Chapter 12
Share Your Dreams
T abitha marched over to the neighboring city of Carabus, trying to channel the strength of an invading army. Her only weapon was a cat, but Bandit did oblige her, hissing when one of the stewards tried to shoo her away. Really, the lone steward was the only one to challenge her. The guards (wearing their own colors of white and emerald green and not the king’s silver and black) mostly dismissed her.
She wasn’t a threat. Just an eccentric cat woman on a mission.
She might have marched her way through the castle to wherever its lord was hiding, but a portrait in the main hall stopped her short. It wasn’t on the wall yet—just propped against the table along with a few other bundles that must have belonged to the princess who would soon be the mistress of the castle. Tabitha recognized the spunky girl pictured as an adolescent youth, flanked by her royal parents, but she was staring at the fourth figure in the painting when she heard the sound of boots behind her.
She had never seen Tom’s human form in the waking world—not as a boy or as a man. It was both wondrous and haunting to see that he looked exactly the same as she had dreamed him to be.
Well, almost the same.
The boots stepped closer. She felt she must explain all the warring thoughts inside her soul, but she wasn’t sure how to start except to reach for the portrait in front of her.
“His hair is longer,” she said, tracing a line down the prince’s painted cheek to show where it hung in their last meeting. “He’s thinner too. Or maybe just taller?” She squinted and then shook her head. “No. He’s thinner and taller.” Which was a relief. Tom still had an inch or two over her. “And I thought he might be fae with the way he was dressed, but he wasn’t.” Her index finger hovered over his hazel eyes. “He stared at me for such a long time. Then he said my name. And I knew . His eyes are the same.”
That was when she turned to face Archie, a bit helplessly. How could she have left Tom all alone? She needed help to get him back, but her memories seemed dreamlike and muddled.
How could she possibly explain it all?
Archie was already looking at her with wide eyes. “You saw Leo? Human Leo?”
“You think I’m mad. You don’t believe me.” Tabitha lowered her head, looking to her cat Bandit for strength. She was lashing out, but she needed Archie’s help. She was determined to keep trying until he understood, but there was so much to tell, and some of the details still seemed too personal to share. The words spilled out in unorganized bursts.
“I didn’t believe me either. I dreamed of him so much I thought I must be dreaming again. And it was always the same dream. I saw him—my Tom, your Leo—but it was like he was trapped.” She rushed ahead, now speaking of her final dream as it was the clearest image in her mind and perhaps the most important one for her to share. “Then there was a woman . . . She seemed—perhaps not entirely evil but empty , and she might be hurting him somehow. Keeping him. I tried to hold on to him so many times, but there was always some magic keeping him away.”
Archie shook his head, perfectly confused. “And it was a dream?”
“I thought it was,” she said, trying to backtrack again. “The same sort of dream for the last three years—not every night, but often enough. Then, I thought I recognized a few of the trees. And I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to see. I went into the woods, and there he was. Like the dream again. And this time . . . I tried to grab onto him, like in all the other dreams, but he left something behind. He had this in his hair.” She held up her palm to show him the small colored bead. “It wasn’t a dream.”
That didn’t help. Archie still looked confused. “So, he’s still in the woods?”
Her shoulders slumped. This wasn’t working. She never should have left Tom alone, and her despair only made her story more muddled. “I know I should have found a way to bring him back with me, but it was like the dream. He wouldn’t come, and I couldn’t hold him. There is something there. Or someone?” She wasn’t sure how to describe the influence the queen and her magic had on him, but Tabitha had come here imagining herself as a warrior, and she wouldn’t allow herself to retreat. “And the way he spoke—like he was drugged or half-asleep. He’s wrong , and I need you to tell me how to fix him,” Tabitha said, reaching the crux of the matter.
She had no more words. She met Archie’s eyes more earnestly, ready for the lord to pass his judgment. “You think I’m mad? Everyone always thinks I’m mad.”
“No,” Archie said quickly. “Of course I don’t. I’ve been looking for him too. We all have. We just never—but we should have known you would be the key, even if kissing him in his cat form didn’t work.” He gestured for her to follow him to the next room. “Come. Let me show you what I’ve found. And next time you see him, we’ll have a plan.”
Tabitha was welcomed into the library, the whole place bedecked in white and emerald green, and eventually she got more of the full story out and in the right order. Archie never said anything to contradict her tale. Instead, he pulled out book after book, looking through the Ogre Marquis’s old records about the fae for a way to help her return to the Fae Realm and find Tom again.
“There are a few places our realms are supposed to naturally meet,” Archie said, “but most sources say that to enter the Fae Realm, you need to be brought in by a fae or faerie beast, just like we would have to pull a fae out of their rings for them to enter our world.”
Tabitha nodded. Tom had brought her through the faerie ring on her first visit, and she didn’t expect the magic she had used in the Fae Realm to work once she left it. “So what can I do?”
“You could try to summon a faerie guide from the ring,” he tried. “Maybe that cat?”
Tabitha shook her head. “I don’t know her name. I never even asked.” Maybe she should have, but at the time she had been so focused on Tom and wary of anything that would make the Fae Realm seem more real and her stay more permanent.
