Chapter 179 — You Got Cocky

Chapter 179: Chapter 179 — You Got Cocky

~ Raven ~

Isolde lunged.

"Fuck!"

Raven threw herself sideways just before she reached her, one foot skidding across ground that did not feel quite as solid as it looked. She caught herself before she went down and turned with a curse already on her tongue.

"Isolde, what the hell are you doing?"

Apparently, the answer was trying again.

Isolde came at her with none of the hesitation Raven expected, forcing her to duck the first swing and twist away from the second. Raven barely had time to straighten before another strike came for her.

"Would you fucking stop?"

Isolde did not.

She drove forward again, and Raven brought an arm up to block what looked like another blow. Isolde shifted at the last second.

Her fist caught Raven across the jaw.

Pain burst through the side of her face so sharply that Raven stumbled two steps before managing to stay upright. Her hand flew to her mouth as the taste of blood reached her tongue.

"Motherfuc—"

Her jaw throbbed beneath her palm.

Isolde was already moving toward her again.

That did it.

Raven stepped into the attack before thinking and drove her fist straight into Isolde’s face.

The impact snapped Isolde’s head sideways.

"Get your fucking shit together!"

Isolde staggered back, one hand lifting toward her cheek.

For several seconds, neither of them moved.

Raven stood there breathing hard, still holding her aching jaw while Isolde slowly turned back toward her. A red mark was already forming across her face.

Good.

Raven was having considerable difficulty feeling guilty about it.

Something in Isolde’s expression changed as she stared at her. The fury disappeared first, then the certainty beneath it, leaving behind something Raven could not read.

"Raven?"

Raven’s mouth fell open.

"Oh, for fuck’s sake. Yes, Raven." She pointed at herself with her free hand. "Me. The person you just punched in the fucking face. What the hell is wrong with—"

Isolde crossed the space between them so quickly Raven tensed for another attack.

Instead, arms wrapped around her.

Raven froze.

For a few seconds she simply stood there with both hands raised awkwardly at her sides, trying to understand how they had gone from attempting to break each other’s faces to this.

Then she felt Isolde shaking.

Her entire body trembled against Raven.

The anger drained out of her almost immediately.

"Hey."

Isolde gave no response.

Raven lowered one hand and gave her back an uncertain pat. It felt useless, so she tried again, this time resting her palm there properly.

"Calm down."

That sounded worse.

Raven frowned over her shoulder before tightening her hand slightly against Isolde’s back.

"Isolde. What happened?"

It took several seconds before Isolde finally released her. She stepped back, although one hand remained closed around Raven’s arm as if letting go completely was not something she was prepared to do yet.

Raven looked at her properly.

She looked worse than she had in the infirmary.

The exhaustion Raven had noticed earlier was everywhere now, stripped of the control that usually hid it. Her hair had come loose around her face, her breathing was uneven and whatever fear she had been trying to conceal before had become impossible to miss.

"You started shaking a few minutes after you fell asleep," Raven said. "Then I somehow ended up here."

Isolde went completely still.

"What?"

Raven frowned. "What?"

"You said minutes."

"Yes."

Isolde stared at her for so long that Raven slowly lowered the hand from her aching jaw.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Minutes?"

"Yes, Isolde. Minutes."

"No."

The answer came so quickly Raven almost laughed, but there was nothing remotely amused in Isolde’s face.

"What do you mean, no?"

"I mean no." Isolde looked around them as though the answer might be somewhere in the warped distance. "That isn’t possible."

Raven followed her gaze.

The place still made very little sense.

The ground looked solid enough beneath them, yet the farther Raven stared, the harder it became to judge where anything actually was. Shadows stretched farther than they should have, while shapes in the distance seemed close one moment and impossibly far the next.

She looked back at Isolde.

"How long do you think you’ve been here?"

Isolde opened her mouth, then stopped and rubbed both hands over her face.

"I don’t know anymore."

Raven’s stomach tightened. "Isolde."

"At least two days."

Raven stared at her.

Isolde lowered her hands.

"Maybe longer."

For a moment Raven said nothing.

Then she gave one short, disbelieving laugh because apparently the alternative was accepting something completely insane.

"You were asleep for a few minutes."

"I heard you the first time."

"No, I mean literally. I was sitting beside you. You fell asleep, started shaking not long after, and then..." Raven looked around them again. "This."

Isolde’s expression shifted as she looked down at herself, then toward the strange world around them.

"That can’t be right."

"I know."

"It felt like days."

Raven stopped.

Not was.

Felt.

Her gaze moved slowly across the distorted landscape.

She remembered the first time the Dreamwalker had pulled her somewhere that felt too real to be a dream, and how difficult it had been afterward to decide whether she was actually awake. Time had never been the part she questioned.

Now she wondered why.

"Maybe it is right," Raven said slowly.

Isolde looked at her.

Raven gestured vaguely around them. "Nothing else works normally here."

The two of them went quiet.

Understanding arrived gradually.

Isolde’s mouth tightened. "So I’ve been running from that bastard for what feels like two days while my body has been lying there for a few minutes."

Raven grimaced. "Apparently."

"Damn."

"Where is he?"

Isolde looked around immediately, and the speed of the reaction answered more than Raven wanted it to.

"I don’t know."

Raven frowned. "What do you mean you don’t know?"

"I mean exactly that." Isolde dragged a hand through her hair. "He appears when he wants. Sometimes I can feel him coming and sometimes I can’t. Sometimes I think I’ve gotten away from him and then everything changes and he’s there again."

Her voice tightened as she lifted two fingers and tapped them against her temple.

"He keeps trying to get inside."

Raven’s expression hardened.

