Page 66 of Keldori By Daybreak

“My—?” She straightened up and then glanced back at the kitchen drawer. “Right. It’s okay. Chickens never last forever, but I did really like those ones. How about dinner?”

She started busying herself in the kitchen.

“Weren’t you going to call my aunt?” I asked.

Ethel sighed as she set a dutch oven on her stovetop.

“Liam. Your parents. It’s important you know that they are so proud of you,” she said. “I know that they love you. And I know you’ll be waking up soon and you won’t remember this, but Liam, you don’t have to do or become anything you don’t want to. Anrai and Sloane were talented Grimguards, and they were loving parents, and you’re going to feel pressured to walk in their footsteps. But please, don’t. Not if you don’t want to.”

Jonquil jumped from my lap when I straightened up on the couch, trying to make sense of Ethel Warrender’s words. But then something tugged on my consciousness, and in those hazy seconds before my mind was dragged elsewhere, I remembered.

I always remembered, every night just before slipping away, only to forget moments later when I woke up. I always remembered, like remembering a recurring dream, but only in those foggy moments just before and just after waking.

And I remembered my mother Sloane and my father Anrai, and I remembered them leaving our home in Darragh’s Watch.

“My parents.” Panic coursed through me in those final moments, and I clung to Ethel’s living room. I wouldn’t forget this time. I’d remember. I’d—

“It’s okay, Liam,” Ethel assured me. “I’ll have soup ready for you when you return. It’ll be okay.”

The living room vanished, replaced with pelt-lined walls.

I’d been dreaming again. I dreamed almost every time I slept, but I never remembered of what. Wherever my mind had gone this time, however, had left me with a strange apprehension that sat heavy in my stomach.

“Daithi?” I whispered into the dark of the room. I concentrated the Skal in my eyes, feeling the electric warmth of the magick as it solidified into place and cast the room in a soft, orange glow. “Daithi, wake up.”

Daithi grunted from his cot and raised a dismissive hand at me. “No, thank you.”

“Something’s wrong.”

It was just a dream—a dream I couldn’t remember, but somehow also a dream I was certain I’d had before.

And I couldn’t shake the feeling of dread that clung to me even as the details of the dream evaded me.

A bugle echoed outside, and Daithi sat up. He blinked orange Skal-light into his eyes and looked between me and the door.

“The Herald,” he hissed, the color in his face draining. “Why is she here?”

But there was only one reason the Frozen God’s Herald would be at Darragh’s Watch, and the dread roiling in my gut solidified into something heavy.

We stumbled out of our beds. Daithi stopped to throw his cloak haphazardly over his tunic, but I raced past, not even bothering to find my boots. My aunt was already running out the front door of our hovel. Sleep-messed hair streamed behind her and bare feet sprinted over ice-laden cobblestones.

I blinked against the afternoon sun as we followed after her. It hung low in the sky, turning the Frozen God’s glacier gold out in the bay. The icicles that hung off the eaves of every hovel in Darragh’s Watch reflected that same gold hue back out at the frozen sea.

I’d only seen the Frozen God’s Herald once before. We weren’t sure where she disappeared to when the Frozen God didn’t need her. Some speculated she was a Nightmare, summoned and sent by the Saergrim to carry out her bidding. Others thought she might be the Frozen God herself. Whoever or whatever she was, she was revered and she was feared.

And she never brought good news.

Now she stood at the head of the street, dressed in black cloaks that made her blonde hair stand out where it rested over her shoulders.

The Herald’s bugle had called most of the town out of our hovels, though many of our neighbors remained at their doors with hands over their mouths or kneeling out of respect.

My aunt, however, stumbled in the wind rolling in off the bay’s frozen surface as she rushed to meet the woman, and my uncle chased after her.

I stayed rooted to the spot. I could feel Daithi next to me, but my vision was closing in on the blonde woman. If I refused to meet her, if I refused to listen…

Because there was only one reason she’d be here, and it was not a reality I was ready to face.

“My sister!” My aunt’s shout carried down the frost covered street. “Where’s my sister?”