Keeping Rose’s lessons and the books’ instructions firmly in mind, and her body solidly on the cottage side of the portal, Thorn entered Sebastien’s dream.
To her giddy delight, she discovered that he was dreaming ofher. Well, of them, since Rose and Thorn appeared to be the same person. It very well could be Thorn.
He danced in a gilded ballroom, an equally glittering Rose/Thorn in his arms. The music dragged in an odd, distorted way that seemed wrong. Thorn hadn’t had occasion to listen to muchmusic, only the enchanted music boxes Jada had once brought her when she was a girl, so maybe this was how it should sound in ballrooms. There seemed to be people populating the background, but they remained an indistinct mass of elongated shapes and blurred colors. Shouts of admiration and applause wove through the music, a strange, discordant thread.
Neither Sebastien nor her dream self seemed to notice anything outside of the other, gazing at each other adoringly as they spun in wide circles, love and uncertainty drenching the air. Her dream self wore white and gold, jeweled roses in her hair of that dark rainbow sort Rose always wore and the matching pendant glowing in the hollow of her throat. So Thorn altered her own gown to be black and silver—the same, but in mirrored colors—and she added forget-me-nots to her hair and wreathing her neck. Sebastien caught sight of her, looking from the Rose in his arms to Thorn, back and forth.
“There are two of you,” he said to them both and Dream Rose laughed.
So, Thorn laughed, too, extending her arms to him. “Dance with us both then,” she invited, and he waltzed away from Dream Rose to embrace Thorn instead.
“It’s you,” he said.
“Yes,” she answered.
She willed Dream Rose to go away and she vanished. Thorn didn’t have to feel any remorse about that, as that Rose was only a figment of the Dream and not real in any way. The dream shifted, the ballroom fading and a dense forest taking its place. The trees loomed in twisted shapes, something unseen but menacing in the shadows. Not liking it, Thorn pushed the Dream to make the trees lighter, the leaves and needles falling like green snow around them, sunlight breaking through the diminishing canopy above, though it had a strangely orange cast to it.
“Where have you taken me?” Sebastien asked.
“Paradise,” she answered, reveling in his answering smile.
“Every moment with you already is,” he murmured.
She kissed him.
It felt odd, not quite right, not like in the waking world, the kiss somehow elusive. She pressed closer and Sebastien became even more insubstantial. She couldn’t let him go so soon. Not sure what to do, Thorn tried influencing the Dream, to keep him there, shoring up the bleeding edges of his Dream presence. To no avail. Like water pouring through her spread fingers, he vanished.
“Thorn,” came a voice, resonating through the forest, shaking the leaves and needles to rain down in a torrent. “What in the darkest stars do you think you’re doing?”
Along with the falling canopy, all the Dream crashed, breaking from the sky down, pouring in a gelatinous liquid, like a gravy rich in marrow, that collected in a flood, surged, then thrust her from the Dream.
She actually physically stumbled, falling onto her rear end, the voluminous skirts of her fancy gown flying up and nearly drowning her in the fluff, ruffles, and netting as it billowed around her head, a waking-world, frivolous version of the dissolved Dream. Fighting it down, the ridiculous springs popping the froth back up, she swallowed a scream of frustration. She’d had Sebastien, right there, practically in the palm of her hand. And lost him again. She shouldn’t have dallied in that lovely, romantic dream. If she’d stepped through the portal physically, she could have been with him in reality. An opportunity lost, perhaps forever.
Finally, she emerged from the black and silver sea of her gown, vanity, and foolish romantic aspirations—to find Rose standing there, glowering with righteous anger, and glowing at the center of a nimbus of magical lights illuminating the nighttime garden.
“I ask again,” Rose said, spacing out the words so each came as a devasting punch. “What did you think you were doing?”
Thorn scrambled to her feet, cursing the overwrought gown, utterly humiliated by her clumsiness and the unreal quality ofthe outfit, crawling together in a shame she shouldn’t have to feel. “I wasn’t doing—”
“You were.” Her sister shook her head slowly, her expression grim. “You were in Sebastien’s dream. You went into his dreaming mind and, far worse, youinterferedwith his dream.”
“I didn’t interfere,” she pleaded with Rose to understand. “I only wanted to see him.” She flailed at the mud on her skirts, wishing she still had the ability, as she’d had in the Dream, to change her aspect and appearance. Rose, of course, still looked impeccably gorgeous. “It’s not like that was a real you in his dream. I didn’t cause you any harm.” Wishing Rose gone in a dream wasn’t the same as in the real world. Was it?
Rose made an incredulous sound, eked out through her nose and throat, as she threw her hands up in the air. “No, Thorn,” she said, dripping with scorn. “The point is that you are correct that, while you didn’t cause any harm to me, you may have caused irreparable injury to Sebastien!”
Thorn’s retort caught in her throat, choking her, panicked regret scalding her worse than any imagined shame. “I didn’t,” she protested, weakly, but valiantly hoping that was true. “I did nothing but find him in the Dream.”
Rose practically spat at her, fisting her hands at her sides. “You ignorant fool. I am trying to be patient with you because it is not your fault that you weren’t taught as you should have been, but didn’t I expressly warn you to leave experimenting with oneiromancy alone? I know I did and you promised me—promised!—that you would wait until I could teach you more. Do you have any idea what you did to Sebastien?”
“Nothing!” Thorn nearly wailed, keenly feeling the unfairness of the accusation. “I only wanted to visit his dreams. I didn’t even contact him physically.” Not that she hadn’t planned to, but she could leave that part out.
“You manipulated his dreaming mind,” Rose said, eyes wide,the words enunciated as if Thorn might not understand. “In all your reading, did you not see cautions on that?”
Now that Rose mentioned it… All right, maybe Thorn had seen something about not interfering in the minds of active dreamers—or how those techniques could be weaponized against enemies. “I didn’t attack him,” she explained. “I barely did anything at all.”
“You tried to keep him in the Dream,” Rose said flatly.
“I didn’t think that—”
