* * * * *
Alessia awoke in her chamber, breathing hard, sweat on her brow.
Selerael was asleep beside her, her breathing soft and steady. Memory of her dream was fading fast, as some part of her mind that she had never been quite able to control, alien but a part of the collective sentience of her atoms, blacked out; in those few seconds the realization dawned that this was not the first time she had experienced this agonizing feeling, like a tidal wave in her mind asserting control over her memory and action.
The next moment she glanced at the chronometer on the wall. Another blank, she thought to herself. What was it about? The last one had been years before, when Kiel and Gerryls had come in to calm her down. They had said she was screaming, blindly, horribly screaming in pure, abject terror. But she never screamed like that—she wasn’t afraid of anything, was she? It wasn’t in her nature!
Yet there it had been, clear in their memories: an image of herself screaming worse than any wounded wild animal before they woke her. So she could no longer doubt, but still she couldn’t imagine what had caused her dreaming mind such pain.
She felt closer to the secret this time. The incidence had disturbed her, not completely dissipated like a gust of wind. This time she could recall that whatever it was that lived in her dreams had been horrifying.
Alessia stroked her daughter’s arm reassuringly, convincing herself all the while that whatever dreams she had, they couldn’t be transmitted to Selerael. And she would do anything to prevent that from happening.
The girl kept breathing sonorously. Alessia watched, comforted in some way by her daughter’s uninterrupted peace.
A peace Alessia had never been able to find.
The Last Immortal : Book One of Seeds of a Fallen Empire Page 77