“And she probably wouldn’t tell you even if you had asked,” Archie said evenly. “Faeries are careful about things like that. But even if you don’t have her true name, she could still come if you gave her a reason to.”
“Like what?”
Archie shrugged. “I don’t know. What do cats like? Dead mice? A saucer of milk? I can usually get a few garden gnomes to appear if I leave out some radishes. They aren’t a bad sort, just self-interested. If your cat is the same, then she might be your best chance to get back there.”
“And if I do . . . Will I be able to save him?” She had to be able to save him.
“I don’t know. I’ve been looking . . .” Archie pulled out another thick tome. “You know about the old matron stories, right? About the fae? They say the stories were given to the first matrons by the fates who serve the Light-bringer. They keep a record of the past, so that’s where most of the stories are supposed to come from, but they can also be more like prophecies—something that hasn’t happened yet. They repeat themselves like cycles through time. One of those stories . . .”
“Tell me.” She was long past being embarrassed that the former miller’s son could read far better than she could. She would sacrifice far more than her dignity to bring Tom home.
“A human prince is bound to a Fae Queen. A normal girl is able to save him, but there are other parts . . . Something about the Queen making a sacrifice to solidify her power at the coming of spring? Something about a child?” He scrunched his face. “You’re not pregnant, right?”
“No,” Tabitha said, but she still ducked her head as if she were guilty. She had never even kissed a boy before Tom, but no one ever believed that with how the stain of her mother’s reputation still lingered.
And when she thought of Tom’s kiss now, the one that might not have been truly hers to claim, she felt more than a little wicked.
Archie put up a hand, looking a bit flustered. “I didn’t think you were. I don’t know what it all means. But if this is all supposed to happen as some sort of spring ritual . . .” He shook his head again and pushed the book away. “It could be dangerous, but you don’t have to go alone. Wait until after the wedding, and I will go with you. Ainsley will too.”
“I appreciate it, my lord—”
“It’s Archie,” the marquis insisted, scowling. “Ainsley never liked it when I used her title, and now, I suppose I know why. But we are friends, aren’t we? Leo is to be my brother-in-law. And if Ainsley had her way, she would already have moved you into the castle and declared you her sister.”
The castle? With all those people and their dreams crying for her attention all at once? Horror crossed over Tabitha at the thought, and Archie put his hands up in response.
“I know,” he said. “I’ve told her so many times not to rush things, not to push so hard . . . but that’s just the way she is,” he said in the resigned but well-contented way of a man who knew his bride well enough to understand her faults and love her anyway.
Tabitha didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. But she never should have kissed Tom. A miller’s son had become a marquis, but that didn’t mean she could be a princess. Just the thought of living in a castle—could there be anything so terrifying?
Even the shop that Granny Tailor gave her was too much.
Her eyes locked on the table’s runner—an emerald green background and a white stag. She just wanted to help her friend. She had no business dreaming of anything else.
Archie shook his head. “We don’t want to scare you off, but we never wanted to make you feel unwelcome, like we wouldn’t drop anything to help you—well, almost anything. But three days? He’s been gone for three years , and you don’t think he could wait that much longer?”
No. Tom couldn’t wait. She had seen how empty he looked, and nothing could be more certain. And if this all centered on the coming of spring, they really didn’t have any time at all.
What if the sacrifice mentioned was meant to be Tom himself, if he had lost too much of himself to be useful to the Queen? She couldn’t lose him that way. “I know I can’t properly explain it, but I believe this is something I must do now, even if it’s on my own.”
Archie eventually agreed. “I suppose a solo quest for true love matches the stories well enough, but if you aren’t back after the wedding . . . Well, we’ll have to look for you too.”
Tabitha read the tension in the words. Of course they would look for her, like they were already searching for Tom. But it was hard to have much hope for success with so little progress.
But Tabitha had seen Tom. She knew it was him, and she would do anything to get him back.
And once Archie gave her the information she needed for the summoning spell, Tabitha was ready to leave.
She turned, catching sight of another white stag that made her pause. It might make her sound mad again, but Archie seemed so desperate to do something, she couldn’t keep it to herself.
She held Bandit close for courage as she faced Archie again. “There is one thing you can do to help, even if you can’t come. Will you . . . can you get rid of the stags?” They reminded her too much of the Prince of Beasts, and that seemed far more significant now that she knew the fae drew more power from human belief.
Especially with how Tom spoke of emerald eyes.
Removing the fae prince’s symbol from Archie’s holding might lessen the fae’s influence.
Archie rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed. “You aren’t the first to say that I should remove them. They’re the Ogre Marquis’s colors, and I should replace them with my own. But I’m a miller’s son. I don’t have any colors, so what would I replace them with? A field of wheat? And they would have to be altered again when I marry Ainsley—her house will always outrank any I might create for myself.”
Wheat. Yellow. Tabitha nodded, seeing the problem like another gown in need of alterations. The colors needed to change, but perhaps not so much that it would be an impossible task. “Replace the green with yellow, and then you can keep the white. Just not a stag. A cat? No, a lion.” She smiled, looking at the burly and blond miller’s son, but also thinking of Tom. “Yes, make the stag into a lion. I’m certain that will help.”