so sharply that I had to press my lips together to keep from crying.

I hadn't told her everything either. I hadn't told her about the silver glow in my palm, or the note still folded in the pocket of my cardigan on the chair, or the gold eyes in the woods. 

Every time I had opened my mouth to say it, something deep inside me had pulled me back, like an instinct I didn't understand whispering that it wasn't safe to say it out loud.

I lay back down and stared at the ceiling, but sleep was gone.

The room felt too small, the air too thick, and the silence too loud. After twenty minutes of tossing and turning, I gave up, threw the covers off and padded barefoot across the cold floor to the balcony doors.

I needed air. I needed to see the sky and remind myself that the world was bigger than this house and the nightmares living inside it.