Chapter 180 — What the Fuck Is Happening?

Chapter 180: Chapter 180 — What the Fuck Is Happening?

~ Raven ~

The Dreamwalker lifted one hand, and pain exploded through Raven’s head.

There was no warning, no pressure building slowly enough for her to brace against it. One moment she was standing beside Isolde, staring at the bastard while he smiled beneath that impossible blur, and the next it felt as though something had driven nails through both of her temples at once.

Her knees hit the ground with enough force to jar her bones.

"Fuck!"

Another pulse followed the first before she could recover, deeper this time, driving behind her eyes and down through the base of her skull. Her vision doubled as the warped landscape around them folded over itself, and Raven planted one hand against the ground simply to stop herself from falling flat on her face.

Something crashed down beside her.

Isolde had dropped too, both hands clamped against her head as a scream broke through clenched teeth.

Raven forced her gaze toward the Dreamwalker and hated what she saw.

He had not moved.

He simply stood several paces away with one hand slightly raised, watching them as though there was nothing unusual about two people writhing on the ground in front of him.

Another wave hit, and Raven’s arm nearly gave out beneath her. It no longer felt like ordinary pain. Something seemed to be forcing its way between her thoughts, prying them apart piece by piece while every beat of her heart drove those invisible nails deeper.

She dragged one foot beneath herself, then the other.

The Dreamwalker tilted his head as Raven forced herself upright. Her legs trembled badly enough that she nearly went down again, but anger gave her something the pain had not managed to take yet.

She reached toward him.

"You think..." Her voice broke when another spike went through her skull, forcing her eyes shut. Raven swallowed against the nausea rising into her throat and tried again. "You think I’m going to fucking bow to you?"

For a moment, the Dreamwalker only stared.

Then he laughed.

Not the quiet amusement Raven had grown used to hearing from him. This was different, delighted enough that something in her stomach tightened.

"Bow?" he repeated, spreading his arms slightly. "Oh, Raven, I don’t want you to bow."

The joy in his voice unsettled her more than anger would have.

The pressure eased just enough for Raven to straighten another inch as he stepped closer.

"You still don’t understand," he said. "You were interesting before. Annoying, certainly, but interesting."

His blurred face turned toward her fully.

"Then you pushed me out."

Raven’s fingers curled.

"You hurt me."

He sounded almost offended by that, but the amusement returned quickly.

"And now you’ve followed me into somebody else’s mind."

Isolde made a broken sound beside Raven, but the Dreamwalker barely glanced in her direction.

His attention remained fixed on Raven.

"Do you have any idea what that makes you?"

Raven’s jaw tightened. "Better at this than you?"

Pain slammed into her again.

Her legs folded beneath her before she could stop them.

The Dreamwalker laughed while Raven caught herself on both hands and breathed through clenched teeth.

"A threat."

That silenced her.

"For once, fate has been unusually kind to me." He moved closer, his footsteps strangely quiet against the ground. "You walked somewhere your precious wolf can barely reach you, and you did it willingly."

Raven looked up at him.

Whatever amusement had been in his voice remained, but something colder sat beneath it now.

"This is my chance to end the problem before it becomes something worse."

Isolde screamed.

Raven twisted toward her.

Her entire body had drawn tight, fingers digging into the sides of her head while the thin silver lines of Stillheart glimmered faintly beneath her clothes. Whatever the sigil was doing, it was not enough to keep the pain from tearing through her.

"Isolde."

There was no response.

Raven tried moving toward her and nearly collapsed when another spike drove through her skull.

She crawled instead.

Every movement made her stomach churn, but she forced herself across the short distance until her hand found Isolde’s wrist.

"Isolde." Raven tightened her grip when Isolde jerked beneath her touch. "Look at me."

Her own voice sounded far away.

Isolde’s eyes opened, but they struggled to focus.

"This is..." Raven stopped when the pain surged again, grinding her teeth until it passed enough for her to continue. "This is your fucking head."

Isolde stared at her through unfocused eyes.

Raven squeezed her hand harder.

"He’s the one who doesn’t belong here."

The Dreamwalker said something behind them, but Raven could no longer make out the words and did not care enough to try.

"Fight him."

Isolde sucked in a shaking breath.

The silver beneath her skin brightened.

For one second, the pressure around them shifted.

Raven felt it immediately. The ground trembled faintly, and something in the warped distance snapped back into place as though Isolde had grabbed hold of one piece of the dream and remembered what it was supposed to look like.

"That’s it."

Isolde’s fingers closed weakly around hers.

Raven moved closer.

"Again."

Another breath.

Another pulse from Stillheart.

The Dreamwalker’s amusement vanished.

The pressure intensified almost immediately.

Pain split through Raven’s head again, but this time she had expected it. She bowed over their joined hands and refused to let go while Isolde tried to breathe through the same assault.

"Come on," Raven forced out, every word scraping past the pain. "It’s yours. Not his."

Isolde’s breathing steadied for half a second.

Then broke.

Her fingers loosened.

Raven looked at her. "Isolde?"

Her eyes were beginning to roll upward.

