I had the dream again. The dream where I’m in the dark and I just know something bad is about to happen.

It rained today, another omen of bad things, I think. I was walking on campus, and it just started pouring. I hate the rain, hate the cold. I’ve been shivering ever since. 

First, I want to say that unlike Ambrea and Julea, I do not have visions. I just…these dreams have been coming to me since my twenty-second birthday. Since I came of age. I thought about talking to Theo about them, but I don’t want to bother him. Even if he is the greatest seer of all times.

He’s my cousin, but we’re not close. Sometimes, I think he almost forgets we’re family. Oh, he’s never mean or cruel or anything. He just…I’m here to provide a service to him, and that’s what he focuses on. The male has been preoccupied for at least the last sixteen years. Something…something has been bothering him greatly.

I don’t want to make trouble. 

But I want the dreams to stop, somehow.

They are always the same at first. Me, in a dark world, alone. And then he finds me. The unknown male. I don’t think he’s Dardaptoan at all. 

He’s far more…sinister.

What he does next with me changes every time. Until I wake, terrified. Because I never know what it is exactly that he wants from me. 

I know he’s not my Rajni. Maryin Sebastos—Theo’s cousin, too—made a point of telling me when I was forty-four and she was in a foul mood not to get my hopes up. 

I do not have a destined mate. I was born without a destined mate. 

I still grieve for that.

I have figured out what that means. It means I’m going to die without finding my Rajni. 

I’m not sure when that will happen or how long I have on this earth. I do know that I’m going to love every single day I have. With my family.

I love my sisters. They are my world, my everything.

They are the reason I’m sitting here in this class. They pushed me—Kellis downright ordered me—to finally do this.

I hadn’t even realized they knew what my secret hope was. 

I just want to know that I can do it. Me, the quiet, shy, backward little Jume, who sometimes struggles to even talk right. Me…