Tempting Fate

Eleven: Dreams Are Exactly What They Seem

"Arietta."

Arietta groaned. Her head was heavy. As if someone had tied a boulder to her forehead.

Her skin felt like a live wire that had already exploded. Adrenaline and fiery pain on the inside, burnt nerves and white-hot agony on the outside.

A snarl ripped through the air. She opened her eyes, wincing at the surrounding brightness. Everything was overwhelming, but also muted.

Warm hands cupped her chin. "Arietta."

She knew that voice. Somehow, she knew down to her very soul, she would know that voice even in death.

"Gav—"

"It is okay, Arietta," Gavriel lifted her chin. He was right there in front of her.

Is this real?

Though his hands on her skin were comforting, there wasn't the spark, the electricity she had once felt from his small touches.

Then she knew. This was a dream.

The agony on her skin seemed to reverberate through her soul.

Arietta laughed humorlessly. "My brain is trying to comfort me," she told him. "But you're not actually here, are you?"

She closed her eyes again. She was tired. So, so tired. The exhaustion pulled at all of her muscles.

"Arietta."

She made herself open her eyes.

Gavriel's face screwed up into a combination of sadness and rage as his gaze scanned over her. "Arietta."

He kept saying her name, over and over, as if by saying it enough, it may change something. But it wouldn't.

"I don't think I get the happy dreams anymore," she mumbled. "But they were nice."

Gavriel tried to pull at the ties on her wrists and ankles, muscles straining through the gray t-shirt and along his shoulders. When that didn't work, he moved out of her vision, and came back with a knife, Reison's knife, from the table in the room. Arietta flinched back at the blade.

Gavriel immediately dropped it. The knife clattered loudly to the floor. Arietta whimpered.

Gavriel made a noise filled with pain. Then he was there again, his firm hands cupping her face. "You fight them, do you hear me? Whatever it takes." His eyes flashed yellow green, then back to brown. "I am coming for you, Arietta. I will get you out of here."

He pulled back, glancing at the room around them. The room was blurred at the edges, as if her dreams hadn't had the strength to bring it into full focus.

Whatever Gavriel searched for, he didn't find.

"Arietta, tell me about the place they have you. Do you know where you are?"

Arietta frowned. "I—I don't—" She cut herself off. "Gavriel, this is a dream. Why are you—"

"It is not just a dream, Arietta." Gavriel's presence was heavy in front of her. "When I wake up, I remember all of this. These dreams—we are actually connecting."

She heard the words, but her brain had a hard time connecting them. Gavriel was here? That wasn't possible.

"Gavriel, these are just dreams," Arietta said. "My brain is messing with me again," she told herself. The dreams used to be her safe place, but now they've twisted on her. Instead of somewhere safe, they brought Gavriel here to her, into this nightmare she lived in during the moments she was awake.