"No."

Raven caught her shoulder with her free hand and shook her.

"Isolde."

The silver lines dimmed.

Isolde blinked slowly, fighting to bring her gaze back down, and for the first time since Raven had found her inside the dream there was no anger left in her face.

Only exhaustion.

"I’m sorry."

Raven frowned. "What?"

Isolde’s mouth trembled before she forced it still.

"I’m sorry."

"Stop apologizing and fight."

"I can’t."

The words were barely audible.

Raven tightened her grip. "Yes, you fucking can."

A weak sound escaped Isolde that might have been a laugh if she had possessed enough strength for one.

"I’ve been running for days, Raven."

Raven stopped.

Isolde looked at her, and something about the emptiness in her eyes tightened Raven’s chest.

"I’m tired."

"No."

"I really am."

"Isolde."

Her eyes began drifting upward again.

Raven shook her shoulder harder. "Don’t you fucking dare."

"I’m sorry."

Her fingers slipped from Raven’s.

Then her head dropped forward.

"Isolde?"

Nothing.

Raven caught her before she could fall completely, lowering her awkwardly onto the ground.

"Isolde."

A faint twitch ran through her arm.

That was all.

Raven stared at her.

The woman who had spent half an hour insulting her in the infirmary, who had laughed while calling her Your Majesty and somehow found enough energy after two sleepless nights to make fun of almost everything Raven said, now lay completely limp beside her.

Something hot and ugly rose into Raven’s throat.

"No."

She pressed her fingers around Isolde’s hand as though squeezing hard enough might force something back into it.

"Come on."

Nothing.

Raven looked up.

The Dreamwalker was watching them, and whatever amusement he had shown earlier was gone.

"It’s time."

Raven slowly straightened.

He lowered his hand toward her.

"It’s time Raven Rivers was no more."

The pressure hit.

Raven never managed to scream.

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out except a broken gasp as her entire body folded around the pain.

The pain was everywhere at once, driving behind her eyes, through her jaw and teeth and down her spine until Raven finally understood that hurting her had never been the point.

Something was pushing past the pain.

Reaching beneath it.

Her fingers curled uselessly against the ground as her thoughts began slipping away from one another, and for one terrifying moment Raven looked at the hand trapped inside hers without remembering why she was holding it.

Isolde.

The name came back a second later, bringing a sharp rush of relief that barely had time to settle before another pulse tore through her head and something else disappeared.

The infirmary.

Raven knew she had been there, but when she tried to remember why, the thought dissolved before she could reach the end of it.

Panic struck harder than the pain.

No.

She needed something simple. Something he could not take from her.

Her name.

Raven Rivers.

She clung to it with everything she had.

Raven Rivers.

Another pulse went through her.

Raven—

Her stomach turned.

Cold ground pressed against her cheek, although Raven could no longer remember when she had fallen. The Dreamwalker was speaking somewhere nearby, his voice reaching her through the haze, but the words had stopped meaning anything.

Even her vision was disappearing now, shadows and shapes bleeding together until the entire dream became one dark smear around her.

Raven Rivers.

She repeated the name silently, or at least she thought she did. Even those two words were becoming difficult to hold, slipping farther away every time she tried to reach for them.

Then something worse settled beneath the panic.

Calm.

Not relief or acceptance.

Something foreign and horribly gentle, inviting her to stop fighting.

Raven hated it immediately because she knew it was not hers.

Her eyelids began to flutter closed.

Maybe if she stopped fighting, the pain would stop too.

Maybe—

"Raven!"

Her eyes opened a fraction.

The voice had come from somewhere impossibly far away, faint enough that for a moment she wondered whether the Dreamwalker had created it too.

She tried to turn toward it, but her body refused to move as another wave rolled through her head and her eyes began drifting upward.

"Raven!"

Closer this time.

The Dreamwalker stopped speaking.

Raven heard her name again, stronger now, coming from somewhere beyond the dream rather than inside it.

"Raven!"

Something struck the world.

The sound was enormous, a deep impact rolling through everything around her until the warped ground beneath Raven shuddered and cracks raced outward through the darkness.

The Dreamwalker spun toward it.

"What the—"

Another impact hit the dream, and something beneath Raven’s ribs pulled so violently that she gasped. Her wolf surged in answer, followed almost immediately by a rush of heat that wrapped around her from the inside out.

Raven cried out as the pain vanished so suddenly that the relief itself left her breathless.

It did not fade.

It was simply gone.

One moment her skull felt as though it was being torn apart from inside, and the next there was nothing but heat wrapping around her body and the sudden rush of air into lungs she had forgotten how to use.

She dragged in another breath.

Then another.

"What the fuck?"

The Dreamwalker sounded different now.

Raven pushed herself onto one elbow.

Fire spread across the ground ahead of her, not burning like ordinary flame but moving through the warped dream itself, racing over shadows that recoiled from it while the air thickened with a pressure Raven knew before she understood why.

Her heart slammed once.

A shape emerged through the fire.

Four enormous paws struck the ground hard enough to make the dream shudder again, and Raven stared as a massive wolf stepped between her and the Dreamwalker.