"Not just the dream. Me." Isolde swallowed. "He pushes at things. Memories. Thoughts. Half the time I can’t even tell what he’s trying to change until Stillheart reacts, and every time I fight him off, he tells me it won’t matter because I won’t remember any of this when I wake."

Raven’s stomach turned.

The bastard had said similar things to her before, and somehow hearing them from Isolde made them worse.

"We need to get out."

Isolde gave her a tired look. "Excellent idea."

Raven ignored the sarcasm. "I got in somehow."

"That is a very reassuring sentence."

"I’m serious."

"So am I. You don’t know how you got here, you don’t know how to leave, and your current plan is apparently to reverse whatever thing you didn’t understand in the first place."

Raven glared at her.

Something almost resembling a smile touched Isolde’s mouth.

Almost.

A voice drifted through the darkness before it could become anything more.

"Where are you, luv?"

Isolde’s face emptied.

Raven felt the change in her immediately as the hand around her arm tightened.

The voice came again, light and almost amused.

"Still hiding?"

Raven turned toward the sound, but there was nothing there at first. Then the shadows began to shift, not toward her and Isolde, but toward something else somewhere ahead.

Every dark edge around them seemed to stretch in the same direction, drawing across the ground in long warped lines while Raven’s pulse began to quicken.

The world itself started bending around whatever was approaching. Distances shifted, shapes that had seemed far away pressed closer, while others stretched backward until they hardly looked real at all.

Beside her, Isolde went completely still.

"You know I’m going to find you."

The voice was closer now.

Raven felt Isolde edge nearer without seeming to realize she had done it.

Then something appeared ahead of them.

A man.

The same wrongness surrounded him, blurring every detail Raven needed most. She could make out the shape of his body, the way he walked and the suggestion of a face beneath the distortion, but every time her attention tried to settle there, it slipped away.

He took another step before suddenly stopping.

Raven watched the movement die out of him as his head slowly turned toward her.

"...Raven?"

The surprise in his voice was unmistakable, and something inside Raven shifted with it. He had not known she was here. Whatever control he had over this place, whatever advantage had allowed him to torment Isolde for what felt like days, her presence had not been part of it.

The realization pulled a slight smile from her.

"Surprised to see me?"

He said nothing, which Raven found considerably more satisfying than any answer he could have given. She stepped away from Isolde, keeping her attention fixed on him as something stirred beneath her ribs.

Her wolf.

The presence came easily enough that Raven barely had to search for it, and the moment she reached toward the Dreamwalker, something in him changed.

Raven felt it before she understood what it was.

Fear.

Her smile faded as she studied him more carefully.

Oh.

That was interesting.

"You’ve spent long enough hiding."

The Dreamwalker took half a step back, small enough that Raven might have missed it if she had not been watching him so closely. Isolde saw it too, judging by the way her attention sharpened beside her.

That was all the encouragement Raven needed.

She reached farther.

She had no idea how she knew what to do, only that the same instinct that had allowed her to touch him inside her own mind seemed to understand something her thoughts had not caught up with yet.

Raven followed the strange sensation surrounding him until her awareness caught against the distortion wrapped around his identity.

There.

Her wolf surged beneath her skin, and Raven closed around the distortion before she had time to question whether something like that should even be possible.

The Dreamwalker jerked.

His fear spiked so sharply that Raven felt it almost like a physical reaction passing through the connection between them, and her pulse quickened in response.

"Got you."

She pulled.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the distortion shifted beneath her grip, barely enough to notice but enough to prove it could move.

Something appeared beneath it for the briefest instant.

Skin.

The edge of a face.

Then the concealment twisted back into place.

Raven tightened her hold before it could settle completely. The Dreamwalker’s fear surged again, stronger this time, and she pulled harder.

Resistance slammed against her so abruptly that Raven frowned.

She tried again.

This time the distortion barely moved.

Something felt wrong.

The connection she had followed so easily only moments earlier had become thinner, and although her wolf was still there, Raven could no longer feel her with the same immediacy she had inside her own mind. She reached inward instinctively and was startled by how distant the presence suddenly seemed.

Not gone.

Just farther away than it should have been.

"What the hell?"

Raven pulled again, but the concealment shifted only slightly beneath her grip.

Across from her, the Dreamwalker changed.

His fear was fading.

At first Raven expected anger to replace it, but something entirely different began spreading underneath the last traces of panic. Something warmer, almost eager, that made the skin along the back of her neck prickle.

Glee.

The Dreamwalker chuckled.

Raven’s grip faltered.

His shoulders slowly relaxed, and somehow that was more unsettling than watching him retreat. Only moments ago he had been afraid she might expose him. Now he stood in front of her as though he had finally understood something she had not.

"You got cocky."

Raven’s jaw tightened as she reached for the distortion again.

The Dreamwalker laughed. "You beat me once and decided that meant you could follow me anywhere."

Raven pulled, but nothing happened.

His amusement deepened as he spread his arms slightly and glanced around the distorted world surrounding them.

"This isn’t your head, Raven."

The words landed harder than she expected.

Raven stopped.

Her wolf still felt distant, and suddenly she became aware of everything around her in a different way. The ground beneath her feet, the strange pressure running through the dream and even the connection she had used to reach the Dreamwalker belonged to someone else.

Isolde.

The Dreamwalker tilted his head as the last traces of fear disappeared from him, replaced by an excitement that made Raven’s stomach tighten.

"You came into my playground without any idea how dangerous it is."

Raven drew in a slow breath.

His smile widened beneath the blur.

"And you’re so much weaker here."

Raven said nothing, and his soft laugh carried easily through the warped space between them.

"Oh, Raven." There was enough delight in his voice now that she almost wished she could feel his fear again. "I am going to have so much fucking fun with you."