Livia's Arc

Chapter 7 of 9

Livia sat alone in the forest before the next trial day. Her snake lay draped across her shoulders. Fuego carried a warning for her, she did not know it yet. He had refused Voracia and chosen Livia, and now he meant to reach her. But the trees stretched wide and dark between them. Livia had no way to know he was coming. She closed her eyes to meditate and search for the answers the trial would demand. The air changed. It pressed against her skin like a hand. A single fly circled her head, slow and wrong. Her snake stirred, then went still. Livia breathed through the strangeness and tried to hold her focus. What she carried. What she hid. What she would give. She turned the three questions over and waited for them to open. Far off, Voracia stood inside a sanctuary of black stone. Vines twisted down its dark walls. She had left Fuego's fire with his refusal still fresh. Now her anger had grown teeth. She pressed her hands flat against the cold stone and reached out with her mind. First she found Fuego, sleeping by his embers. She poured false dreams into him, tangled shapes that bent his path and slowed his feet. Then she turned the same force on Livia. The attack landed behind Livia's eyes. Pain bloomed sharp and sudden. Her thoughts scattered. The questions slipped from her grip. She pressed her palms to her temples and bent forward. The fly buzzed louder. Her snake lay flat against her skin, afraid. Livia could not hold her meditation. The headache drove her down. "Not now," she whispered. But her body would not obey. She lay back on the forest floor and shut her eyes against the hammering in her skull. The strangeness in the air wrapped around her like smoke. She fought it, then stopped fighting, because fighting made it worse. She let herself sink. Sleep took her fast. In the dream she stood in a gray place with no walls. A shadow rose before her, tall and faceless. It moved when she moved. It wore her shape but not her face. The shadow reached for her snake, and the snake would not strike. Livia understood, in the deep way of dreams, that the shadow had come from outside her. Someone had sent it. Someone was in her mind right now, reaching. She woke in the dark. The headache had dulled. The fly was gone. Her snake lifted its head and tightened once around her neck, a warning she now believed. Livia sat up slowly. She had not found the answers she came for. The meditation was ruined. But she had learned something the attack never meant to teach her. Her rival had reached across the forest to break her. That meant her rival feared her enough to try. Livia stood. She knew now she was being hunted in her sleep, and she would not rest easy again.