One week after the garden, Viola’s nightmare was worse than any that had come before.
Mel was in her room when she heard the scream, muffled by walls and doors but still audible enough to bring her instantly awake. She was out of bed and moving before she had fully processed what she was hearing, her feet finding the familiar path to the nursery in the darkness.
By the time she reached the nursery door, Viola was sitting up in bed, tears streaming down her face, her whole body trembling with the force of whatever she had seen in her dreams. Anna was awake as well, sitting up with the alert expression of a child who was assessing whether this situation required her intervention. Thistle, remarkably, was still asleep, though Brutus had hopped from his terrarium to the edge of her pillow, apparently awakened by the commotion.
“Shh,” Mel said, crossing to Viola’s bed and gathering the child into her arms.
“I’m here. You’re safe. Nothing is going to hurt you.”
Viola clung to her with desperate strength, her small hands fisting in the fabric of Mel’s nightgown.
“Don’t leave,” she whispered. “Please don’t leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
It took nearly an hour to calm her. Mel held her and rocked her and hummed the lullabies her own mother had sung, the ones she had not thought about in years but which emerged now from some deep place in her memory. Eventually, Viola’s trembling subsided and her grip loosened, and Mel was able to lay her back against the pillows and smooth the hair from her face.
But Viola would not let her leave.
“Stay,” she whispered, her eyes still bright with tears.
“Please. Stay until I fall asleep.”
Mel stayed. She sat on the edge of the bed, holding Viola’s hand, watching the child’s breathing slowly deepen into the rhythms of exhausted slumber. The nursery was dark around them, lit only by the faint moonlight filtering through the curtains and the glow of a single candle Mel had brought from her room.
When Viola was finally, truly asleep, Mel eased herself off the bed and made her way downstairs. Her hands were shaking slightly, whether from cold or exhaustion or something else entirely, she could not say. What she needed was warm milk, the remedy her own mother had always provided for childhood terrors, and the quiet of the kitchen where she could gather herself before attempting to sleep.
The kitchen was dark when she entered, and she moved with the ease of long familiarity, locating the milk and the pot and the matches for the stove. She worked in silence, the small sounds of her activity the only break in the midnight stillness.
The milk was warming when she heard footsteps in the corridor.
She knew whose footsteps they were, she knew before she turned, before she saw his figure appear in the doorway, before their eyes met across the dimly lit kitchen.
Rhys stood in the doorway, dressed in shirtsleeves and breeches, his hair disheveled in a way that suggested he had been lying awake rather than truly sleeping. His expression shifted when he saw her, surprise giving way to something more complicated.
“I heard the scream,” he said quietly.
“Is she all right?”
“A nightmare. Worse than the others. But she’s sleeping now.”
He nodded, not moving from the doorway, not coming closer. “You’re making warm milk.”
“It helps. My mother used to make it for me when I had bad dreams.”
“My mother believed in cold water and stern lectures.” A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “I’ve found your approach considerably more effective.”
She turned back to the stove, checking the milk, giving herself something to look at that was not him.
“You should go back to bed. There’s nothing you can do here.”
“I know.” But he did not leave. He stood there in the doorway, watching her, and she could feel his attention like a physical weight on her shoulders.
The milk was ready. She poured it into a cup and turned to leave, intending to take it back upstairs, intending to escape this moment before it became something she could not control.
