"It's okay, I'm right here." (Sera)
Frequent nightmares came as a yummy side order to Harry’s chaotic and often terrifying life. It was all part of the package, and he was more or less used to them, even if he did wake up in a cold sweat with his heart threatening to pound itself right through the wall of his chest every few nights.
This one had been particularly bad. The ones in which his loved ones were harmed or killed always were, and in this one, he’d seen Sera torn apart at Mab’s behest by the denizens of Winter. He hadn’t been able to do a damned thing to stop them.
Mab had stood beside him, watching the carnage impassively. Ice had encased him, holding him immobilized in a sheath of numbing cold with only the right side of his face partially exposed, and he had been unable to look away, to even close his eyes against the horror. Tears had fallen from his right eye and frozen against his scarred cheek.
“Though you perhaps cannot see it, I am doing you a kindness, my Knight,” Mab had said in his ear. “Such attachments, such sentiment, are not befitting to a Knight of Winter.”
He tried to scream, but she had taken even his voice, and he woke with a sob caught in his throat.
I’m right here, Sera said, and he turned his head to see her graceful form beside him in the dark. Before he realized what he was doing, before he realized he had only been dreaming, he rolled himself towards her and flung an arm around her, crushing her against his body as he uttered her name. He buried his face in her hair and breathed in the scent of summer flowers.
Reality reasserted itself, and his breathing slowed as he returned to wakefulness. He became aware of how tightly he was holding her, and let his arms relax a little.
“Sorry,” he said, his voice a raspy mumble. “Stupid brain with its thinking and dreaming and random cravings and shit. Who the hell thought it’d be a good idea to give us one of those?”
