Frankie:
Dreams came in fragments.
A crackling fire. A shadowed forest. Whispered voices speaking in a language I didn’t understand. The weight of the bond—fractured, unrelenting—pressed against my chest like iron chains.
And then the voice.
Low, cold, and serpentine, curling around my mind like smoke.
“You think you’ve won something by defying me?”
Nettie.
I wanted to scream, but the sound never came. I was no longer in the room, no longer in my body. Instead, I was in that suffocating void where time and space bled into nothingness. The edges of the dream sharpened as she appeared, her silhouette twisted and unnatural, her too-bright eyes burning into mine.
“You will break, child,” she hissed, stepping closer. “It’s only a matter of time.”
I could feel her reach for me, her magi
