“I’m well,” she replied faintly, which did nothing to smooth his frown away. “It’s so crowded and loud.”
He nodded. “You need rest. And food.” He winked at her, just as he’d winked at the stable girl, and Thorn understood why it had made the girl smile.
“I like food,” she said, delighted that he immediately grinned.
“I like food, too,” he told her.
Then Thorn got whisked away to the delicious quiet of a very nice room, along with a hot bath and dinner sent up. However, once she drank several glasses of odd-tasting water, and got over the unexpected delight of the bath she didn’t have to heat her own water for and the delicious meal she hadn’t had to cook, she found herself lonely. Sebastien had said it wouldn’t be proper for them to be together at the inn.
She’d expected to be deliriously happy once she escaped Jada’s thumb—not completely miserable. And still so alone. Still, Thorn also knewhowto be alone, if she knew nothing else. And she would see Sebastien in the morning, she reassured herself, and everything would be wonderful again.
The inn’s serving maids turned down the bed and bade her good night, reminding her to lock the door behind them. A good thing, too, as that wouldn’t have occurred to Thorn. Little as she liked being locked in, at least she controlled this door.I can leave any time I like,she reminded herself.
This was no damp root cellar, but a warm and lovely room with a bed nicer than any she’d seen in her life—like a princess might sleep in. Her life, her real life, was truly beginning. Thorn found herself unbearably sleepy once she finished eating. In truth, almost before she finished, her head nodded as sleep nearly overwhelmed her. It was all Thorn could do to stagger toward the bed, stripping off her clothes as she went, and drawing the covers over her.
And when she slept, for the first time in as long as she could remember, she dreamed. She didn’tknowshe was dreaming, notat first. After all, how could she recognize it when it had been so very long since she’d dreamed?
But, after a bit, she realized she was back in the Dream, but not walking physically through it, rather as part of the fabric of it. There was a tangible difference, though she would have been hard-pressed to explain exactly what it was. It felt like the difference between feeling her hand move and seeing it move.
And yet not like that at all.
She wandered through a garden, very like her own garden, but overgrown and abandoned, just as Jada had left Thorn to go to weed and seed. There, the weeping willow dangled old branches into the pond, clogged with rotting leaves. And there, the herbs lay in a tangle, a rabbit burrow in the midst of the carefully laid pattern. All around, the rose canes snaked in black bramble hedges, stark against the sky, their thorns longer and sharper than anything she recognized. And the roses themselves were purple instead of yellow, larger and lusher than any she’d seen before.
In place of the cottage itself, however, a white-walled house rose in graceful, smooth towers. Sparkling glass windows shone on all sides, promising spectacular views from within. Tallest of all, a slender tower like a flower stem grew from the center of the house, topped by a crystal bubble that seemed to radiate light.
Glass-paned doors opened into what looked like a cheerful, light-filled kitchen, and the black cat Moriah melted around a corner, emerging from the house. She came toward Thorn, but stopped a short distance away, sitting on her haunches and coiling her long tail around her forepaws. She gazed at Thorn with glowing emerald eyes, inscrutable. Thorn tried to speak, to hail her, to ask questions, but no sound came from her lips.
A crackling sound started softly, quickly growing louder, and Thorn spun to see the rose hedge furling and billowing, canes stretching at a rapid rate, thorns curving and flexing like a cat’sclaws, rose blooms unfurling and dripping crimson petals like drops of twilight. As she watched helplessly, the roses climbed the walls, then the tower of the house, the black vines and canes weaving a spiderweb over the shining white, growing thicker and denser, until the black and violet obscured, then consumed all the white.
In another moment, the house stood gleaming black, studded with purple roses, as if the edifice had grown from the thorns and then been splashed with ink. Thorn held out her hands, trying to peel the consuming bramble away from the once lovely and peaceful house, but she had no magic. She called to Moriah to help, but the big cat sat still and unblinking. Trying to yell louder—if only someone could hear her!—she ran for the walls grappling the rose canes, her shouting muffled and distorted.
“Rose!” The unfamiliar name and a sharp sting of pain penetrated her panic and she opened her eyes, confused to find a beautiful, golden-blond man hovering over her, his eyes an extraordinary spectrum of greens, not unlike Moriah’s, and filled with stark fear. He’d slapped her? She whimpered.
“Rose,” he said again. “Wake up! Get control.”
“I am awake,” she protested reflexively. Was she? She must be. This felt real. Not like a dream or the Dream. She was at the inn and this was the charming prince who’d rescued her when she’d escaped the cottage. Sebastien. But he’d sent her to sleep alone. “How did you get in here?”
“Broke the door down,” he answered, distractedly raking back the golden tumble of his hair. “You’re dreaming. You have to—” He winced as glass shattered. A huge black vine, glossy hard and bristling with thorns as long as Moriah’s claws, thrust into the room. A group of people near the door screamed and ran out, calling to others to run. Above them, the wooden roof creaked ominously. Sebastien vised his hands on her arms, squeezing hard. “Stop it now, Rose.”
“I don’t know how,” she whimpered, only in part because his grip hurt.
“But you… You’re the best oneiromancer there is. How…” He sounded hurt and bewildered, as if she’d somehow deliberately injured him. Betrayed him. The blank shock on his face melted into a terrible realization. “Who are—” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter right now. Breathe with me. Banish this dream. You made it; you can dissolve it. You must. People are getting hurt.”
He was right. She needed to handle this, to stop being such a victim at every turn.
“Let me go. Let me concentrate.” She sat up when he immediately released her.
His face filled with relief and hope, but her skills in oneiromancy still felt so clumsy, so raw and new—plus her magic had for the first time ebbed very low. Her skull pounded. She couldn’t think.
The screams were escalating, new ones rising, like nothing she’d ever heard before. Someone shouted about the stables. The horses, she realized. That was that unearthly screaming. Oh no, the poor horses.
Sebastien jerked up his head. “Kismet!”
She hadn’t been confined to the cottage for her own safety. She’d been confined for everyone else’s.
Despite the grinding shame and fear, no one else could stop this. What had the books said? Somewhere in those warnings she’d carelessly skimmed, the books mentioned that the untrained—or unwarded—oneiromancer could accidentally create a portal from their own dreams into the waking world. She’d been using her sorcery as she slept, fueling her dream elements, extracting them unknowingly from the Dream and unleashing them on the waking world.
In desperation she tried simply cutting off the flow of her magic. That made her feel less likely to collapse, but had no effecton the vine flailing about the room that Sebastien was fighting with his sword, chopping off pieces as they whipped into reach. Flanking him, Nina and Nonna, his faithful hounds, worked in perfect concert, feinting and biting in the spaces between the arcs of the sweeping sword. Fresh blood spattered the floor with crimson.
