The Vision by Jessica Sorensen
Chapter 1
I kept having these dreams, or maybe they were more like nightmares. In them, Alex and I are standing out by the entrance to The Underworld. The lake is frozen and the trees are iced over with icicles dripping from the branches.
The sky is as dark as a shadow and the air chills me to the bone. Alex is holding me, his arms are wrapped tightly around me. We stay at the edge of the frozen water, clutching onto one another as if our lives depend on it.
The wind is blowing my hair into my face. There is a holl owness to the outside, like nothing is there but Alex and I, as if the whole world is empty. As we hold each other, a thought occurs to me that we are not supposed to be together, and if we don’t let go, we will die. I look up at Alex and tell him my thoughts, but he always shushes me as he brushes my hair away from my face.
“It will be alright,” he whispers, but his bright green eyes tell me the opposite. It won’t be okay, they say.
I open my mouth to tell him that I know he’s lying, but a crackle ripples through the air and sucks the words away from my lips. I see them—the black hooded figures emerging from the trees, like an army of ice-monsters heading to destroy us.
I look at Alex, wanting him to say something—to do something—but he never does. He just sweeps my hair back and pulls me closer to him.
“It will be alright,” he whispers one last time, and then I am suffocated by light. I hold onto Alex and take a deep breath as I am engulfed by warmth.
It will be alright.
But will it? Because every time I have this dream, I always wake up, lying on the floor of the cabin, stuck out in the middle of the snow-buried mountains. And in the snow lies my weakness. Praesidium. The one thing that renders me of my Foreseer power and binds me to the cabin for as long as Stephan wishes. Yes, I always wake up from my dream, but sometimes I wish I wouldn’t.