Her nights were spent with Az, mostly. Though, sometimes Bastian came to her to sleep. He would lie on his side, staring at her, and she would feel what she’d promised to him seep into the sheets wrapped around her.
He nevertouchedher—in that way. But he most assuredly touched her. He would hold out an arm, his fingers grazing her elbow where it poked over the sheets tucked under her chin. She would press her fingertips to his and let her eyes fall closed, unable to bear the weight of his red-tinted eyes as sleep took her.
Her dreams were always remembered. Strange things. Hazy scenes that she could not quite make much sense of. When she cornered Bastian to ask if he was stealing into her mind, he denied her claims. She sensed the truth through their bond.
So if her dreams were not a gift from the vampire, then what were they?
She no longer dreamed of Enora and Caliban. A fact of which she was immensely grateful. After knowing the truth of who Caliban was, she could not fathom seeing his face again, even in her dreams.
Vale would always look at her when he thought she did not notice, but shealwaysnoticed.
Standing outside, watching the sea—she didn’t feel fear anymore as she stared, entranced, at the waves cresting—and a tingle on her nape would alert her to the dragon King’s presence. The scent of ash followed him. He was constantly riled and never willing to do anything about it.
What would it take? For this stalemate between the Princess and the King to break?
Curled in the sheets one night, between Az and Bastian, Luella asked just that.
"Why won’t he come near me?" She didn’t need to say his name—they knew.
Az’s fingers stilled in her hair.
"Vale needs time, pet," Bastian told her. "He fights battles we do not understand."
But Luelladidunderstand.
Lying on her back, she touched a hand to her breastbone as if to press down the magic within her. She was able to feel it now, always. With every breath she breathed, it was there.
She fell asleep between them, her heart heavy.
Her dreams that night were dark with blood, dripping from the ceiling. But then, the scene shifted.
Stardust, swirling past in a litany of precious light. It was warm as it whizzed by, and her feet would not move, no matter how desperately she willed them to. She was stuck.
"No," she said, and her voice echoed in the star-speckled darkness in which she had found herself.
The stardust was so swift as it streaked through the dark, it disappeared in the span of one blink. Grief cracked her heart, making the organ splinter like broken glass. Tears made her vision blurry.
"Come back," Luella called, one hand outstretched toward where the stardust had gone.
Something wet tickled her ankles, and she looked down, finding a thin pool of water on the ground—if it could even be called such. As if she’d been thrust into the vastness of space, there was nothing to differentiate between up or down, right or left—only the way she stood. For everything appeared the same.
Again, she tried to lift her leg, but could not.
She began to fear earnestly that she would be stuck here forever. Tucked between nothing and everything.
Luella’s breath grew ragged. "Help. Help. Anyone!Please?"
She covered her face with her hands and sobbed, tired to her very core from her struggles. Tears wet her palms and spilled between her fingers. A warmth grazed the back of her hand, and she looked up, teary-eyed, to find the stardust back.
"Thank you," she whispered brokenly. "I don’t know what I am doing here. I want to leave. Can you show me the way?"
The words did not come fumbling, as if searching for what to say in anxious thought, but they came unbidden, as if all of this had already come to pass. As if all of her words here had already been spoken, and she merely had to reenact it.
Awareness trickled over her, and the stardust bobbed in the air. She stumbled to the side as her legs came free from whatever held them. She took a step forward, water splashing underfoot, slowing her movements.
A great booming noise echoed. She gasped, hands flying up to cover her ears. It was so loud, she felt as if her brain might bleed out of her ears.
"What is that?" she yelled, but couldn’t even hear herself.
