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“Dix?” Alex called, rushing over to her friend. She reached out to restrain D.C.’s arms to keep them from smacking her in the face. “Wake up, Dix!Wake up!”

“Noooo!” D.C. wailed. The sound was heart-wrenching and it caused chills to trickle down Alex’s spine.

D.C. continued to scream and fight, so Alex roughly shook her. When she finally woke, her demeanour changed almost instantly. One second she was screaming bloody murder, and the next she had her mouth closed and eyes wide open, looking up at Alex in confusion.

“Alex? What are you doing?” D.C. asked groggily, staring at her arms where Alex held them locked in a firm grasp.

“You were having a nightmare,” Alex said, releasing her. “You were screaming and everything.”

D.C. looked bewildered but then her expression cleared. Just as swiftly her eyes shadowed, and she looked away from Alex, swallowing thickly. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Hey, you can’t help what you dream,” Alex said. But then she remembered that sometimes D.C. actuallycouldinfluence what she dreamed. Her friend’s gift enabled her to dreamtruedreams—dreams that showed the future. When D.C. had those dreams, she could choose to relive the visions anytime she wanted to gather more information.

“Dix, was that… Were you dreaming one of your, you know,dreams?” Alex asked.

D.C. looked up at Alex with eyes that were calmer than before, but still held a lingering trace of darkness.

“I’m sure it was nothing, Alex.” Despite her confident words, she didn’t sound certain. “I can barely remember it, so I think it was just a regular nightmare. Usually I have much more clarity when I have true dreams.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Alex offered.

“N—no,” D.C. said quickly. Then she cleared her throat as if to cover her abrupt answer. “I mean, it’s late, and I’ll probably have forgotten all about it by morning.”

“You sure?” Alex asked, not wanting to upset D.C. when she looked so vulnerable. “You know I’m here if you want to talk.”

“I’m good, but thanks. And sorry again for waking you.”

Alex told her not to worry about it and made her way back to bed. While D.C. seemed to fall straight back to sleep, Alex had trouble relaxing. Try as she might, she couldn’t get D.C.’s agonised screams out of her mind. But soon enough the events of her day in Meya and the exhaustion from having to relive every moment—except for the ones she promised Roka not to speak of—during her talk with Darrius caught up to her, and she drifted off into a restless sleep.

That was the first night D.C.’s screams woke Alex, but it wasn’t the last.

Every night for the rest of the week Alex was woken by the terrified noises of her thrashing roommate. When confronted, D.C. adamantly refused to speak about her nightmares, continuing to claim they were nothing. And while the night terrors lasted only a few minutes, they were so anxiety-inducing that Alex was rarely able to sleep much afterwards.

Within a few days both girls had dark circles under their eyes, and their lack of proper rest hadn’t gone unnoticed by their friends. But more worrying was that their exhaustion was beginning to cause problems in class.

D.C. was the first to reap the consequences when she failed to answer a question correctly in Medical Science. Professor Luranda ended up giving her a detention when her reply was, “Sorry, Professor. I was so bored that I zoned out for a moment there. Can you repeat the question?”

By the time Friday arrived, Alex was definitely feeling the effects of her barely-awake consciousness. Finn had nearly killed her that morning in PE, andshehad nearly killed her entire class in Chemistry. Equestrian Skills had also royally sucked because she’d been so out of it during their forest ride that she’d ended up being coat-hangered by a tree. The impact had sent her flying off her horse and onto the ground, resulting in Tayla ordering her to go straight to the Medical Ward where Fletcher had thankfully treated her bruised ribs without comment.

If Alex thought things couldn’t get any worse after that, she was soon proven wrong. While Fletcher had been fixing her up with pain meds and a Regenevator to increase the healing speed of her injury, the heavens had opened up, bringing a downpour of rain across the entire academy.

“Perfect,” Alex groaned as soon as she stepped outside Gen-Sec and saw the liquid bucketing from the sky. Knowing she wasgoing to end up soaked no matter what, she stepped out into the rain and began to jog over to the Arena for her Combat class. While she ran, her thoughts grumbled about the lack of roofing over the amphitheatre. Sure, she’d had to take the class out in the elements before—rain, hail, snow, shine,everything—but she wasn’t in the mood to deal with the added inconvenience after the week she’d had.

Such was her luck that when the class actually started, the rain began falling even harder. Fabulous.

She made it halfway through the lesson before finally losing it.

“Fun, hey?” Brendan called over the violent sound of the downpour.

Alex could barely see him through the barrier of water. She could hardly seeanything. But since they were supposed to be attacking each other, her lack of vision presented a serious problem.

“Somuch fun,” she returned sarcastically.

The truth was, Alex’s tolerance had reached its limit. But she continued to get the stuffing knocked out of her, knowing the class surely had to end soon. She was wet and miserable, and all she wanted was a long, hot shower and a good night’s sleep. Was that too much to ask?

Fifteen minutes later, Brendan again yelled to her over the tumultuous noise. “I take it back—this isn’t fun anymore!”

Alex grunted in agreement and kicked out at him. They were practising unarmed fighting techniques, so at least they didn’t have the added danger of slipping on the muddy ground and impaling themselves on their blades. That was a positive, if noth