“Sam, wake up!”
“I am,” I said in the castle.
“I am,” I said in the woods.
I said, “I am, I am, I am—”
And then all the sounds in all the world fell away as the dragon spoke. His voice was a deep rumble, as if the words were heaving from the very depths of him. I felt every word vibrating down into my bones.
The great dragon said, “I have awoken, O human child. In this forest deep, in the dark of the wild. And I have seen what is in your heart. Take heed of my warning: you are not ready.”
And then everything was melting, the dragon, the forest, the colors bleeding together as I took in a gasping breath. The ground split apart beneath my feet and I was falling, I was falling, I was—
A sharp crack across my face. My head rocked to the side.
“Motherfucker,” I groaned.
“Oh, now you wake up?” Ryan growled above me. “You asshole. Don’t you ever scare me like that again!”
I opened my eyes as I clutched my cheek. I was on my back on the floor in Castle Lockes, in the same hallway we’d been in before… whatever had just happened. I glared up at Ryan, who was at my side, leaning over me, an annoyed look on his face.
“You hit me!”
“No shit,” he said. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do!”
“So you hit me? Who does that?”
“Your eyes were rolling back in your head, and you were shaking.”
I pushed myself up as he fell back on his knees. There were a couple of guards standing a little farther down the hall, watching us warily, but I ignored them. “So the first thing you think of when you see me having a seizure is to hit me?”
“I said your name first,” he said with a frown. “Like… three times.”
“Oh, that makes it better. Sam, Sam, Sam, oh it’s not working. I should probably domestically violence my boyfriend by punching him in the mouth. For shame. We need couples therapy if we’re ever going to survive this.”
He rolled his eyes. “Glad to know you’re just as you always are.”
“Amazing?”
“Maybe not quite the word I was going to use.”
“Yes, well, abusers probably don’t.”
“I didn’t abuse—you know what, no. You are not going to distract me. What the hell was that about?”
And I could see it then, the pinched look on his face, the way the corners of his mouth were drawn down. He looked scared and worried, and even if he beat me, I swore I could change him and make him love me. “I’m fine,” I said. “Your forehead is doing that wrinkle thing when I’ve done something dumb and you don’t know whether to hug me or yell at me.”
“It is not,” he muttered, forehead wrinkling further. “I wasn’t even worried. And fair warning, I am going to probably hug and yell at you.”
I snorted. “I see no problem with any of that. How long was I down for?”
“Five minutes? Maybe a little more. What happened?”
“And I was always here? I didn’t… disappear or anything?”
That certainly didn’t make the expression on his face go away. If anything, his eyes narrowed further. “Disappeared where?”
“Fuck if I know,” I said, scrubbing my hand over my face. “I was in the middle of the Dark Woods, I think. Some place I didn’t recognize. After she—wait. Where is she?”