Page 24 of A Vow of Embers

Did he think me such a simpleton that I hadn’t caught on to his plan? “This is all part of your scheme to force me to marry you.”

“Which you’re already doing. So try again.”

That made me stop short. He was right. If the point was to trick me into marrying him, that mission had been accomplished. There was no reason for him to keep showing up in my dreams since I had agreed.

“I don’t know how this magic works,” I said. “Maybe you had someone open it and now you don’t know how to close it.”

He ran his fingers through his midnight-black hair and for a moment I thought he was going to tug it out by the roots.

“You are the most frustrating, stubborn, obstinate woman I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. I can’t believe I have to marry you in two days.” He was yelling and I got the sense that he didn’t do so very often. I enjoyed that I had pushed him to the limits of his control.

Especially because he was always pushing me over that edge.

“I feel exactly the same way.” I reached for my xiphos, but the dream version of me didn’t have it. My shoulders drooped. I really wanted to test my theory. “And ‘stubborn’ and ‘obstinate’ basically mean the same thing.”

“Enough. I’m done,” he said. “Enjoy your strange reunion.”

He began to storm off, his long legs eating up the floor. Then he suddenly stopped and whirled around to glare at me. “And just so you know, I’m the one who sent your parents a letter last week telling them that you and Quynh were both alive. You’re welcome, by the way.”

As soon as he said those words, I woke up, gasping as I sat straight up.

“Lia?” Ahyana called out to me. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just a bad dream.”

My sisters no longer teased me about seeing Jason in my dreams now that we all knew who he really was. Honestly, some part of me missed their gentle teasing.

But the prince’s words kept me up the rest of the night. Was he being honest? Had he really sent my parents a letter telling them that both Quynh and I were alive and that he and I were going to be married?

If that was true, then what had I seen? I had thought it was some kind of wishful thinking on my part ... but what if it had been real? What if I had actually been in the room with my parents?

The dreams had never worked that way before, but I’d never been given any instruction on how they were supposed to function.

I thought of the timing. If he’d sent the note last week and my parents had just received it ... and I wasn’t married yet ... was it happening right now? This very moment? And I had somehow seen them from across an ocean? It was like watching a play, only it seemed to have been real life.

My parents hadn’t been asleep, though. They were awake and speaking to one another. Was that why they couldn’t see me or the prince?

What did any of this mean?

And would I ever understand what was going on?

Chapter Nine

As I went about my day, I realized I had been so fixated on how I had seen my parents and whether it had been real that I had completely overlooked the part where the prince had claimed he wasn’t responsible for us being connected in our dreams.

Him being to blame had seemed like the only logical explanation. That it was part of his scheme to trick me into marriage. But as he’d pointed out, that part was done. He had made it obvious he didn’t want to be in that space with me any more than I wanted him there.

But if he wasn’t responsible and I wasn’t responsible, then who was?

And why?

I asked Maia about it in our private tutoring session but she said she’d never heard of such a thing. I didn’t give her the details about the kinds of things that had routinely happened in my dreams in the past, as I was afraid it would scandalize her innocent ears.

It was like repeatedly beating my head against a stone wall. I had question after question after question and there were never any answers.

There was no one else I could ask, either. As I walked through the temple grounds pondering my situation, the others did not pay any attention to me. I had thought the priestesses and acolytes might gossip about me and the prince, but instead they all just seemed happy that the soldiers had left early that morning and that the women of the city were allowed to return to the temple and worship the goddess.

Everyone else had gone back to their regular lives and I felt like I had been pushed out to sea on a tiny raft that didn’t have a rudder, paddles, or a sail. I was going to drift along until the waves took me down.