Up close, the illusion of sleep fractured. There was no rise and fall of breath, no subtle shift beneath the consuming stillness. He didn’t look as though he slept, but as though he had been preserved—untouched by time and decay, caught in a moment that refused to move forward.
A chill rippled through me. Was this how I’d once appeared imprisoned in my own enchanted slumber?
I bridged the last of the distance and reached out before I could stop myself. My hand hovered for only a fraction before settling against his arm. Warmth met my touch. Relief surged through me so fiercely it left me unsteady. Warm, not cold and lifeless, just…still.
My fingers tightened slightly, as though to confirm he was real, that he was truly here and hadn’t been entirely lost to the curse that held this kingdom in its grasp.
“You’re still here,” I whispered, the words trembling despite my effort to steady them.
He didn’t respond, only remained as he was. Silent. Still. Unreachable.
My gaze traced his sleeping form hungrily, as though I could memorize him back into wakefulness. “I’m going to awaken you,” I promised softly, even though the way forward remained obscured in mystery. How could I find him when even in dreams I hadn’t been able to reach him?
A wild idea seized hold.
There was just enough room on the settee beside him. I hesitated only a moment before climbing onto it, settling carefully at his side, curling my body against his chest. The warmth of him seeped into me where we touched, precious proof that he still lived beneath the spell.
I took his hand, tracing each knuckle as I studied his face. After a moment, I laced our fingers together, hoping and praying that the contact would guide me to where his mind was trapped. That somewhere within the dream, I would find him.
I squeezed his hand gently, as if offering reassurance. Then keeping our hands entwined, I drew in a steadying breath. With a silent prayer, I closed my eyes.
Sleep didn’t come easily the second time. It resisted me—not with the same impenetrable distance as before, but with a fragile reluctance, as though whatever path once existed betweenworlds had thinned to something that could no longer be crossed without consequence.
I felt it as I drifted—the slow unraveling of waking thought giving way not to the vivid immersion I had once known, but to something quieter, dimmer, as though I were stepping into a reflection rather than a place.
When I finally managed to completely cross over, it didn’t feel like sleep.
There was no drifting, no soft surrender into unconsciousness, no gradual slipping from one world into another. The transition came sharply, as though I had stepped not into rest, but into something that had been waiting for me to choose it.
The world formed around me in fragments—not the garden or castle, but something broken between them.
The ground beneath my feet was stone, fractured with thin veins of darkness that spread outward like cracks in glass. The air was unnaturally still, as though even time had ceased to move within this place. Above me, the sky stretched wide and colorless, neither day nor night, caught in a state of suspension that felt unsettlingly wrong.
This wasn’t the dream I had once known, but what remained of it.
“Evander?” My voice carried strangely, absorbed by the space rather than echoing through it, as though the world itself resisted the presence of sound.
There was no answer, but that didn’t stop me from moving forward.
Each step felt heavier than it should have, as though the world pressed subtly against my movement—testing and resisting it, as though I hadn’t yet earned the right to pass through it freely.
“Evander,” I called again, more steadily this time. “I know you’re here.” It was fragile, unyielding hope that carried me forward.
The cracks beneath my feet deepened. A faint tremor passed through the ground, stirring at the sound of his name. My heart lifted.Evander.
“I’m not leaving without you,” I continued, my voice firm now, no longer uncertain. “Please stop hiding.”
Once more the world shifted in response. The fractured landscape gave way, still not fully formed or entirely real, but shaped by an intention that still lingered beneath the surface of the curse.
As though our joined hands in the real waking world acted as a tether, I felt myself pulled through the fractured remains of this dreamscape. The haze began to thin and the garden gradually emerged around me, its familiar shapes softened and indistinct at the edges. Vines and roses still adorned the trellis, but their color and vibrancy had faded, their petals pale beneath a muted sky that felt more like memory than reality. The air carried no scent, nor did the wind stir, the shadow of life that had been left behind.
The dream continued to rearrange itself, filling in what details it could. A balcony took shape, the place where we had once stood beneath the stars, where he had shown me a world that had felt more real than anything I had known.
Only now it was dim, fading. The stars flickered weakly above, their light unstable, as though they no longer had the strength to remain. And there, standing at the balcony…my heart lifted.
He stood several paces away with his back to me, his gaze fixed on the horizon as though he had been standing there for a very long time, waiting.
“Evander?” My voice sounded distant, as though it belonged more to the space than to me. He didn’t answer, as if he hadn’t heard me.
