“I… see.” I very much donotsee.
“It’s the safest way for us to communicate since you don’t want me using the passageways?—”
“It’s not safe!”
“— so, while you’re in this dreamscape with me, your physical body is still fast asleep in the palace.”
I tilt my head. “Huh. Clever.” Hate to give him the credit, but it’s actually a great idea.
“Told you I’d see you later.”
“I didn’t realize later wasin a few hours in my dreams.”
“I’m full of surprises,” he says with a smirk. “Tell me,” he says leaning back onto an elbow as he stretches across the end of the bed. “How do you like the palace? I didn’t have enough time earlier to ask.”
I let out a sigh and slump back against the headboard. “It’s overwhelming, as you said it would be. I keep thinking I’m going to make a wrong turn and get all turned around.”
“It’s possible,” he smirks.
“But, otherwise it’s… nice, I suppose.” I play with a fraying thread on the bedspread to keep my hands occupied. “I had dinner with my parents, but it all felt so stiff and formal. Too polite, that we pretty much just danced around some of the touchier subjects, which is pretty much everything if you think about it. But perhaps tomorrow I can speak with them more. They had an advisor give me a tour and I think she’s going to be my tutor.” I wrinkle my nose in disgust.
“Tutor?” He tilts his head. “Let me guess,” he begins to tick them off on his fingers, “etiquette, language, and… history?”
“Nailed it.”
He lets out a soft laugh. “Good to know they push the same lessons on the royals here as the Unseelie did with their prince growing up.”
“I suppose it’s a royal rite of passage.” I think back on the rest of my day. “Oh! I saw the library today. There are loads of books. There must be one there about the castle in the veil. Only problem is that most are in the Fae language, and I can’t read asingle word. It may take some time to track it all down, but I’ll keep looking,” I promise.
“I appreciate you taking the time, but it’s not anything urgent. A… curiosity more than anything,” he explains.
“Yeah, but your curiosity has me itching to find out. Ifyoudon’t even know what it is, then it must be something good, right? Maybe some centuries-old kingdom lost to time.”
He shrugs. “Who knows. Maybe it’s just something so incredibly dull that it wasn’t worth keeping around.”
“Well, we won’t know until we exhaust all our resources.”
He gives me a soft smile. “Right.” He’s silent a moment before he lets out a sigh. “Alright, I should let you return to an uninterrupted sleep. I’ll try to check in with you this way each evening. Is that okay?”
“Yes, that’d be perfect,” I say with a shy smile.
He leans over to place a soft kiss on my lips and another on my forehead before pulling away. “Same time tomorrow then. Sweet dreams,staellara.”
