❝dreams of war, dreams of liars, dreams of dragons' fire.❞
in which valerie greenwood is the sandman. she is what nightmares are made of. she is hell wrapped up in a twenty year old girl (at least, according to her). and travis stoll isn't scared of...
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DESPITE BEING SO RUTHLESS, Valerie Greenwood is terrified of blood. She's smelled it, tasted it, felt it splatter onto her skin enough times to be repulsed by the viscous crimson of it.
It's not an accident that she dreams of it every night after the incident in the restaurant. Her father had wormed himself into her mind, and he had seen every secluded corner where her deepest and darkest fears are hidden. Every night for the past week, he has tormented her with nightmares, filled with blood and the slaughter of those she loves.
She wakes up nearly screaming every morning at dawn, frigid sweat beading down her neck and temples, with Travis already at her door.
He soothes her every time, hands brushing her sweat-damp hair from her forehead, helping her untangle the blankets that have wound around her legs in her fitful sleep.
Every morning, like clockwork, the younger Greenwood girls creep into Valerie's room, stirred from their sleep by the quiet commotion from down the hall. They crawl into her bed as the sun rises, freckled and tanned and scarred hands finding each other over the duvet.
"Hi, firefly. Hi, bumblebee." Valerie whispers across the muted dawn light, bronze eyes tired.
She knows Travis is sitting with his back against the door—she can feel him through the heavy wood, can hear his thoughts.
She is lulled back to sleep by the deep, even breathing of her little sisters and the steady heartbeat of the boy she loves.
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The screaming starts at dawn the next morning. At dawn, when her sisters would sneak into her bed to protect her from the bad dreams that plague her. At dawn, when the sun is just beginning to slip through the windows of the Greenwood Hotel and paint everything inside a burnished gold. At dawn, when she is thrown out of sleep and into a waking nightmare.
Valerie hurtles out of bed, diving under the mattress to find her sword. She'd thrown it under the bed the night Travis had suggested they move back into the penthouse, and no night terror—not even the worst of them—had been bad enough to reach for the mottled bronze-and-shadow blade since.
Until now, when that ungodly screaming rips through the silence of an early morning.
She collides with Travis in the hallway outside of her bedroom. He is shirtless, his dark hair messy and blue eyes droopy from sleep, his own sword gripped tightly in his hand. He narrowly avoids skewering her with it, instead bracing a hand on her waist to steady them both.
Valerie is half-feral when she looks at him. "It's Eloise. I know it's Eloise."
What she doesn't say, however, is that Morpheus has come calling, and she knows he doesn't intend to be turned away a final time. Today is her reckoning. Something feels different than every time she has seen her father in the past two years—it feels like the idea of pretending she has a choice in any of this has gone out the window.
