Page 19

CHAPTER 19

Lost in a Dream

W ariness flickered in eyes washed up from the ocean, so blue they were like glass smoothed by waves over centuries.

Kneeling beside me, dirt coating his slacks, Bryn gripped my clammy hand in his own. Rain beaded on his bottom lip and darkened his hair to faded moonlight. I blinked back the haze and desire lingering from the Gate as my body screamed at me, confused about why it’d been interrupted.

It wasn’t us! I shouted at it.

Kazie remained sprawled on the blanket to my left. Drool pooled at the corner of her mouth as breath fought a path through her nose, gurgling into a suspended snore.

Bryn squeezed my hand. “Would you have preferred me to leave you in the Gate?” The question held just enough of a challenge that I knew I’d been caught like James.

It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want this. I didn’t .

Heat crept into my cheeks and neck, hotter than the fires burning inside Ruhaven’s trees. What a joke I must be to him. And now he’d gotten a front-row seat to me debasing myself with a mythical animal.

I yanked my hand away and sat up too quickly.

“You are still weak after the Gate, Rowan,” Bryn noted. “You must build up more tolerance.”

Maybe, but lack of Gate endurance wasn’t what had my thighs shaking.

I loosed a shaky breath. Speak, idiot. “I’m fine,” I said abruptly. “Fine.” But I saw my fears written in every nonexistent line of his face. “You—you saw, didn’t you?”

Bryn’s mouth twitched. “I take it the beast did not eat you?”

I guess he thought if I was going to play pretend with another life then I deserved the consequences of it too.

“Bryn, if you tell anyone,” I warned in a low whisper, “I’m leaving. I won’t come back to the Gate. I’ll finish the research in L’Ardoise. I don’t care what you threaten me with.”

He studied me, one hand on his knee, face impassive. “Very well, Rowan. Though I fail to understand why you are so embarrassed by your dreams.” He rose and reached for a blanket, began unfolding it.

“I think it’s obvious why I don’t want to be watched with a bird man.”

“An Azekiel,” he corrected, and draped the throw over my shoulders. “You are shivering, Rowan.”

Suspicious, I tugged the blanket around me, eyeing him as he unpacked cheesecloth-wrapped sandwiches, apples, and the canister of tea.

“No, thanks,” I said when he sliced off a piece of a Granny Smith.

With a frown, he held out the sandwich instead.

I shook my head.

“Rowan,” he said impatiently, “your blood sugar is low from the Gate. You remained for twenty minutes today. A new record.”

I lifted my chin from my knees. Twenty minutes? Really? “I’m fine, I’m just cold.”

He polished the apple on the corner of his shirt before tossing it in my lap. “Eat, Rowan.”

Of course, not a hint of fatigue or stress worried his face after nearly an hour in the Gate. If anything, he looked healthier—his cheeks had more color, his shoulders were a little straighter.

I picked up the apple. Maybe, if I could anchor myself like Bryn, I wouldn’t need to be watched while Nereida enjoyed the Azekiel. “How can you return without an anchor?”

Bryn settled back against a thick tree trunk covered in soft moss and draped his arms over both knees—casual, for him. “When I previously resided at Naruka,” he answered after a moment, “I spent a vast majority of my time in the Gate. It allowed me to acquire a level of tolerance.”

Vast majority —did that mean even more than the six hours he spent every day now? “Why?” I asked. “Why go in so much, especially if…” It caused James to exile you . “If it’s so taxing?” I asked instead, and bit into the apple’s taut skin, but when I thought of the teeth sinking into Nereida’s throat, I lowered the fruit.

“Because, Rowan,” he murmured in a wistful growl that tightened my belly, “I wanted what was in Ruhaven more than anything here.”

I waited a beat. “And what was in Ruhaven?”

Shadows flickered over his pale face. “The truth,” he said, then abruptly changed topics. “Has my research been helpful to you?”

I toyed with the apple. I’d figure out how to anchor myself then, or find another way. “Yes, thanks. There were three entries I found of Ruhavens who’d been killed by the Inquitate and also suffered from broken Tethers. One of them, Patrick, was in France at the time Willow visited. I thought maybe I’d look at him more.”

