Page 38

T he sensation of dream walking overtook me as I fell under, deeper and deeper.

I hadn’t felt this sucked into a dream in a long, long time.

We weren’t in the throne room, where my dream walking usually took me.

We were in Donika’s personal bedchamber.

Donika stood at the vanity, a black sheer robe tied around her waist, her blue and white ombre hair falling in curated ringlets down her back.

She inspected herself in the mirror, pulling against the frown lines on her forehead, the textured skin at her cheek.

“I’ll need more elixir soon,” she said, casting her gaze to the wrought iron bed beneath the crescent window.

“Of course, My Queen,” a voice purred.

I turned my gaze expecting Corian, but it was Zachariah Dragovya. Nik’s father.

He lay across the sheets, shirtless, his skin spells on full display. He had other tattoos dancing across his chest, too. Just like his son. He was barefoot, his arms folded behind his head, a deep grin playing on his lips.

“I do believe the stress of losing my precious Noctani aged me ten years,” she replied, leaving the vanity to join Zachariah on the bed.

She curled against him, her hand on his chest as she gazed up at him.

Oh… Mother above.

That was… that was twisted. I know Nik had said she was working with him, but I hadn’t realized she was with him.

After she had been with his son? She was much older than Nik, but I hadn’t imagined anything going on between her and Nik’s much older father when Zachariah had appeared at her side in Siraleth.

That answered the question of whether she knew of the fate of her Noctani, though. We had painstakingly taken the time to bury all the bodies—Noctani included—but somehow she knew.

“My Queen, you haven’t aged a day.”

Her dark gaze traveled down the muscles of his abdomen and I tried to push out of the dream, fearful that I might be forced to witness something I most certainly didn’t want to.

“I wonder when Nikolai will be back,” she mused, her voice taunting.

“You don’t think he was killed with the others?” Zachariah asked, his brow raised as he gazed down at her.

Donika laughed, and the sound sent a shiver down to my toes. “You underestimate your son, Zachariah. Not only would they not have had the heart to kill him, but he would never let them. He is faster and stronger than even their best soldier.”

“Then he will be back,” Zachariah mused, nodding .

So… they didn’t know Nikolai’s location, and they didn’t know about the antidote, either. That was good. Very good. We could use that to our advantage, especially with one antidote left to spare. It will come as a shock to Donika when we march against her, a perfectly mortal Nikolai at my side.

If he was up to it.

She couldn’t know the damage turning him Noctani had caused him, not that she would care. They didn’t call her the Black Heart for nothing.

“I must say, Isaac’s passing threw a wrench into my plans,” Donika admitted, tracing her long, delicate finger against him.

I wasn’t fooled by her appearance, there was nothing delicate about her.

“You’ll have the little Stormshade bitch’s magic soon enough, you won’t need his,” he assured her.

“No… ” her voice was cutting. “I won’t need his, but I wanted it.”

Zachariah laughed, his pearly teeth on full display. “My Queen, you will have so much magic you won’t know what to do with it.”

Her sinister lips lifted into a malicious smile. “I’ll know exactly what to do with it.”

Donika hadn’t known we killed her contingent of Noctani until Isaac’s magic had left her, another win for us. Another thing she hadn’t planned. We might not have the upper hand in this, but she wasn’t predicting our movements, and I was relieved at that.

“How many Noctani does that leave us with?” he asked, stroking his hand against her vibrant hair.

Donika thought for a moment, her gaze on the ceiling. “About forty, give or take.” Her laugh made my stomach fall, a stone in my gut. “Luckily, the Araneoch are much easier to make.”

No.

Oh no.

We had no idea how many of those she had created, and with their size and poisonous pincers they were equally dangerous.

They couldn’t steal our magic, but they could kill us all the same.

I had never seen where she was creating the monsters, where she was keeping them.

My dreams never showed them to me. How many were there, if they were so easy to make? Tens? Hundreds?

I needed to find out before we marched on The Stone City. I needed to figure out how to leave a token and dream walk wherever I wanted, as Corian had. I needed to find out what we were up against so that we weren’t going in blind.

I tried to pull out of the dream once more, but it held me firmly. It was as if I were underwater, their voices becoming harder and harder to hear. I knew I was waking up, but it was taking longer than I would have liked.

