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to the dream frequencies so the dream tendrils affected it like normal.
Shame we don’t have the same powers we have in dreams. Imagine what we could do
then!”
    Adabelle nodded. If she
could fly, or grow a million feet tall, or leap buildings in the real world,
she would be a veritable god.
    “But that’s not what I
called you here for,” she said. She gazed down as her hands. There, her eyes
stayed for a while. “It was something else I saw in the dream. Your father was
there. And he…said he was coming for you.”
    “What?” Adabelle gasped.
“But he’s imprisoned. And it was just a dream.”
    “But he did this.”
    She pulled the shoulder of
her hospital gown down, revealing another cut, this one sharper and deeper, for
it was covered in a red-soaked bandage.
    “He had a knife,” she
explained. “He said something to the Sturding Nhyx I didn’t understand, and
then he struck me, which threw me from the dream completely. Everything else
blurs after that. But no dreamer—no dreamer that isn’t a Sturding, that is—can
do that. It’s one of the first rules of Dreaming you learn. Sturdings can only
hurt other Sturdings. This,” she gestured to the bandage, “should not be
possible. Especially on just a regular Dreamer.”
    Adabelle didn’t know what to
say to that. She felt her breathing shallow, rattling in her now empty,
paralysis-stricken chest. It was her greatest fear—the form of any Nhyx she’d
ever had to face—and if Larraine was right, then he was back.
    “But he was sealed away. The
Oen’Aerei did it themselves! It was completely and utterly done, there was no
reversing it.”
    “Well unless Nhyxes can take
two form—which they cannot—he may be back. And he may want you.”
    “To kill me?” asked
Adabelle.
    “I do not know,” Larraine
said, taking Adabelle’s hand. “But you have to stay safe. We can’t have you
wandering about in the Frequencies anymore. Not while you’re untrained by the
Oen’Aerei. I sensed you last night, only quickly, but the feeling is
unmistakeable.”
    Adabelle felt her hand
shivering with Larraine’s, her lip quavering with terror. She fought tears, and
overcame them, but could not hide her fear. She didn’t want to go to the
Oen’Aerei, but neither did she wish to face her father.
    “Does he have a precursor?”
she asked. “Do you remember what it was?”
    “I can’t remember much,” Larraine
replied, “but the only thing that seemed out of place in the dream was the
scent of a male cologne. I don’t know which one, but it was strong and musky.
Smelled a little like shaving cream, really. Then, he appeared, and it seemed
to quell the Nhyx, too.”
    “Right,” she said. If ever
she found herself Dreaming, she would have to keep her nose open for that
scent. It was no certainty, but if she could escape the scent, she could escape
her father.
    “Now, I could be wrong…but I
don’t know how,” Larraine said, looking somewhat guilty for having to bear this
news. “But I want you to be careful…I want you to be safe. Promise me you won’t
get into trouble.”
    “I promise,” Adabelle said.
    She left Larraine by herself
in the hospital wing, the girl smiling as she left.
    The matter of the Oen’Aerei
plagued her thoughts for the whole walk to her room, and then for some time
after that. Larraine was an Oen’Aerei, which meant she had received formal
training from the academy run by Lady Morphier. The moment she began there, she
stopped being referred to as a Dreamer, and began her life as an Oen’Aerei. The
difference was slight, more symbolic than anything, but in the eyes of the
Oen’Aerei, it meant the world. An untrained Dreamer, in their mind, could be
incredibly deadly, to their self and to others. Any number of tragic accidents
could occur while drifting about the Frequencies.
    She took the afternoon to
wait for Mrs. Abeth to finish her work for the afternoon before bothering her.
She eventually found the caretaker in her