Betrayals of Spring (Forever Fae #2)(73)

Tabatha Vargo ~ On the Plus Side

Tiffany King ~ Meant to Be

Beth Balmanno ~ Set in Stone

Lizzy Ford ~ Dark Summer (Witchling Saga #1)

Ella James ~ Stained

Tara West ~ Visions of the Witch

Heidi McLaughlin ~ Forever Your Girl

Melissa Andrea ~ Flutter

Komal Lewis ~ Falling for Hadie

Melissa Pearl ~ Golden Blood

L.P. Dover ~ Forever Fae

Sarah M. Ross ~ Awaken

Brina Courtney ~ Reveal





By

Jenna Pizzi



Available Now





Chapter 1


Lilly rolled over and looked at her alarm clock, 3:29 a.m.

“Ugh!” she muttered. It’s always the same time every time she wakes up. She knew she could forget about going back to sleep. She got out of bed and walked to the kitchen to get herself a drink of water. As she walked through the living room, she could hear her best friend and roommate, Amy, snoring so loudly that she sounded like a buzz saw. Must be nice to be able to sleep like that, Lilly thought as she smiled. One of these days I am going to record her just so she can hear what she sounds like.

In the kitchen she grabbed a glass from the cabinet then walked to the faucet and filled it. As she held the glass to her lips she happened to glance out the kitchen window. She gasped; there in front of her stood a figure cloaked in darkness, standing only feet from her window, staring at her. Lilly dropped the glass and screamed a blood curdling scream. Amy woke with a start and ran to the kitchen.

“Lilly, what is it? What happened? Are you all right?” She asked with panic in her voice. Lilly didn’t want to frighten her friend any more than she already had so she nodded.

“Yeah, I’m so sorry, Amy, I had another nightmare. It’s no big deal. I just came out to get something to drink.” Amy looked at her suspiciously.

“What aren’t you telling me, Lilly?”

Lilly knew she couldn’t keep anything from her best friend; they had been through too much together. She leaned against the sink to get her bearings.

“OK, it’s just that I could have sworn I spotted someone lurking outside in the courtyard. It’s probably nothing. I was most likely still half asleep. I am just so tired.”

Amy walked over to her and touched the back of her t-shirt as she said, “Geez, toots, it must have been one hell of a dream. Look at your shirt.”

Lilly didn’t know what she was talking about, so she grabbed the back of her shirt. It was shredded at the shoulder, as if someone grabbed hold of her and pulled. With a strange feeling of trepidation, Lilly realized that it was the same spot where she had been grabbed in her dream.

“I must have caught it on something; I am not sure what happened.”

Amy looked at her suspiciously, but Lilly assured her she was all right. Lilly then quickly cleaned up the broken glass and smiled at her friend.

“I’m all right, really. I’m just gonna go back to bed. Everything will be better in the sunlight.”

Lilly had tried to confide in Amy as much as she possibly could without making it sound like she was completely crazy, but deep down she knew that she couldn’t tell her everything, not yet anyway.

Amy was hesitant to leave her friend and return to her room. She had known about Lilly’s vivid dreams, or rather nightmares. She’d been there to bear witness to Lilly waking up in a sheer panic only to have no recollection about it. She tried not to make a big deal out of it for fear she would shatter Lilly’s psyche. She figured she would wait patiently for Lilly to open up on her own.

The two of them had been best friends since before either of them could even remember. Their parents were friends and therefore introductions were not necessary.

Lilly’s parents were killed in a mysteriously set house fire six years earlier, when Lilly was only twelve. She was the sole survivor. They only thing Lilly recalled about that horrid night was that angels saved her by carrying her to safety. Amy’s parents were named her legal guardians with the stipulation that when Lilly was old enough she was to be enrolled in the prestigious boarding school Plymouth Academy for the Arts.

Lilly’s dreams worsened after the fire. She would often dream about the fire itself. In her dreams, she would see creatures lurking around her house, searching for something, or someone. She could hear them speak in tongues, a language that didn’t make any sense to her. In the dreams, she watched her parents as the fire consumed them and their flesh burned. To her it felt as though she were watching through someone else’s eyes. She knew it wasn’t really her, but in the dreams she became someone else.

The police concluded that the fire was started with an accelerant, which meant it was set on purpose. They never found the party responsible for igniting it.

Lilly was forced into therapy twice a week following the fire. Dr.Collins, her therapist, believed that he could fix her with Lexapro, an antidepressant for post-traumatic stress disorder. He felt the dreams were her mind’s way of releasing the trauma of her parents’ deaths and from being the sole survivor of the ordeal.

Lilly never took the pills though; she knew the dreams were more than just dreams. After five years of being in therapy, Lilly continued to see Dr. Collins once a month for follow-up visits. She learned along the way to no longer tell him about her dreams and how they progressed over the years. She didn’t want him to treat her as though she was crazy or still traumatized. She knew it was something she’d have to deal with on her own.