Bryn propped an elbow on his knee, looked around thoughtfully. “I recall the pain of the broken Tether initially frightened Patrick away from the Gate.” He paused as if considering it. “Which is why he moved to Marseille. I believe he took a rather large, orange tabby with him.”

“That’s right, it was in your notes. But you also mentioned something about the Fall? What’s that?”

Bryn’s eyes tightened. “Another Ruhaven legend. You need not worry over it now.”

I n Naruka’s ticking kitchen, with the remnants of last night’s onion stew still lingering, I stared down James. Not too difficult, given we were the same height.

“I’ve really got to plaster today,” I lied baldly.

“But it’s Friday,” James insisted for the tenth time, pointing to the calendar where a grinning pumpkin barely hid Father October’s considerable sins. “Yer going to miss the market.”

While it was true I needed to sand and plaster the drywall in the gate lodge, I might have exaggerated the urgency—and given that James had let Bryn repair his house with glue, I probably wouldn’t be called on my lie.

But I did feel guilty.

Twice, I’d barely escaped having sex with O’Sahnazekiel—or Sahn, as I was now calling him—and only because, by some miracle, Bryn happened to be anchoring and pulled me out before I witnessed something biblically illegal.

Too close. It’d been far too close to someone else knowing exactly what Nereida was up to. And maybe a part of me—one I really wasn’t proud of—wanted to experience some of what they shared… alone .

Still, while James might have given up pretending he wasn’t with Essie, I couldn’t live in the memories knowing whoever anchored might hear me moaning Sahn’s name or whatever it was that Nereida growled. If Bryn wouldn’t teach me to anchor, I’d come up with another idea.

I just needed to make peace with my arch-nemesis to do it.

James set down his wicker basket. “Well, if ye insist on staying here, then sure I’ll have to stay meself,” he bemoaned, doing a very good job of making me feel even guiltier than I was.

I looped my thumbs in my tool belt. “I know you and Bryn think the Inquitate will come back, but I’ve spent twenty-seven years without them. They haven’t appeared since Oslo, and you can’t follow me forever.” Plus, I wasn’t in the Ledger, so maybe it was just a mix up.

James wagged a finger. “I wouldn’t be placing no bets on that.” Which was saying something, considering he’d once put fifty on a horserace replay . But then, he’d had ten pints. “And sure, why would ye want to take the risk? Maybe it appears as someone else next time and ye haven’t a clue.”

“Doesn’t Bryn go off by himself all the time?”

Nose twitching, he dropped his act. “Aye, but as ye’ve seen yerself, he’s something of the Gate to protect him here.”

That glimmer .

Except I didn’t have a glimmer, couldn’t anchor myself, so I’d have to use other skills.

“Ye know, if this is about falling behind with the gate lodge, ye don’t need to keep working,” James reminded me. “I’ve enough money from Ruhavens over the years, and those who send it from abroad.”

Fixing Naruka was the only thing that eased my guilt for lying to James about who I was. At least, when he found me out, I’d be able to say I left Naruka with new shingles.

I adjusted the straps of my backpack, the weight of the contraption inside sitting heavily between my shoulder blades. “I can pull my own weight.”

“Roe, ye should really—”

But I was already striding away, toward the gate lodge, where I had no intention of spending my day.

Once they were at the market, I’d head up to the Gate. I wouldn’t overdo it, wouldn’t take risks. Still, twenty minutes? I could stay in longer than that. Not so long that I wouldn’t have time to do that plastering when I got back, but I needed to figure things out in the Gate— alone . Needed to figure out how I felt about the Azekiel without everyone watching me.

And on that thought, I bowled into Bryn.

Brushes scattered, white spirits burned a third nostril in my nose, and the palette he’d been holding flipped into a theatric arc, tumbling, tumbling, tumbling…

Splat.

I cringed when it landed paint-side down on the antique carpet.

James was going to kill me. The thing was probably some relic from a great aunt Ruhaven.

Stairs croaked before Kazie bounded through the lounge, leapt over the palette like a gazelle, and called a cheerful, “See ya later, Roe!”

One down, now just one more to—

I turned to Bryn. Winced.

Sprawled in the entranceway, a streak of paint marring his bleached-sugar sweater, he blinked up at me through thick eyelashes. Light from the stained-glass doors scattered over his bent form.

