Page 51 of Winterveil

“Indeed,” Professor Blanchard said, glossing over it. He held out a plastic case with a pair of nodes. “Let’s not waste any time. Put these on.”

Giselle stared down at them. She thought about Nadiya again, but not the version of Nadiya from the dream—the version of Nadiya in the classroom, slumped over at the desk, tears drying on her cheeks. A sudden flush of anger rose to her face.

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to.”

Professor Blanchard tilted his head. “And why not?”

“Because . . .” Giselle dug her fingernails into her palm. “Because you haven’t explained anything. I still don’t know why I’m here, or why any of this matters. You tortured Nadiya, and you made me be a part of it. I’m not doing it anymore. I won’t.”

By the time she finished speaking, her heart was pounding. Professor Blanchard merely regarded her.

“Haven’t you felt it?” he asked. “The rush?”

“No, I . . . What are you talking about?”

“The rush,” he repeated, “of pure power. Of influence. I may have told you to press those memories into Nadiya’s head, but you did it yourself. And that is the least of what you can do.”

Giselle opened her mouth to speak, but then fell silent. She hadn’t felt what he was talking about, not quite—yet hadn’t she? When she had brought Nadiya into her dream? Her stomach clenched.

“Aren’t you tired of it?” Professor Blanchard went on. “I’ve read your file. Your friends abandoned you. Your family cast you out. You may well have rotted away in that jail cell, had Dr. Iver not come for you. And you couldn’t do anything about it.”

Tears leaped to the corners of her eyes. “Stop it.”

“Don’t cry, Giselle. Can’t you see? None of this is just for me. It’s for your sake, too. Let me teach you. Let me help you reach your potential. I promise—you’ll never be so powerless again.”

Giselle squeezed her eyes shut briefly. She remembered it all, and she hated that she did. The cold air that pricked her skin as she walked down that lonely gravel road. Bonnie, shutting the door in her face. The unforgiving wood of the park bench where she’d slept. Sutton, spitting his words through the bars of her cell: It’s your kind of sin that He isn’t too keen on pardoning.

Almost unconsciously, her arm stretched out. Her fingers shook as she curled them around the plastic case.

“Good girl,” Professor Blanchard said.

That night, Giselle slept with the nodes on again. As soon as she slipped into slumber, the dream resurrected itself. The lake. The trees. The whisper of the wind.

Only this time it was dark, and the moon’s reflection rippled on the water. The stars cast down their cold silver light. Giselle stood on the shore, chill prickling her skin, listening to the distant cries of the birds that hunted at night. It was only when she heard a faint rustling that she turned around.

Nadiya stepped out from behind the willow tree. Her black hair was loose again, falling in a silken sheet to her waist, and she had on the same gossamer dress, like nothing Giselle had ever seen her wear in the real world. That thought occurred to her with a needling of guilt.

“I’m sorry,” Giselle said in a rush. “I shouldn’t have—you must want to wear something else.”

Bewildered, Nadiya merely stared at her, and then in another moment, she changed. The dress dissolved into nothing and was replaced immediately by a pair of dark jeans and a leather jacket. The same outfit she had worn when Giselle had met her for the first time, at the jail in Belle.

Nadiya looked down at herself, brow furrowing. “How did you do that?”

Giselle felt a pulse of adrenaline. She did have power here. It was her dream.

“I just . . . imagined it,” she said. “I remembered.”

Slowly, Nadiya drew closer to her, footsteps hesitant. The grass wavered, damp from an earlier rainstorm. That was just the way Giselle remembered it, too. Everything was just the way she remembered it.

“I thought you wanted a chance to see inside my head,” said Nadiya.

They were standing near enough now that Giselle could glimpse her own reflection in Nadiya’s dark eyes. “I did,” she said. “But—I wasn’t sure you would come again.”

“I wasn’t sure, either.” Nadiya glanced out over the lake, and then back to Giselle. Her gaze was intent.

“But you did.”

“It just seemed like the right thing to do.”