Blue ▹ The Originals [2]

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
THE WAITING GAME

"When I'm down, I get real down."

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

     Henrik would be lying if he said he knew when he was dreaming. The truth was that, most of the time, Henrik's dreams were just as confusing and disorienting as anyone else's, so sometimes it was hard for him to tell which ones were normal weird dreams and which ones were omens. This time was no different. He dreamt of wooden doors shattering, dreamt of hands going into ribcages and necks snapping in half. He dreamt of screams, so loud and horrifying that they should've woken him, but they didn't. He dreamt of a brown wolf with glowing golden eyes, and dreamt she was on fire, burning and burning until there was nothing left but ash. He dreamt of all of those things combined into a jumble of nonsense that he couldn't make sense of.

Not until he woke with a gasp, his body covered in a fine layer of sweat. He jerked so badly that the entire bed shifted, and when he flew up into a sitting position, he could feel himself shaking. He pressed a trembling hand to the center of his chest and simply breathed for a moment, his eyes wide and his mind racing. The horrible dreams—nightmares, really—were already fading from his memory, and for that he was grateful. He rubbed at his eyes with his fingers, then blinked as he looked around the room. It was still dark. The only light from outside was from the moon and the street lights below. He couldn't even hear cars driving by, and when he tapped at his phone on the bedside table, he saw it was three in the morning. He also had many, many missed calls, none of which he'd heard. He and Francis both put their phones on silent when they were sleeping nowadays, as sleep was few and far between for them lately. He clicked through the calls as he sat in the dark, and beside him, Francis shifted in bed.

"Why are you awake?" Francis groaned, his words slurring together as he sleepily reached across the bed. He patted blindly at Henrik's knee before resting his hand on his thigh. Henrik patted his hand comfortingly as he dismissed all the calls. Most of them were from Klaus. Henrik had no desire to speak to his older brother at three in the morning, so he opted to texting Freya back instead, asking what all the calls were for. He didn't get a response, so he set his phone aside.

"Bad dream," Henrik said quietly, angling his body toward Francis and petting his hair. His eyes had adjusted in the dark enough for him to see Francis squint his eyes open. He raised his head slightly off the pillow, then grunted as he pushed himself up. Henrik sighed, rolling his eyes fondly at him. "Go back to sleep, love. It's nothing."

"You don't have a good track record—" Francis broke off to yawn into his palm. "—with bad dreams." Henrik could admit that he had a point, but he didn't respond. He just watched as Francis rubbed the sleep from his eyes and twisted to pluck his daylight ring off the bedside table. He'd taken it off the night before when he'd gone to shower, and hadn't bothered putting it back on, since Henrik had spelled the bedroom so sunlight wouldn't hurt him. "Why don't you tell me about—fuck." With a gasp, Francis jerked his hand back, and his daylight ring fell from his fingers, clattering to the floor. Henrik stared at him, his mind going alarmingly quiet. Francis, too, went eerily still, and then he was scrambling off the bed and reaching for his daylight ring again. As he straightened up, he reached to switch on the bedside lamp. He was holding his ring just fine now, but before...

"Francis—" Henrik started, all the air rushing from his lungs. He knew what the ring burning Francis meant. He knew, because he had put the damn spell there in the first place. It would tell Francis if or when Hayley died, just so he would know. All the missed calls flashed in his mind, and then his dreams did, too. The dream of a wolf burning and burning. He felt, suddenly, like he was going to be sick—and another feeling was there, too. Anger, simmering just below his shock and grief, just below the surface. Anger that Francis wasn't bothering to push down like Henrik was, if the expression on his face was anything to go by.