“Do you make a habit of stampeding through this door, Rowan? If so, I shall avoid it altogether.”

God, I’d just flattened a cripple, and there were enough Jesus statues in this house to judge me for all eternity.

Fumbling for an apology, I bent and grabbed his elbow. “Are you alright?”

He reached for his cane and, bracing against it and me, righted himself in a doorway only a few inches taller than him. “I have survived worse. Why are you in such a hurry, Rowan?” Bryn asked as I briskly straightened his leather apron. Stop touching him. “Are you looking forward to the vintage tractor parade in town?”

I stepped abruptly away. “What?” Was this a joke about L’Ardoise or… “No, no, I’m not going to town today. I’ve got things to do here.”

He limped away from me to peel the palette off the rug, studying the abstract design it left. “Not going?”

When I gave him the same excuse I’d fed James, Bryn cut me off. “We cannot leave you alone. If you wish to stay, then I will remain and paint a study of the lodge while you work.”

I stabbed my clenched fingers in my pocket. “No.”

Bryn looked at me with raised eyebrows as pale as his sweater. “No? Rowan, while you may believe the Inquitate are gone, I can assure you they will come back. You agreed not to take these risks.”

I dug for patience and found the well bone-dry. “We can’t always be together,” I said, then rubbed my neck at how that sounded. “I mean, James, Kazie, and—”

“Until we find a cause, we will,” he broke in, undeterred. “This is a reasonable precaution, Rowan. Surely, you do not find my presence… ghostly, as you described to James—so intrusive?”

Shame nipped at me.

But a new idea slowly began to form—one that would see him distracted and completely absorbed as he had been at the port. Luckily, it took Bryn at least a few hours to butcher a canvas.

“You’re absolutely right,” I said, switching my tone to what I hoped was repentant. “I wasn’t thinking. But I’ll just be disturbing your… your process , if you paint near the gate lodge.”

Bryn capped a tube of paint. “That is quite alright.”

“I mean, there’ll be dust flying everywhere when I cut through the drywall. And it’s loud too. Not conducive to painting.”

He loosened the apron around his neck. “This does sound serious. I do hope you shall consider wearing goggles and ear protectors.”

I ground my teeth. “I will. I do, and—”

“Not nearly enough,” Bryn corrected, wiping his fingers on the rag in his front pocket. “I have been reading about your profession and small amounts of dust can cause blindness.”

Profession . I almost laughed. But since he still wasn’t getting the hint, I said, “It’s just, well, why don’t you try painting something with more color? Like the vegetable garden?” Or anything a comfortable half-mile from the cottage.

“You wish for me to paint James’s garden?” He repeated like I’d said, “ I want you to paint the toilet seat .”

I handed him a blue tube—no, cobalt turquoise—and tugged at my ear. “Uh, yeah. The tomatoes looked nice. Pretty.” Paintable? Did James even have tomatoes? After installing the chicken wire in August, I hadn’t paid attention. “Maybe you should— Oh —I—”

Bryn snatched my wrist. “You have paint on your fingers, Rowan,” he said, and wiped them with the end of his rag.

“Thanks,” I murmured when he released me, my hand tingling from the solvent. “But for painting, I was thinking of something for the kitchen. James would like that.”

Bryn picked up his easel, a half-smile playing on his lips. “As you wish then, Rowan. As long as you remain in Naruka’s grounds.”

I forced a smile that felt like I’d chomped on hay. “Of course.”

When he offered his own sincere one back, I almost reconsidered. “Well, Rowan, I shall attempt this garden,” he began, limping toward the kitchen with the satchel thumping his thigh, the cane stealing a free hand, and the easel under an armpit. “Perhaps we can take lunch together. Although I cannot cook the meat you prefer, Kazie tells me my sandwiches are quite edible. Does noon suit you?”

Lunch with Bryn? A quick glance at the apple clock told me I’d be back from the Gate by then. “Sure.”

“Very well. Do consider the protective gear…”

I watched him duck under the doorway, nodded as he offered his painting gloves, and when he was well and truly set up in the garden, I stole away to the Gate.

Finally, I’d be able to see Ruhaven— alone .

