Page 118 of Awakened Ash and Alchemy

She nodded, not because he was right, but because she couldn’t speak and was doing everything she could to stop blacking out from the lack of oxygen and that putrid smell, along with claustrophobia and the Black Cloaks.

There were so many of them, and they all turned to face her.

She stepped back across the highly polished obsidian floor that reflected her frightened expression as she searched for an escape.

“What’s this? An uninvited something-something who dared to come into my realm? Now isn’t that something.” The voice came from above and below, in the kind of sound designed to creep under her skin and make her tremble all over.

And yet, her feet moved without instruction, making her turn to face the source of all evil.

Katarra.

It had to be him. She just knew it. All those stories, the warnings of this creature coming after her, forcing her from her home, to face the man who controlled the Black Cloaks. Of course, it made sense that he’d be her nightmare.

It didn’t dampen the terror that turned her legs into cement, stopping any chances of her ability to run.

“You can do this Angela, breathe.” Father Michael’s presence, his hand holding hers, was the only reason she didn’t run. It was enough for her to finally face what she wanted to forget.

Standing at the center of the amphitheater, Katarra’s height bent the rules of biology. His hooded cloak was a deep crimson, the color of the underworld, which looked like dark blood against the obsidian stone that made up the cavern. The cloak’s fabric moved like liquid, his hood drawn low to reveal a pair of burning red orbs for eyes—glaring directly at her.

What’s worse? The part that squeezed her ribs and stopped the air in her throat, making her wake every night with a scream trapped in her throat, where her mind refused to let her remember this part…

Was that he didn’t look surprised.

“Well, like a wraith you’ve come to visit me again. How long before you scream? Cry? Faint? Or flee?” Katarra taunted her as he walked around her once, twice, three times, while twisting the obsidian ring on his bony finger.

Then Katarra stopped and tilted his head, showing an impossible depth to the darkness under the hood, except for those red eyes that bored into her, as he leaned closer, suffocating her with the stench of rotten meat and death.

“Finally, you can see me, too. And now I know the something-something you are. Angela Duboise.”

The panic hit hard, realizing she was all alone with no idea how to get away from him. Her lungs finally filled as her hand locked around the medallion, and she screamed.

FORTY

The witch’s young apprentice opened the door with her finger over her mouth to ensure Gellar, with Condorr and Bellus, stepped silently into the room. Gellar had been in enough battles to know the difference between a room going quiet and a room holding its breath.

This was the latter.

Gellar leaned against the far wall with his arms folded, watching the Sleep Wizard work.

Bellus stood beside him, his spectacles catching the low candlelight, with notepad and quill at the ready. Condorr remained a half-step back, with his palm out, reading the magick in the air.

The three witches moved in a slow circle along the room’s edges, their chanting a steady low hum beneath the incense and flickering candle flame.

Angela Duboise lay at the center of the Dream Circle, asleep.

She looked so small and fragile lying there.

That was the thing that always caught Gellar off-guard—she seemed so entirely ordinary. A mortal woman from the mortal realm, breathing slowly on a floating mattress, surrounded by the Dream Circle’s web made of chalk and feathers.

Nothing to fear.

Except his most disciplined captain, a man who had spent centuries mastering his magick that could level a mortal realm’s city block, had broken the Accords for her without flinching.

As Commander of the Vanguard, leader of the Sworn Exarchs, Gellar could not forget it either. But first he needed to see how this played out as there was a lot riding on this dreamscape. The one question he needed answered most: was Angela Duboise the new power?

The Sleep Wizard’s hands moved in careful passes above her sleeping form, his voice low and steady. “Can you hear me, Angela?”

No response.