Trigger Warning: Mentions of insomnia, and a lot of death.

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That night, I dreamed a dream of a boy with ice blue eyes and a stone-cold heart.

Ryker.

When I was little, I had suffered from insomnia. It wasn't normal insomnia that kept powerless humans up at night, but insomnia that wouldn't let me, a five-year-old girl, sleep. I dreamt of blood and death, of carnage and torture.

I hadn't even had my first period yet and I dreamt of children younger than me getting shot in the heart without a second of remorse. 

All of the Abraham telepaths had it. "It is a burden we must carry to know the whole truth," Dad said, brushing my red hair back from my face and wiping a tear with his thumb, "It will make you stronger." Dad, of course, had found the secret to curing it back in his youth and refused to tell me. I had struggled with it, often waking up with rings the size of Cadillacs the next morning. My grades slipped, I found that long snatches of my day were stolen from me, and sometimes I faceplanted on my breakfast of oatmeal and toast.

Mama was furious. "Nora is a child." she had hissed at Dad one evening over a tense meal when I cried to him over how I was afraid to go to sleep that night. "To hell with the Abraham bloodline- she's suffering and you're too proud to help her."

The monsters are in my head, Daddy, and they won't get out.

I know, sweetie, but they have to stay there for a while. 

When Dad still refused to show me the light, Mama snuck into my room that night. "You're safe," she whispered, "What happens to you at night, Nor?"

And so I told her. I told her everything. When I was done, cheeks moist with tears, she only kissed the top of my head and said, "You dream, but you're not asleep, correct? You have visions." Telepath visions, the visions that came every night and plagued me throughout the day. I saw blood. People dying. The screams of the people damned to an early grave. It was cursed insomnia, and I saw no way out.

"Yes," I said, voice shaking.

"Listen, Nora," my mom looks at me, clear eyes fixed on mine, a calm point in the hurricane, "Dreams are just your innermost thoughts dredged to the surface. You decide what you see, and the visions don't control you." A dark look passes over her eyes as she says this, vanishing so quickly, it's as if it wasn't there at all. "You hear me? The visions don't control you. You're the master of your fate, your destiny. And I believe that you can fight through this." She kisses me at the crown of my head and then stays with me the entire night.

That night, I dreamed of a toddler taking her first steps. There was no blood, no screams. The baby didn't fall but only seemed to stand taller, brown and blue eyes shining, an excited squeal escaping her throat.

That night, I slept for the first time in two years.

It wasn't a coincidence that I was dreaming of Ryker now. None of my dreams ever were. 

He could be the key to finding Mom. I just need to get close to him and achieve the all too important task of not having my throat slit by a Snow.

All in a days work. 

God, I sound like my Dad.

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"This is a bad idea."

"Mary, all of your ideas are usually bad." Two hushed voices sound from down the hall, startling me awake. People don't think when they're asleep. They dream, and I haven't taught myself to see dreams yet.

Judging by the haze around the second girls thoughts, I can tell that it's a very injured Li-Yang. Something in her voice holds me back from going to check up on her. I can't tell whether it's exhaustion or some other unnamable emotion, but she sounds nothing like her usual cheery self.

My fault. All my fault.

"Li, where does it hurt?"

"Everywhere." Li-Yang's teeth are gritted, and by now I find myself leaping off my purple-and-pink striped bed and creeping down the hallway, feet trained to make no sound. Call me crazy, but in the past twenty-four hours, she's sort of become a friend. A real friend.

"I'm so-"

"Mary, don't." Li-Yang says, and then the two of them are kissing. That stops me in my tracks for a second, smiling from ear to ear. I'm right outside the door now, the plush red carpet in the dorm's main area doing a good job of masking my footsteps. By the time they pull away, I'm already gone.

I know what I need to do next. Find Ryker and convince him to help is step one. Goodness knows, we're going to need as much help as we can get. 

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Taking a right out of the dorm, I move as quietly as I can. Students are out in full force tonight, most of them practicing for the test in two days, also known as the test that I've neglected to prepare for and the test that relies on me completing my mission. Without it, I'll never find Mom.

"Watch it." A Lunar hisses as I step on her cat toy made out of light she pulled from her old camping lantern. Her orange and brown tabby hisses at me as well and I resist the urge to punt it across the hall. 