In the cool, misty morning, I rolled out the blanket and toed off my shoes. Thanks to the socks that James kept misplacing in my room, I was wearing thick wooly ones today.

Then I unpacked the device that would bring me home.

Kazie’s alarm clock.

It’d taken a few tweaks, but I’d rigged it to work on a battery, and added a built-in vibration that should wake me if the loud bell didn’t.

I cranked the bronze knob. One hour. I could handle an hour.

Determined, I hugged the alarm to my ribs.

And awakened in Ruhaven.

Z erellia batted silver eyelashes into a filmy lens with a distorted reflection that made recognition nearly impossible, and yet I saw eyes as silver as Sahn’s were gold, framed by jelly-like eyebrows that matched the strands of gleaming hair.

I think I had freckles, too, so many they were a streak of glitter across my cheeks that had me smiling inwardly. Maybe there was something that connected Nereida and I, something that said this was my past life.

No—that was stupid thinking that would get me nowhere.

She gripped the frame of the glass, studying the odd, filmy lens that distorted our features. On her right hand, she wore a single band with twin half-moons braced on each side of an opal. Did they have moons in Ruhaven? At night, I’d been too distracted by the burning violet trees.

But as Nereida inspected the glass, I breathed in the heady scent of a rainforest in winter, and let my mind adjust.

I’d never get used to it—not just the sliding into another body, but the low beat of drums cascading over the lattice mountains, the wind blowing as thick as honey, the sweetness of lavender on my tongue, the sparkling pearls floating through the air, the—

AHHHH!

Nereida stumbled. Tripped. Fell.

An angel appeared from behind the glass, one fang curling over his lower lip, a dimple in his left cheek, and pure mischief in his pupilless eyes.

Sahn.

He puffed out his cheeks, fogging the lens before poking his head around with a grin. It was quick and wicked and not the least remorseful, but thankfully he wasn’t naked. A single piece of material draped over one shoulder, fastened at his waist with a dark leather belt, and hung to his thighs. He curled bare, clawed feet into the pearly earth and fluffed his wings like an under-plucked turkey.

Playing with us— again .

Not to be outdone, Nereida ducked and palmed a heavy ball, then chucked it with such deadly aim that Sahn flung out his wings to dodge it.

His flapping blue-merle feathers sent a hoard of furry butterflies squawking indignantly. With an oops look, he held up clawed hands in surrender, his sensual lips moving, voice a teasing growl. Despite the language barrier, I heard loud and clear: Is that your best shot ?

Whatever his flaws—like being part bird—they both had it bad for each other.

Nereida stalked toward the lens, shoved a cloudy arm through, and gripped the grinning Azekiel by his silky hair. The concave lens oozed around my arm, electrical pulses zapping into my veins like fireflies.

What a world this was—the sensations crawling up my translucent skin, Sahn’s quick, feline smile, the air soaked with wintery vanilla warmth.

Laughing deeply, Sahn let me drag him through the lens, the goo sliding over his golden skin and clinging to his lengthening fangs.

Slow arousal curled in Nereida’s belly.

Please, let the alarm clock work in time.

But maybe I could touch his feathers first, at least once. How did Nereida resist running her hands through them? They were all shades of gray except gray itself, like faded purples and greens and blues.

But before I could touch, he shook his golden head and flung gooey lens slime everywhere. His braid listed back and forth, sliding over a back carved with muscles while Nereida wiped a streak of slime from our cheek.

Then laughed.

The sound was like wooden bells—a chorus of chimes hanging in the woods, twenty notes of a scale that wasn’t possible on earth.

Sahn might have been as transfixed as I was because his eyes warmed, and he gave her a slow, indulgent smile.

Then before I could blink—or she could—he was scooping me into his arms.

Wide lips lowered to mine. Nereida all but wilted at the first sweep of his tongue. Quick and playful, he tugged on my bottom lip with his fangs, each touch sending electric shocks tumbling through my belly.

On a moan, she threaded her fingers through his long braid.

When her legs circled his waist, two dappled wings shot out on either side. He moaned, long and low, the vibrations tumbling through our joined mouths. And his hands roamed over each inch of her, touching places I wasn’t sure existed, the sensation like minty heat over my skin.

