Midnight Frost

of thunder. “Kill the Frost girl—now.”
    “With pleasure.” This time, it was Logan who spoke. Only it wasn’t his voice—it was Loki’s.
    I looked at him in horror, but Logan was already running toward me.
    “No, Logan,” I said, holding my hands up and backing away from him. “Don’t. Please don’t. Not again—”
    Logan surged forward and ran his sword through my chest.
    Agonizing pain exploded like a bomb in my heart, and I screamed and screamed from the sharp, brutal force of it. Logan smiled, yanked his sword out of my chest, and stabbed me with it again.
    And again, and again, and again . . .
    I woke up screaming.
    One second, I was on the amphitheater stage with Logan killing me, and Vivian, Agrona, and Loki all happily watching. The next, I was lying in bed in my dorm room, wrestling with the pillow I’d buried my face in.
    I slapped the pillow off the bed, sat up, and gulped down breath after breath. My eyes darted around my room, but everything was the same. Bed, desk, bookcases, fridge, TV. Vic hanging on the wall, Nyx curled up in her basket in the corner, Ran’s seaweed net draped over the back of my chair.
    Real—this was real . Everything else had been a dream. Just a dream.
    Vic’s eye snapped open, and he regarded me with a sympathetic expression. “Another nightmare?”
    I slid to the floor and leaned back against the side of the bed. Nyx hopped out of her basket and raced over to me. I scooped up the pup and cradled her in my arms. Nyx licked my cheek, and I felt her warm concern wash over me.
    “Gwen?” Vic asked again. “Another nightmare?”
    “Something like that.”
    “Did he stab you again this time?”
    “Oh yeah.”
    My chest ached, as though Logan really had hurt me again, and I buried my face in Nyx’s fur until the sensation faded away, and I was reasonably sure I wasn’t going to cry.
    “How did it start?” Vic asked. “The nightmare?”
    Calmer now, I rewound the images in my mind. Thanks to my psychometry, I never forgot anything I heard, saw, or felt, not even my dreams. Sometimes it was a blessing, being able to recall a cherished memory, but with the nightmares I’d been having lately, it seemed more like a curse.
    “I was in here, pacing back and forth, and I felt like I needed to escape . . .”
    I told Vic the rest of it. When I finished, the sword frowned in thought, while Nyx licked my fingers, trying to let me know she was here for me too.
    The weird thing was that I really had gone to the Crius Coliseum a few days earlier, and I really did have Ran’s net draped over my desk chair. In fact, I’d talked about the net and how useless it seemed with Alexei and Daphne Cruz, my best friend, when we’d had dinner in the dining hall earlier. We’d come back to my dorm room to hang out for a while, and after they’d left, I’d decided to lie down on my bed to rest for a few minutes before taking a shower and getting ready for bed. Instead, I’d fallen asleep, and the image of the net had somehow led to my recurring nightmare of Logan stabbing me in the chest.
    Just like he’d done for real a few weeks ago.
    “Well, obviously, you still have some issues with the Spartan and what he did to you,” Vic finally said. “And who wouldn’t? Do you want to talk about it?”
    He’d been asking me that ever since I’d had the first nightmare a couple of weeks ago, but once again, I shook my head. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t even want to think about it, even though my refusal to deal was probably causing some of my nightmares. After a moment, I sighed, suddenly tired—of Reapers, of fighting, and most especially of all the horrible memories that I could never, ever forget, not even when I went to sleep.
    “Gwen?” Vic asked again.
    “I’m fine now,” I said. “It was just a dream. It wasn’t real.”
    This time.
    Vic gave me a sympathetic look, which I ignored. The sword had been extra nice to me ever since Logan left. All of my friends had, which only reminded me all the more that he was gone.
    Still, despite my words, the nightmare had shaken me, and once again, I felt that desperate need to escape, to go someplace where no one was watching me, to go someplace where no one would think to look for me or try to hurt me. I glanced at the clock on my nightstand. Just after eight. I still had some time before the dorms locked down for the night at ten.
    I gave Nyx one more hug, carried her back over to her basket, and helped