“What truth?” she begged, reaching out for the woman for answers, attempting to grab shoulders that weren’t truly there.
“Good luck,” the woman said before vanishing into the air.
Alissa woke up with a start. Sweat slid down her forehead, her heart racing so hard she feared Eldric would hear it on the sleeping mat beside her. She narrowed her eyes, trying to remember everything she had dreamed, but like in every otherdream, her mind seemed to be intentionally hiding important pieces of the puzzle. As if her brain made the effort to steal those memories away from her grasp. Like they were something she was never supposed to have seen.
Alissa stood up and quickly rummaged through her bag to find her notebook and quill pen. The same ones she had taken to the potion shop to ask Mr. Hamit the questions that led her out of Bryniard. She wrote down keywords as recollections of her dream came back and forth: young woman, silver hair, blue eyes. Reading her words aloud flushed her mind with memories of something Dhalia had told her the day after Mr. Monlard’s service:“I had a dream of a princess. She had silver hair and blue eyes.”
It can only be her!
The woman from her dream must have been the princess Dhalia had mentioned that morning, the same girl the other victims of Senectus Subita had dreamed about.
But who was she?
A heartbeat later, another important detail returned to her. “If you find out the answer to that question soon enough, you might be able to save her,”the woman had said.
Alissa wrote down those exact words in her notebook before her brain tried to steal them from her again. Suddenly, it struck her that the verses she heard from the canyons, leading her straight to Golheim, weren’t the only answers she had been given. The apparition of this same woman was a vital clue she had almost let slip away.
Staring blankly at the paper where she scribbled, she bit her lower lip, waiting for the paper to magically give her the answer she so desperately needed.
Tapping her feet, Alissa glanced ahead and saw Freyah standing guard. On her right, Eldric slept like a baby. His breathing blended with his own snoring and the sounds of theforest where they camped that night. She crawled to where he lay and abruptly shook his body.
“Van Myr,” she whispered low in his ear, trying to wake him up. He was the only person she knew who could answer that question.
In a matter of seconds, Eldric grabbed the knife he left by his sleeping mat, climbed over Alissa’s body, and pressed the blade against her throat. She swallowed slowly, her eyes wide in fear, aware of the touch of the cold blade against her skin. His breathing was so close to hers, she could smell mint.
Eldric was aware that he had used his weight to pin someone to the ground. It was only after his eyes focused on the view of the woman beneath him that he recognized her. His knife was pressed so hard on Alissa’s jugular that he wouldn’t need to put much more pressure into his grip to end her life in a second.
When his gaze settled on hers, Eldric saw fear. He sighed, lowering the knife from her neck.
Alissa took a breath of relief but couldn’t help but notice his body was still on top of hers, his chest against her own, pressing her against the floor so hard she could barely draw enough air into her lungs.
“What happened?” he murmured in a threatening yet sleepy tone.
“Nothing. I wanted to ask you something.”
“Did you just wake me up like that to ask me a question?” He didn’t want her to notice how scared he had been, thinking they were in danger, so he put on his best look of boredom. Despite his efforts, his pounding heart gave him away.
“It was important,” Alissa said, their eyes inevitably locked, such was their proximity.
“I could have killed you.” His tone was a warning.
His awareness of her body and how she reacted to him was unmistakable; her eyes hiding intent, her long and rapid breathsbringing her chest up and down, her racing heart almost to the rhythm of his. Eldric’s gaze settled on her lips as she bit them, and out-of-place thoughts flooded his mind before he could rein them in.
“I know,” she whispered.
He shook his head, but his scrutiny was as intense as it had been seconds before. It made her blush, and she shifted beneath him, uncomfortable with the attention of his green eyes.
“Could you…” Alissa cleared her throat, looking up to avoid his gaze. “Could you please let go of me?”
Eldric swiftly nodded, although it hadn’t even crossed his mind to stand up. “Do you promise not to do that again, unless we’re in danger?”
“Yes.”
He slowly stood up, sitting back on his sleeping mat, his eyes on her, curious to learn what would be important enough for her to wake him up in the middle of the night.
“Do you know if there are any records in Heldraine of a princess who had silver hair and blue eyes?” Alissa asked, serious, hopeful.
She never would have expected the reaction that followed.