“No one is as smart as you, my darling,” Zachariah rumbled against her cheek, grasping her face in his palm and capturing her mouth with his.

It was time to go.

Wake up, wake up, wake up.

WAKE UP!

He pushed the sheer robe back from her shoulder, revealing a patch of bare, tanned skin. His mouth explored her decolletage, her neck, finding her mouth once more.

WAKE UP !

I shot up in bed with a start, sweat coating my back, my nightgown stuck to me in every place it touched my skin. I placed a hand over my chest, slowing my breathing.

The Araneoch.

They could turn the tides of the battle, and I needed to find out where they were. Needed to find out how many of them she had created. I needed to do more research on dream walking, and I needed to do it now .

I stood from the bed, wrapping a black robe around me. Despite the sweat coating my skin, a chill had settled in my bones. I slid a pair of slippers over my bare feet, treading out into the hallway. The torches were doused, the darkness clinging to the hallway in a menacing way.

It had to be the middle of the night.

I traced along the stone walls until I reached the library door, pulling it open and descending into the shadows.

I found the table I had been working at yesterday by almost crashing into it, stubbing my toe in the process.

I swore, rubbing at it until the sting dulled.

I grabbed around blindly for the lantern on the tabletop and when I finally found it I struck the match, filling the space with warm light.

I sat, wrapping the robe tighter around me as I pulled the dream walking books towards the front of the table.

I opened the first one, combing through the text to find anything I could about intentionally dream walking. If I could figure out how to leave a token behind, I could dream walk anywhere I wanted in The Stone Palace. I could find out where Donika was creating and hiding her Araneoch .

Annelise would be back to the cottage underground tomorrow and we were set to train.

I knew I should head back to bed and get some rest, but my dream walking had unsettled me too much.

We were running out of time, and we needed all the advantage we could leverage.

We needed the upper hand. I was too anxious to sleep.

My eyes were bleary with exhaustion by the time I made it to the second book.

The words were smudging together on the page as I peered down in the dim lamplight.

The library door squeaked open, and I jumped, the book before me knocking the lantern over.

I stood quickly, grabbing it and righting it before the light was doused.

I turned to see Nikolai standing in the doorway, his blond hair disheveled, his white T-shirt crinkled from sleep.

His gaze held mine for a long moment before he spoke. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” He swallowed hard in the flickering lantern light, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his linen pants awkwardly. “It’s just— I thought I heard something… then I saw the light on.”

I nodded, falling back into the chair and sliding the lantern away from the edge of the table. “I couldn’t sleep.”

He moved forward, his gaze on my profile as I remained turned towards the table.

We hadn’t been alone together since I had administered the antidote, and I wasn’t sure what to say.

How to act. He had been pushing me away so thoroughly I was surprised he wouldn’t have simply turned back around and gone back to bed when he saw it was me poring over the books in the library .

All the words I wanted to say to him were stuck in the back of my throat in a lump, allowing nothing to pass my lips.

“Bad dreams?” he asked as he squatted next to the table, his hands resting on its edge.

He was close enough to me that when I turned towards him, I could see the reflection of his glacial blue eyes in the warm light, flecks of gold spattered around the iris. His eyes were heavy with lack of sleep, his brow creased.

“Something like that.” My eyes fell back to the table.

“You can tell me, Diana.” His voice sounded fragile. Brittle.

“Can I?” My gaze swung to his once more, eyes narrowing. “You have been avoiding me like the plague, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what I’ve done wrong.”

He shook his head, one hand moving from the edge of the table to grasp mine from my lap. He squeezed, his palm warm against mine.

“You did nothing wrong.” His voice was raw this time—strangled.

I shook my head. “Then why?”

“This has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me.” His gaze fell to our combined hands in my lap. “You can’t imagine the guilt I feel. Every moment of every day it threatens to swallow me whole.”

He was punishing himself.

“Then tell me,” I pleaded, inching towards him. “Tell me what happened. I can’t help you if you don’t let me. It eats me up inside to see you like this, Nikolai. So… fractured.”

He let out a long exhale, biting his cracked lip between his teeth. “The things I did while I was Noctani… ”