Loud, blaring voices wailed in my mind, cracking my skull open as they screamed so loud that I was physically unable to hold up my body to stand. Sinking onto my knees, I held my head and felt so much pain, so much anguish, terror and danger that my sight blurred.

"What's going on?" Someone asked, though I barely registered the words at all.

Something overshadowed their voices, and I couldn't hear anything that might have followed.

All I felt was pain, above all else. Blind, searing pain shot through my entire head so brutally and relentlessly, that the rest of my body began to react as if I were about to die.

Throwing up, I tasted blood between my tongue and gums. My stomach hardened and twisted into severe knots, cramps rattling through me with an intensity that drove my mind insane. It was as if my soul was being shredded and my body couldn't take it. My gift pulled in emotions of turmoil, dread, fear and panic into the core of my ocean that ran red with blood. With pain.

I registered different emotional signatures, and something about how they reached me made me know that they were coming from a distance. Multiple people I had never met were feeling these things. But why? And how could I be registering them? Why now?

And like a light-switch being flipped off with nothing but a tiny movement, one single second to make the change a reality, the pain vanished.

"Catherine. What's going on? What are you feeling?"

I felt crazed, then, and started crying. How could something hurt so bad but be eradicated and erased like it never even happened mere seconds later?

"Something's wrong with me," I murmured, shaking now not in pain but in terror of the state I was in. I could no longer pretend that I was fine or that I would be.

I wasn't.

Nothing about me was fine.

"Talk to us, Catherine, please," Emmet pressed and I could feel him close by. Reece had his hand on my back, but he said nothing. Instead, worry seeped into me.

I tried to open my mouth and say that I heard voices whenever I was in danger, but the words couldn't get past my lips. Nothing audible emerged, just like last time I tried to talk about it. So, I tried to approach it differently. Taking a deep breath, I focused on clearing my mind by eradicating any winds that threatened to agitate the waves of my ocean. Each steadier growing breath brought in more control.

"Those with ill intent can make others bleed by handing them the thorns of a rose."

Opening my eyes to see Reece and Emmet's concerned faces only centimeters away from mine, a puzzled expression lined both their features. A wave of anxiety and an ever-stronger wave of concern mixed into the stream of my ocean.

"What are you saying?" Reece asked, his probing glare moving to Emmet, who's hazel sight was set on me. He squinted his eyes in thought.

Emmet left us all in a silence that felt almost peaceful enough for me to fall asleep, as fatigue began to overpower my will to stay awake. My efforts of controlling myself began to drain me.

"The thorns cut but they protect," I continued, trying to bypass whatever curse loomed over me that prevented me from directly saying that I heard voices and they were most probable to be a warning system in case of imminent danger.

"The pain opens my eyes to see who hands me the rose."

"Tassanhat, Catherine, what the hell are you saying?" Reece cursed, using one of the few words that couldn't be translated from the ancient language we only knew scarcely. "Rose? What rose? This is not the opportunity to talk about damn flowers!"

Emmet took a deep breath. "I think she's saying that her pain warns her?"

Nodding, I felt a sense of relief when Emmet caught on to what I tried to convey in such strange phrases. But I had faith that Emmet would get to the bottom of it, even when I couldn't be anything but cryptic. If someone could make sense of it, then it was Emmet.

Reece's glare was filled with anger at first but when Emmet's words reached him, something in them changed. Recognition flashed through them and he stared back at me with a look that felt like it pierced right through me.

"I can't believe I didn't realise this sooner."

Confused, even Emmet, we both stared at our eldest brother.

"What you have is similar to what I got," Reece muttered yet did nothing to explain what it was that he meant. It was like not saying anything at all, really.

"Go on," Emmet said.

Reece got up from his kneeling position and paced through the room, his footsteps echoing through my dorm. It reminded me of when he held a bloody rag in his hands, just after we'd been attacked. He was on to something, probably sorting out a million thoughts that ran through his mind. Emmet remained next to me, and we both didn't move, waiting for Reece to elaborate further. For him to bring the picture together of a puzzle Emmet and I only had few pieces to offer.

"Whenever one of you is in danger, I feel physical pain. It's how I knew to come home when you were both attacked in Everett Valley."

"So, you're saying that the two of you have biological alarm-systems?" Emmet concluded quickly.

Reece sighed and drove a hand through his black, shoulder-length hair. It was unkempt. Being on the run had also given him time to grow a beard, one I was only taking notice of now properly. It wasn't long, yet still suited him, being around a centimeter in length. It was mostly black but shone red when the sun hit it right.

"Yes, and I think our father was the one who created it for us to be able to protect each other. I think he might have known that we would need it one day."

I was about to ask Reece why the hell that he could voice it but I seemed incapable when the doors to my room were slammed open with a force that nearly unhinged them.

Leizer, who had been kind to me earlier and had offered to show me around, hurled wind through the dorm that swept across the walls and rattled my skin as it touched me. My hair blew out of my face as if I were standing outside in the cold.

There was no window open.

Merely his entrance had created such a strong gust of wind that I suspected it had a deeper meaning behind it.

Maybe all dragons had gifts. But now was not the time to dwell on whether he could control an element or not, for the words that left his lips caused me to press mine to a thin line.

My muscles tightened as the previously felt dread turned into my own.

"The traitors have escaped."