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Low clouds hung across the Vale of Mists, wrapping the ancient fortress in a soft, cottony layer of dense fog that made it impossible to see more than a few dozen paces beyond the reach of a person’s own hands.

For Ashlynn, as she sat behind the writing desk in her room, it meant that the world beyond her terrace vanished into the fog, leaving her feeling like the tower she had claimed for her coven was an island, floating in a vast sea of gray.

The fire in her hearth crackled merrily, filling the room with the faint fragrance of cedar smoke as it pushed back against the autumn chill in the air. Near her hand, a cup of hot jasmine tea added a faintly floral scent to the air that helped calm her heart.

She’d intended to sleep for most of the day after returning from the celebration of Ollie’s awakening but after a handful of hours, she woke gasping for air, trembling with remembered terror from a dream that seemed to come more and more frequently the closer she came to Lothian March.

Ever since forging a bond of blood with Nyrielle, Ashlynn’s dreams had become more vivid and more memorable, but one dream had haunted her more than any other.

It began with a familiar conversation with her mother. The pair of women stood alone in a luxurious sitting room hung with white lace curtains and filled with the earliest flowers of spring while the Blackwell Countess helped Ashlynn make the final adjustments to her wedding dress.

"Mother, what do I do if he sees the mark?" Ashlynn asked, just as she had on the night of her wedding to Owain Lothian. "How can I hide it when we..."

Looking back, it was almost embarrassing how flustered she’d been at something as simple as an act of intimacy between a man and a woman.

In the months she’d spent with Nyrielle, she’d learned all too well the ways that leaving clothing on while hands roamed beneath and tongues danced along the slight gaps where a bit of skin showed could build pleasure in a way that simple nudity never accomplished, but the Ashlynn trapped in her dream had none of that experience.

"Just do as I’ve taught you," her mother suggested. "Dim the lights and..."

The advice was useless. By the time Owain reached the bedroom where she had prepared to give every last bit of herself to him, he was already aware of the mark on her hip.

She never had the chance to dim the lights or slip into bed without him seeing her mark.

.. everything ended before she could even try.

Sometimes, when the dream came upon her, she tried to run the moment she realized she’d returned to the same dream.

If she could just make it to the Vale of Mists, if she could steal a horse, or a carriage, if she could find the place where Nyrielle had hidden herself, waiting until nightfall, if, if, if. ..

But fleeing never worked. Sometimes, her mother stopped her from fleeing. Other times, she escaped her chambers only to be brought back by a smiling guard, a wandering priest of the temple, or someone else. Once, it had even been Bors Lothian who brought her back to her wedding with Owain.

"It’s fine to be nervous," the gray-haired Marquis said when he caught Ashlynn trying to slip out of the temple through a side entrance that led to the stables.

"My Isla was as nervous as a young colt on its first ride to war the night of our wedding.

Her mother found her pacing in the gardens until just before the ceremony. "

"Do you like horses?" Bors asked with a gentle smile.

"If it would help, I could take you to the stables.

They might even have an apple or two stashed away that you could feed to the horses that will pull your carriage when you leave the temple and come home to the manor," he offered, speaking as though his soon-to-be daughter-in-law was as skittish as the horses he thought she wanted to visit.

"I’d love to visit the horses, Father-in-law," Ashlynn said sweetly, hoping she could use it as an opportunity to escape.

Once they reached the stables, she was confident that she could subdue the aging Marquis, and then she would take the fastest horse she could find and ride away from the wedding without ever looking back.

When she tried to summon her familiar magic, however, she found that her body couldn’t even feel the power of the world beneath her feet.

The grass in the fields, the trees in the gardens of the temple grounds.

.. she couldn’t feel any of it. In the dream, she was just as weak and helpless as she was on the day of her wedding.

Suddenly, the idea of overpowering Bors Lothian became laughable.

Without her witchcraft or her bond with Nyrielle, she was just a young woman trying to confront the veteran commander of the War of Inches.

Even if it had been years since Bors Lothian last rode to battle, he was still a powerful man who towered over her and could easily overpower a simple, ordinary Ashlynn.

And so she learned, no matter what she did in this dream, it would always result in her standing beneath the glittering golden dome at the center of the temple, bathed in the multicolored light filtering the stained glass windows and swearing herself to love, honor, cherish and obey her husband for as long as the light of the Holy Lord of Light shone upon them.

After that, she attended the banquet where she danced with Owain, Loman, Bors, and her own father before finally retiring to the chamber where Owain brutally beat her to the edge of death.

The dream never ended there. Each time the dream repeated itself, it didn’t end until she found herself wrapped in nothing but a bed sheet, soaked to the skin in the rain, and shivering as Sir Broll and Sir Tommin shoveled pile after pile of sodden earth into her grave.

Only, in this dream, the trees never helped her, the roots never found her fingers to pull her from the earth, and she had nothing to cling to as she struggled to get free.

In the dream, the darkness of her grave was inescapable and the dirt piled on and on and on until there was no air left to breathe.

That’s when she woke, shivering, gasping for breath, and desperate to escape the dark curtains that blocked out the light in her room while she slept through the middle of the day.

Her heartbeat thundered like a warhorse at a gallop, so loud in her ears that it drowned out the echo of Nyrielle’s heartbeat in her chest, leaving her feeling more alone than she’d felt any time in the past six months.

It wasn’t until several minutes passed that she was able to light a lamp beside her bed, open the curtains and reassure herself that, no matter how vivid and real it felt, it was only a dream.

But some dreams held more truth in them than others and so Ashlynn began to ask the question... Could she use the dream to find answers? Could she search for the person who had betrayed her to Owain Lothian?

Whether it had been one of the serving women who helped to fit her dress, or one of the ladies of the Lothian court who had seen something they shouldn’t have when they escorted her to the cleansing ritual, could she use the dreams that haunted her to discover them?

She didn’t know, but since she couldn’t keep the dreams away, she resolved to use them however she could.

And maybe, if she could find an answer somewhere in the depths of her mind that she could only search from within these vivid dreams..

. maybe she could find her way to a measure of peace and put an end to days where she woke breathless and alone, feeling the weight of the sodden earth crushing the air from her lungs. ..