She gets crabby when she's on a mission.

I've noticed, inner voices.

The boys dorm is not that far from the girls. I hesitate across the hallway for a second, wringing my hands nervously. I should've brought a knife, a hot poker, a rusty nail, something to defend myself with. Ryker is dangerous, and if I'm not able to talk sense into him, there's no telling what he might do. 

Strike first. Get the job done. The darker part of me says I should kill him and be done with it. My father trained me to use my hands as a weapon and I can kill someone with just my teeth. But Ryker is a Phantom, trained by nobody but himself, and sharpened at the cruelest forges in the entire world. They made him who he was. I just hope they left a string behind for me to pull at. 

Squaring my shoulders and taking a breath, I dart across the hall and gently push the door open. 

Someone protect me, I think to myself as I push open the door to the boys dorms. The blizzard isn't so far away now, a faint buzzing in the back of my head. He's here.

The boys dormitory is a maze. There are rooms surrounding the Great Room on all five sides, making the shape of a hexagon. Each of the rooms has a letter on it, ranging from A-T, and they spell something out. I turn, squinting in the dark, trying to make them out. 

I-N-D-E-A-T-H-T-H-E-R-E-I-S-L-I-F-E.

I wish I'd thought to remember what that meant. Every prestigious boarding school has a motto, yet I threw this one out of my mind, choosing to forget it. It means something. Everything here does. 

The Great Room is empty, smelling faintly of boy's cologne and sweat. I make my way in further, careful to avoid any traps that a bunch of teenagers might've set. Casting out my net, I hear only one thought and sigh. Devon.

He shares a room at my immediate left with another boy. A boy who dreams of death, and who walks in its shroud. A boy who I know all too well.

Why does he share a room with Ryker?

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                                                                                      Ryker Snow

 Ryker was dreaming. Dreaming of Death, the death he carried with him. 

His family had a saying. "The strongest kind of Snow is the one that will last in the rain."

He had no idea what it meant. He had become his father's enforcer, the one who was willing to break a few legs, crush a few- okay, more than a few- hearts, but he still had no idea what that saying meant.

Strength, he imagined his Dad saying, Strength is the only thing that matters in a Snow.

Baz Snow wasn't known for his brains. He was known for producing children who could stab you in the heart without a second glance, children who would spit on fire just to hear it sizzle. Ryker and his siblings didn't have brains as sharp as flint but they made up for that in size and power.

Ryker hears his roommate Devon utter a really long, loud, snore. Sweet melted icicles. Ryker never liked Devon, especially when they first met. He was loud, a burst of light that melted the icicles in Ryker's busy mind and pissed him off so much. 

It was Sorting Day, the day that Aurelia wannabes found out their roommates. Ryker remembered scoffing at the basicness of the name, the fact that his father and the Council couldn't have decided on a more clever name for the next chapter in a villains life. 

Ryker didn't want to be a villain like Mr. Freeze or the Penguin. He didn't want to strut around wearing ridiculous costumes or makeup and get his ass kicked hundreds of times.

No, he wanted to be the kind of villain that would be remembered. The kind of villain that would take people like Nora Abraham and her clan of telepaths and run them into the ground.

On Sorting Day, all boys lined up in even rows of five and faced the front podium where Ryker's father would stand. The girls never got sorted. They are the weak ones here. Male villains are far more powerful. Male villains are stronger. Madame Aurelia picked the pairings, with the help of Baz Snow, so Ryker was surprised when his name and Devon's were called. His father would've pulled some strings for him.

But he was even less surprised when he heard his father's voice in his head. Snow's are not weak. Snow's take any opportunity and learn to survive.

So that's what he did. Three weeks later, he wasn't sure he could survive any longer. Devon was loud. He snored. He kept his side of the room ridiculously messy and every time he went out to practice flying, he would smell like sweat and the pine from the pine grove at the edge of school. To make matters worse, he was friends with that imposter, Nora Abraham. 

Nora was everything he'd come to hate. A hero, hiding in his home, threatening the few people that he loves. Ryker's fists clench in his sleep. He would kill her. No matter what.

Just then, a hand claps over his mouth. Ryker thrashes, reaching for his knife, but it's no use. He slips under, deep into the cover of darkness.