“You left them at the Dark Sea?” Elsbeth’s voice took a strange, pitched tone.
“Hmm.”
“To do what?”
“Fight the Kraken, I suppose.” Tor felt himself falling asleep.
“The Kraken?” Elsbeth echoed incredulously. “Such a beast exists?”
Tormalugh replied with a snore.
His eyes had barely closed. His head hit the pillow, and sleep rushed over him with the force of an angry wave.
Maeve.
He hadn’t allowed himself to miss her.
She had given him leave to take the Dark king’s prisoners to safety. His loyalty had been torn, and she had given him permission to protect his creed.
For weeks, he had felt her mind being split in two. Forced open like prying hands on a clam. At first, Tor had thought it to be trauma from Balor’s ministrations, but he realized it was something darker. Something was poisoning their bonds.
He thanked the gods for the boon of dreams.
He had barely closed his eyes when she appeared before him.
Maeve felt different. Unburdened. Her eyes sparkled in a way he hadn’t seen in a long time. Perhaps since the first time he had met her on the Skala Beach, before the Frosted Sands. Before everything had gone to shark shit.
“Maeve.” He exhaled her name. Feeling his body relax from the tension he hadn’t been aware he was carrying.
His Shíorghrá had been his constant companion for many months, and he had taken her for granted.
Maeve frowned, her head cocking to the side as if confronted by a stranger.
He reached out for her, repeating her name. The world around them shifted, no longer any recognizable terrain, but an endless sea made of dark oil. The sky above was a rainbow of clouds, and below the surface, people walked upside down, as if the world had turned on its head.
They stood on the oily water. No land for miles.
“Where are we?” He asked, aware it was a dream.
“...Tor?” She tasted his name, her confusion clearing up as she took a single step towards him. Her hands were knitted together. “Is that you?”
“We’re dreaming.” A laugh burst from the Kelpie's lips, as if he couldn’t believe it. “Shay Mac Eoin often boasted of dream-walking as a Nymph power. It seems you have taken it for yourself.”
Maeve’s eyes flicked to the side, in confusion, “Shay?”
“Where are the others?” Tor asked earnestly. “Did you make it to the Siren Cove? To the Kraken?”
Maeve looked down at her hands as if she had never seen them before. “I... I don’t know?” Her question caught in her throat. “Where’s Cormac?” She turned on her head, searching the oily sea. “Where am I?”
Tor took a step forward, and then another. “Maeve!” His fingertips were inches away from hers.
He smelt her skin, like deadly nightshade and dying roses. Her long platinum hair brushed over his fingers.
And then he woke up.
The guests had already made their way to breakfast in the great hall when Tor arrived the next morning, though everyone but Rian Swiftgait refused to meet his eye.
Kelpies ate in near silence, save for the low murmurs of conversation that quickly halted as Tor swam down the central aisle to the head table.
