Page 9

“I’m here!”

He turned, and there she was; haunting green irises, shiny black hair, smooth red lips… Only, her eyelids drooped, dark crescents cradled her eyes, her fair lips were parched, and her black hair was tossed. Her chest pumped like she might faint. Dranian barely reached for her before she lurched to the side like she’d been thrown. She tumbled into the ship’s rail, cracking the wood with her back. Dranian sprang after her, grabbed her hand, and pulled her to her feet in one strong tug.

Thunder crackled overhead, followed by streaks of electric light burning through the clouds. Dranian’s brows pulled together. “Are you doing this?” he asked. Frosty air blew over his shoulders and down his spine. He got the strangest sense he was in trouble.

“I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry.”She fought to catch her breath.

“Did you give me a nightmare?” Dranian looked warily at the sky, at the sinking boat.

But she shook her head.“I gave you mine.”

Dranian’s grip tightened on her hands.Hernightmare. This was…

He looked around again, something dropping into the pit of his stomach. “Queensbane,” he muttered. If he was a bolder fairy, he might have pulled her in and held her tight as she lived through it. But he didn’t know if that was the sort of thing she would have liked.

The fresh scent of grapes brushed by, mixing with the eerie musk of angry clouds and hungry waters. Dranian’s nose wrinkled as it all bled together strangely. “Were there grapes on your ship?” he asked.

The girl looked at him oddly. “No. That scent is coming from outside your dream.” But her eyes narrowed, and her lips peeled apart. “Wait… are you in the North Corner?” And then, “Are you by a vineyard?”

There was no time to answer as a mouth of darkness opened above them and inhaled debris from the ship, water, and cloud. The girl with no name was sucked backward, her hands sliding out of Dranian’s, her body blowing up toward the abyss.

Dranian leapt forward to try and grab her back, his hand raised and empty. But she was swallowed by darkness, vanishing right before his eyes, leaving his dream, leaving him trapped in her nightmare.

He shouted.

Dranian was slapped, and he startled awake.

He gasped, flinging up to a sitting position. Lily knelt there, surrounded by a quiet forest and the blue threat of early morning. She was staring at him like he was a lunatic. “Are you alright?” she asked in a voice higher than normal. “You were shouting in your sleep!”

So she’d slapped him.

Dranian swallowed, finding his mouth parched. His whole body shook. He was dizzy, too, his mind going blank—no. He could not panic at a time like this. Not alone out here with Lily who needed him.

He inhaled deeply. Exhaled. Repeated it three times over.

When clear thoughts returned, he looked down at his hands, imagining someone else’s holding them. Imagining someone’s fingers sliding out of his grip. Imagining her being torn away.

Seconds. He’d barely seen the girl forseconds, and she’d been in distress. Dranian dropped his head into his palms and gripped the hair above his pointed ears.

“What’s gotten into you?” Lily put a hand on his shoulder. “You never yell.”

There weren’t exactly proper words to explain his situation to a human. He hadn’t told Lily about his nightmares, even when they were trading secrets about Luc, and her secret fairy-destroying police division, and all the other things. So, all he said was, “I had a bad dream.”

Lily nodded. She slumped to sit beside him in the cool grass. After a moment, she said, “I get that. I could never sleep well when I was younger because there was no one looking out for me while I slept. So I always had these crazy dreams where I was alone and someone was hurting me, or chasing me, or whatever else.” She plucked a stalk of grass and rubbed it between her fingers. “The worst part of having no family was being too afraid to fall asleep in strange places.”

Dranian glanced over at Lily, thinking of when he first became haunted by a dreamslipper and how hard he’d fought to stay awake. He tried to picture a small human girl doing the same thing.

He wasn’t sure he had any sort of comfort to provide, so he cleared his throat instead and offered, “Sometimes ‘family’ is something you find when you’re a little older.”

Lily’s face broke into a smile. “That’s super deep, Dranian.” She patted him on the shoulder. “Nice job.”

He couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or if she meant it, but she did look grateful as she rose to stand and extended a hand to help him up. Dranian climbed to his feet on his own though, using both his good legs to do it.

“Do you feel like jogging?” Lily asked.

Dranian scowled. “Jogging?”

“Yeah. We’ll get there faster if we run.” She pulled her satchel onto her shoulders and headed back toward the path. She broke into an easy jog without warning or waiting for him to agree to it.