Page 35 of Dream Lost (The Fae Universe #12)

35

B ridget stood in a garden. She knew she was somewhere in the astral plane by the quality of the air. It was like her body knew it didn’t need it because here, she didn’t need to breathe at all. She tried to pull herself to where her library was and hit an invisible barrier.

“A trap. That motherfucker,” she growled. The astral was her safe space, and the Brollachan had turned it into a prison.

Bridget tried to pull herself together and not panic. Bas was going to be worried, but she didn’t want him to jump into the astral to find her and get stuck too.

“You have never needed a man to save you, and you’re not going to start now,” Bridget told herself. She just needed to find a way out. This was the astral plane. It didn’t conform to rules that people or creatures imposed on it, no matter how talented they were. She had manipulated it to create a library for herself. She could make herself a way out.

Bridget looked around at the high hedges around her. The Brollachan had put her in a maze. “Going with the classics, are you? Very well. I know the classics.”

Bridget ripped off a branch of the hedge, stripped it of its leaves, and held it out like a sword. “On guard!”

The stick turned into a rapier, and Bridget smiled. The Brollachan might have put her in a mind prison, but she doubted it had ever tried to trap someone like her. She was a magician. This was her place, not the Brollachan’s.

Bridget used the edge of the rapier to cut the bottom of her shirt and tore a strip free. She bundled it into a ball and focused her mind, imposing her will on the fabric while thinking of the story she needed to pull from. The fabric shivered in her palm, and she opened it. She was holding a spool of fired clay wrapped with a shining red thread.

Bridget tied the end of the thread to a stone post, marking the beginning of the maze, and began to wind her way through it. “Don’t worry, Bas. I’m coming. I’m not going to let this bastard get in the way of me learning magic and kissing you whenever I like.”

The maze wound deeper and deeper. With every wrong turn, Bridget backtracked, rewound the thread, and began again. She wasn’t going to give up.

“You probably should,” said a voice she would never forget. Her mother was sitting on a stone bench, filing her nails. “You know the likes of that posh family are never going to accept a bastard like you. Your own father didn’t want to know about you.”

Bridget’s hand gripped tighter to the sword. “You didn’t want me either.”

“I should have gotten rid of you the moment I found out I was pregnant,” her mother said, and Bridget cut off her head. She was breathing heavily, her hands shaking. The corpse didn’t disintegrate. It just lay there, blood spurting from the neck wound.

“I have been welcomed to the family multiple times. The Greatdrakes want me, even if you didn’t. You should have loved me for who I was.” Bridget turned her back on it and continued through the maze. The Brollachan was going to have to try a lot harder than that.

Around the next corner of the maze stood her step-father. He opened his mouth to mock her, and Bridget drove the tip of her sword through it and out the back of his head. She wasn’t going to listen to any more mocking lies.

These kinds of mind games might have worked on the Brollachan’s other victims, but Bridget knew herself and had read the Emerald Tablet so many times that the ancient Hermetic lines of ‘As Above, so Below’ were etched on her bones. Her inner world was the core of her, and she knew herself inside out.

There was no monster hidden in her subconscious that the Brollachan could summon that she hadn’t already fought before.

“This is my space, you asshole. I’m not dying here,” Bridget snarled, when she hit another dead end. She turned to retrace her steps when she heard a voice calling to her.

“ Bridget, I love you so much. I want to teach you magic, watch you grow into your power, and outshine us all.”

“Bas? Bas! I’m here!” Bridget said, racing back to the wall of the hedge.

“ I never got the chance to tell you that you are my mate. My other half. The dragon knew within moments of meeting you. I thought it would frighten you because we haven’t known each other for long. I should have told you. ”

“Damn right, you should have told me! What the fuck? When I get out of here, you are going to get the biggest lecture,” Bridget said and started hacking at the hedge with her saber. “Apollo said something about that the night you shifted, and I was too tired and worried about you to make any sense of it. You ass. Your dragon was all like, ‘You’re mine,’ and I didn’t even question it because I just wanted to be wanted that much.” Bridget hit the hedge with every word. “I was too spellbound by your dick. God, I’m such an idiot.”

“ I need you to keep fighting your way back to me, Bridget. I can’t lose you. I know you’re going to be mad, but I’ll take that over you being gone ,” Bas’s voice said through the greenery.

“Fuck this. I’m done playing your games,” Bridget growled and put down the saber and thread. She shut her eyes and thought of the sky. Her body bent and twisted, her wings and feathers burst free, and she was a hawk.

Bridget flapped her wings, winding higher into the sky. The hedge wall kept growing, but she was faster. She sped over the top of it and reached for Bas and her body with all her might.

“Bas! I’m still here! I’m trying to get out and back to my body! Help me!” she cried, hoping that he would hear her.

A thorned vine snatched her from the air, and she was back in her human form. She screamed as the vines tightened, and she was dragged back down towards the earth.