Painful Reminders

Chapter Eighteen: They're Here

I was dreaming again. From a distance, up ahead, I could hear rustling and the occasional snap of a twig as well as muffled laughter. Feeling a sense of déjà vu, I leaned forward a bit, trying to peer around the trunk in front of me.

Lucius flew out of the shadows, and I heard Aurelia's cry as they went down. The memory of what happened next hit me like a rock and I straightened abruptly, clearing my throat and looking up at the sky. "So now I get reruns?" I mumbled to myself, fanning my face. I couldn't figure out why I'd been shown this ordeal the first time, let alone a second one.

Nearby, only a few feet away, I heard the faint crunch of leaves, immediately pulling my attention away from the two of them. Was this whatever had caused the noise Lucius had heard? I narrowed my eyes, squinting in the direction the sound had come from as I attempted to locate the cause. Some fifteen feet away, I could just make out the outline of a shadowed figure, crouched low behind some brambles. They seemed to be looking in the direction of Aurelia and Lucius, watching the two.

A twig snapped as the figure edged closer and in the distance, I saw Lucius jumping to his feet, followed by Aurelia's words. "What is it? Did you hear something?"

The whole world shifted, a feeling I was becoming annoyingly used to, and I was thrown into the daylight. Lifting an arm instinctively to protect my eyes from the bright light, I blinked furiously as my eyes struggled to adjust. I stood just behind a little stone house with a thatched roof, and similar houses built on either side and all around. At the edge of the houses were small fields and a sprinkling of farm animals.

"Lucius," Aurelia breathed just a few feet away where the two stood together, something silver glinting in her hands as she looked down at it and then up at him with a happy smile. "It's beautiful."

A movement near the edge of the house, thirty feet from them, caught my eye and I glimpsed a handful of fabric as it disappeared around the corner.

Thrown into darkness once more, I was back in the forest, but this time I stood at the edge of a clearing. In the center, a well-lit fire was burning, casting a flickering light all around it. Lucius burst out of the trees just to the right of me, coming to a stop just before the fire, his attention on two figures standing on the other side. "Floriana."

"I'm so glad you're here, Lucius," Floriana greeted him with a poisonous smile. The flames of the fire danced in her eyes and I realized the other figure was Aurelia. A sick feeling came over me when I realized Floriana held a dagger to the other woman's throat. This wouldn't end well. "We've been waiting for you."

"Lucius, don't—" Aurelia's words were cut off abruptly when Floriana pushed the dagger tighter against her throat. Blood began to trickle down just below it. I tried to move forward instinctively or call out, but I was rooted to the spot and my mouth wouldn't move. It was as if my body wasn't my own. Feeling terrified and helpless, I looked toward Lucius, but it appeared as though he was facing the same struggle as me.

"I've loved you my entire life," Floriana said, hatred and bitterness lacing her words. "I would've done anything for you, yet you chose her. Why?"

"Let her go," Lucias growled, apparently gaining back the use of his mouth, though he still seemed incapable of moving the rest of his body.

She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Would you kill for her, Lucius? Would she kill for you?"

"Floriana—"

"I would," she said, interrupting whatever he'd been prepared to say. I caught a glint of something on her face and suspected they were tears. "In fact, why don't I prove it?"