Her mouth found his neck, kissing the corded veins and muscle, the golden skin warm under her lips. He tasted like the sun, like pure, morning light. Gentle dew and rain, and a warming hope.

And I felt something else, something that couldn’t—

Suddenly, a tinkling chorus of flutes assaulted my eardrums.

Panting, Sahn spun us around, my legs still around his waist, his wings cocooning us so I almost missed the tiny creature skipping by.

I squinted downwards, through thick feathers, and caught a pair of twirling, spiral horns.

She—and it was definitely a she—huffed an annoyed breath at me before skipping onwards, babbling music.

I grinned. Of course, of course I knew who this was.

In agreement, Sahn unraveled his wings, setting me softly on the floating pearl earth.

For the first time ever, I studied Kazie.

Horns was an understatement. Antlers sprouted from her head in a tangle of Medusa hair, like a thorny, overgrown maze, and extended well past her shoulders. They gleamed a polished black, the same color as her skin. Except, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t that her skin was black, but that it inhaled light—seemed to suck it in and become the void where it should have existed. White, pupilless eyes landed on Sahn and I in a face as empty as the rest of her form. Then she smiled—or rather, a set of pointy blue teeth emerged from the dark.

Nereida answered in that extra sense that said hello.

So this was Kazmira.

She stopped feet away from Sahn and I under the shadow of a blooming jelly mushroom.

Sahn tried to speak to her, but she waved him off, pointing instead to the mechanical forest growing from the sky. Nereida followed her finger.

These gears moved slower than the others, and rather than the clicks and chirps, they sounded like a cresting wave breaking against rock.

When I looked back at Kaz, she lifted a telescope and gazed at the gears. She murmured something, then pointed again. And again.

The ground rumbled under my feet.

Clink-clink-clink.

I scrambled back, bumping into Sahn before he caught me and shielded us from the spewing rocks as something massive speared through the earth.

Kazie let out a sweeping bark of laughter—like a hoard of chirping dolphins—and waved us away. It’s fine , she seemed to say. You’re all a bunch of warts .

Glittery dirt peeled away from the obstruction to reveal an enormous lens, identical to the smaller one I’d just been staring through.

Then another lens broke through the earth, and another, until finally, seven crooked metal arms surrounded us like spider legs. Each arm curled around an enormous lens that glinted in our star’s purple light. Dirt streamed off the machines in sparkly waterfalls, but the lenses remained perfect, pristine glass.

Something pricked my neck.

What was that?

I tried to slap at it, and sighed philosophically when Nereida didn’t move. It was probably Sahn trying to pick up where we’d left off.

Or did they have mosquitos here?

As it pinched me, I tried to soak in the details of this machine, amazed, as always, that it could look so similar to things back home, like something from an abandoned factory. Maybe a very rich, antique factory, but still it had cogs, pulleys, and smelled like oil and burnt metal shavings.

Kazie hopped off the telescope and cranked a dial on the base. It pivoted in answer, grinding toward the rock-lattice mountains.

Heat continued to crawl down my spine like a pinched nerve, but Nereida didn’t react, nor did Sahn, who I saw was not behind me but beside me again. And he jumped whenever she stubbed her toe. Bryn was right about one thing—the male’s Mark was definitely protection.

My shoulders wanted to squirm at the sensation between them, but I couldn’t.

Was it my alarm clock going off? I should reassemble that thing into an egg timer.

But I didn’t need to return yet. I’d lasted an hour, and my body and memory remained intact, alive, every sense firing awake. No, I was stronger .

I could taste the air and its sweetness for the first time. And Nereida’s eyes not only zoomed, which no longer bothered me, but could detect the finest sparkle inside the veins running through the squid-like trees.

And the sounds . How could I have never noticed the music humming from the leaves? Even the gears were part of the symphony, a low base note accompanying the rest of the world. I’d needed to stay in longer to hear this. To live this and—

Something grabbed inside me.

A fist clenched my spine, no longer asking gently, but pulling with the force of a freight train.

This was no alarm clock.

I dug into Nereida, latching on to her as the power tried to wrench me away by the roots of the memory. Strong, it was so damn strong.

A headache stormed between my eyes as it pulled again, a wave sweeping me out to sea.

Before I was flung into the abyss.