Flames moved along its body without consuming the fur, curling over powerful shoulders and down its sides before spilling across the ground beneath its paws.

The wolf lowered its head and snarled.

The sound rolled through the dream.

Raven stopped breathing.

She knew that heat.

She knew the violent pull still burning beneath her ribs.

"Dante?"

One of the wolf’s ears twitched.

The Dreamwalker stared at him.

"No."

Dante’s wolf bared his teeth.

"What the fuck is this?"

The Dreamwalker took one step back, looking between the wolf and Raven.

"No. No, you do not get to—"

Dante lunged.

The Dreamwalker barely moved in time.

Flames tore across the place where he had been standing, and the entire section of dreamscape warped beneath the impact as he appeared several paces away and twisted toward the wolf.

"You meddling fucking fool!"

Dante was already turning.

There was nothing controlled about him, no hesitation and no attempt to understand where he was or what had happened.

The moment he found the Dreamwalker again, he attacked.

Fire rolled outward with him.

Raven flinched as the heat swept past her, but it never burned. It moved around her instead, spreading across the ground in a wide circle before surging toward everything beyond it.

The shadows nearest Raven pulled back.

The pressure sitting inside her head weakened further.

She stared at the flames surrounding her.

It felt strangely familiar.

Not the fire itself.

The intent beneath it.

The same possessive certainty she had felt from Dante more than once, stripped of words and reduced to something far more animal.

Stay away from her.

The Dreamwalker appeared again farther away.

Dante followed.

"You think being a Cardinal means you can force your way wherever you please?"

The wolf answered with another snarl, the sound carrying enough pressure to make the dream tremble.

The Dreamwalker’s blurred face turned toward Raven, and his entire body went still.

Even without being able to see his expression, Raven could almost watch the realization taking shape.

Isolde had seen him when she should not have been able to. Raven had somehow followed him into another person’s dream, and now Dante’s wolf was standing inside that same dream as though every rule the bastard relied on had simply stopped applying.

His attention settled fully on her.

"You."

Raven frowned at the sudden ugliness in his voice.

"This is all you."

Dante moved before she could answer.

His jaws snapped shut where the Dreamwalker’s shoulder had been a fraction of a second earlier, forcing the bastard to vanish and reappear several paces away as fire tore through the space he had occupied.

A curse ripped from him.

"This is fucking madness."

There was nothing playful in his voice anymore.

Dante did not give him time to recover. He charged again, and the Dreamwalker threw one hand outward, twisting the dream between them until the ground stretched into an impossible distance and walls of shadow rose in Dante’s path.

The wolf never slowed.

He crashed straight into the distortion, fire bursting outward on impact and tearing through the false distance until the warped space collapsed around him.

The Dreamwalker stumbled backward.

His head snapped toward Raven.

"What the fuck are you?"

Raven had no answer.

She was still staring at Dante, at the enormous wolf surrounded by flames that should not have been here, and at the impossible reality that somehow he had reached her.

Dante lunged again.

This time the Dreamwalker did not wait for him.

His form began fading around the edges.

Raven’s attention snapped back to him. "No."

The blurred face turned toward her, and for one moment she thought he might try one final attack. Instead, a laugh escaped him, although there was real anger beneath it now.

"You think this changes anything?"

Dante snarled and surged forward while the Dreamwalker faded farther from him.

"Enjoy your victory, Prymont."

Dante broke into a run.

The Dreamwalker’s form flickered backward again, his voice beginning to come from everywhere as the dream itself started breaking apart around them.

"You meddling fool. You think you can do whatever you like because you’re a Cardinal wolf?"

Shadows split apart while cracks raced through the ground beneath Raven.

The Dreamwalker’s blurred face turned toward her one final time.

"Don’t worry. I have a surprise waiting for both you and your little queen."

Dante reached him a heartbeat later.

Too late.

The Dreamwalker vanished before his jaws could close, and the entire dream collapsed with him.

Raven barely managed to draw breath before something caught her from behind and ripped her backward. The fire disappeared first, followed by Dante and then Isolde, until everything around her stretched into darkness.

The next instant, Raven slammed back into herself.

She woke with a sharp gasp, her body jerking hard enough that pain shot through her neck when she tried to sit up too quickly.

The infirmary rushed back around her all at once. The bed beneath her, the walls, the lamps and the cool air filling her lungs were suddenly real again.

Raven turned immediately toward Isolde.

She had not moved.

She still lay exactly where Raven remembered leaving her, eyes closed and body unnervingly still.

"Isolde?"

Before she could say anything else, a wave of heat rolled across her skin.

Raven froze.

Slowly, she looked the other way.

Dante stood beside her with one hand still locked around her arm.

His eyes were burning, fire glowing behind them brightly enough to reflect in his pupils, while heat rolled from his body in waves that made the air between them shimmer. His breathing was heavy and his jaw was clenched so tightly that, for once, there was nothing remotely teasing in his expression.

He looked at Raven, then at Isolde, before his gaze returned to Raven.

"What the fuck is happening?"