Page 88 of Burdened Bonds

I wake with a jolt,bolt upright in the bed, my body caked in sweat and shaking, the world spinning and Winnie shaking my arm. A second later three men, in various states of undress, come crashing through the door.

“What’s wrong?” Azlan says, arms raised and ready. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Winnie says, stroking damp hair back from my face. “Just a bad dream.”

“A dream?” Stone says, his jaw tightening. “What kind of dream?”

I peer at Renzo, lingering by the door. “The same one as before. I’m running to save a beast. An injured beast. One I have to save. Only I wasn’t running up the mountain this time. I was somewhere else. Somewhere dark and,” I shiver, “sinister.”

“A beast? What beast?” Winnie says.

“I don’t know. I can’t see it. I don’t know what it is. I just know it’s hurt, injured, and I have to save it.” I stare round at Stone and Azlan. “I had the same dream last time I slept. And it’s like … it’s like my dreams used to be.”

“A premonition,” Stone whispers.

“Yes, but why has this dream come again? I healed the dragon. We watched her fly away.”

“Maybe that wasn’t the beast you were meant to heal,” Winnie suggests.

“Then what beast am I meant to heal?”

“Spencer Moreau,” Azlan says, and my eyes leap to meet his.

Spencer!

34

Tristan

I creep through the forest,the trees becoming denser and denser the deeper I walk until I’m squeezing between tree trunks, leafless branches scraping at my shoulders and my face. It’s eerily quiet. Perhaps it’s because the birds have flown south and the other animals are hidden away hibernating. Or maybe it’s the oppressive nature of the forest.

There are rumors among the students that the forest is haunted, haunted by ancient spirits that feed on the souls of trespassers. That’s the reason the forest is impassible. That’s the reason no one comes in or out.

That also sounds like bullshit to me. There are no such things as spirits.

Then again, there were meant to be no such things as dragons. And that turned out to be bullshit too.

The temperature this far into the forest is severaldegrees cooler than it was out on the campus and my breath hangs like a ghost of its own in front of my face, the cold wind like icy fingers stroking at my skin.

Yeah, okay, it’s creepy.

I try not to think about it, plowing onwards. I’ve turned off my phone – I don’t want to be tracked – which means I’ve had to resort to old-fashioned methods of navigation. I hold a compass I stole from Johnson’s classroom up to my face. By my reckoning, if I keep heading northeast, I should reach the other side of the forest. Then I’ll have to circle back around the base of the hill, hoping no security forces are patrolling there, and head out into the lanes. There’s an old motorbike out in one of the fields – one Spencer crashed on a night of craziness a year ago. We never bothered to try and fix it or to drag it back to campus. I’m hoping I’ll be able to revive it back to life.

That’s my plan, anyway. I admit it’s not the best. I could find myself lost in this forest. I could find myself caught. The motorbike may no longer be there after all this time. Or perhaps I won’t be able to make it start. It’s the best I have for now, though, so I’m sticking with it, even as the wind wails through the branches overhead and has me reconsidering my life choices.

I try to ignore it and the sinister sensation that there’s someone out here in the forest with me, my skin creeping. This is how it must have felt for Piglet that time I followed her into the forest. Only that time there had been someone there with her. Me.

This time I’m imagining it. Imagining the sound of whispered voices and the brush of fingertips against my skin, of my mom’s voice in my ear.

“Tristan.”

I spin around. The trees are so close now, so crowded, soclustered together and drawing closer and closer until they’re pressing against me, entrapping me in their branches, circling me in a prison.

I crash my magic hard against the trunks as they squeeze tighter and tighter, trapping me, crushing me. The wood splinters, two of the trees sway and topple to the ground and then I sprint through the gap, hoping I’m running the fucking right way.

Those voices grow louder, taunting, calling my name. I swear I see a ghostly face peering at me from behind a tree as I race as fast as I can, the trees seeming to chase me, scratching at me, reaching for me.

I stumble once and a limb wraps around my ankle, dragging me to the ground as laughter cackles through the cold air.