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I took a full breath in, clearing the cobwebs of my forced solitary confinement.

“Deal,” I said, wondering if Erix’s secrets could solve the issue of my own. “I need to know everything. To save him.”

“To save Duncan?” Erix asked, but I could tell he already had worked out the answer.

“Yes, but not only him,” I replied. “Tosaveus all.”

CHAPTER 3

“It’s almost the same every night,” Erix said as he explained that he’d come to Imeria because of a nightmare. Apparently I’d been there, pleading with him to come here. And he did. I didn’t have the confidence to ask him what else his dreams entailed, because my heart told me they were connected to those that plagued me. Which didn’t exactly make me comfortable, knowing the scene I’d been a part of, bodies entangled, the three of us locked in flesh and desire.

We studied each other, me sitting upon the edge of my bed, him moving before it, wringing his hands just to give them something to do.

“Sit with me, Erix,” I said, patting the bed at my side, forcing the dream from my mind. “Your pacing is making me nervous.”

So is the thought of you experiencing the same dreams as me. So is the fact that you are here surrounded by all the secrets I’ve fought hard to keep.

Erix had hardly stopped moving since we’d entered my personal rooms, as though he didn’t feel like he belonged. Truthfully, I didn’t either. From what Eroan had explained, this chamber was once used by my mother. It was one of many in Imeria, and luckily it hadn’t been crushed when the Draeic attacked the castle and caused more than half of it to collapse.

She’d used this chamber on the lower floors in the eastern wing when she was pregnant with my half-siblings – sisters and brothers who King Doran Oakstorm had slaughtered in his desire for vengeance. The connecting room just to my side – a door which was concealed by a large tapestry of mountains, stars, and wild stags – led to the smaller room where Duncan was in his induced state of sleep.

Erix stood before it, scuffing marks into the stone-slabbed floor with his boots. “I’m sorry. This is all just a lot to take in.”

Was he apologising for his fidgeting movements, or the fact he’d turned up to Imeria, saying he’d dreamed about me calling for him?

I swallowed down my anxiety and asked the one question simmering in my brain. “How long has it been happening?” Did I really want to know the answer? “The dreams, that is.”

“Weeks, maybe months,” Erix replied without breath. “In fact, longer. It all blends into one if I’m honest. Sometimes I might not remember what I’ve dreamed about, but my body aches and reacts as if I do. But the one detail that always stands out is you are there, as is Duncan… both of you requesting my presence over and over.”

“You should’ve told me,” I said.

“I could say the same to you.” Erix stopped, looked me dead in the eye, the intensity causing me to look down at my lap. My fingers picked at the seam of my trousers, fraying thread. If I had nails left to bite, Altar knows they’d be between my teeth by now. “Robin, you haven’t given me, or anyone but Eroan and Jesibel, much of a chance to get close enough to speak to you about even minor matters. And until last night, it has only ever felt like a dream, something my own mind conjures to… punish me. For things I have done in my past, but perhaps also actions I never took.”

“This is no punishment,” I replied. “At least not in the sense that you are thinking.”

Erix’s eyes darkened to storm clouds. “It is Duncan, isn’t it? He is creating these dreams somehow. Taunting me – tauntingus.”

“Nightmares,” I corrected. “And no, I don’t think I can blame him either. Not entirely.”

It’s the monster beneath his flesh that’s doing this to us.

“And are they nightmares for you?” Erix asked, a hopeful glint in his eye.

I lifted my gaze, looking toward the tapestry, more so what lingered behind it. “Yes – most of the time.”

There was a relief in sharing the burden. Like a weight, not completely lifting from my shoulders, but easing a little. All it would take is to ask him what exactly happened in his dreams, and hope it wasn’t a mirror image of those I had.

Limbs entangled, mouths connected, a blanket of desire and love wrapped around us.

“How is it possible?” Erix asked, although I knew he already had worked out the answer.

“You tell me,” I retorted. “Or are we going to keep pretending like nothing happened when you saved Duncan from Duwar’s realm?”

I studied Erix in the silence that followed, reading the nuances of his expression. The wince in his silver eyes, the deepening of lines across his forehead. How his fists balled at his side, never straying far from the sword belted at his hip.

Before he replied, he finally took a seat.

Erix drew up a chair, opting not sit on the bed with me. It was a wise choice, a cautious one, born from the knowledge of our past, and the fact my present and future was festering in a bed of chains in the room beside us.