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He bit his lip, looking slightly guilty. “I need to study it a bit longer before I can return it…or perhaps you can save me the trouble by simply telling me what’s inside it.” He fell silent, granting me the opportunity to confess; when I didn’t, he simply shrugged and continued. “I keep thinking back to the night I first acquired this—the night I gave you a nightmare. I would love to discuss the details of that night when you decide to stop lying to me. Why won’t you admit you received my dream?”
“Because I didn’t.” But my voice wavered; each time he brought it up made it more difficult to continue denying it. “I can’t dream.” That at least I could be honest about.
“I can’t deny there’s some truth to your claims,” Darius said. “The primary reason I wanted to give you a nightmare was because I found something rather interesting in my investigations after I witnessed that first unusual burst of magic you performed on Earth.”
“What did you find?” Stardust demanded.
“Something rather unusual in the weaving records,” Darius said. “I stumbled upon it quite by accident when looking something up for Mother. Apparently, you’re listed as an unusual Mortal, one for whom Weavers seem incapable of weaving. Half a dozen were assigned over the years before they finally gave up. Their investigations into your inability to dream was surprisingly sparse. Strange the Dream Council didn’t look more into it, but perhaps it’s not so surprising after all, given their usual incompetence in matters like this.”
“It’s true I’ve never had dreams, and that includes yours.” But my thoughts whirled. I’d had Weavers who hadn’t been able to weave for me? Then how had I seen Darius’s nightmare?
“I admit I didn’t expect you to actually receive my dream considering the magical activity I’d discovered around you,” Darius continued. “But I always welcome a challenge. Imagine my delight when I succeeded where everyone else had failed. There’s no doubt you saw my nightmare—it yielded me a lot of dream dust, the most I’ve ever received from a Weaving. You must have been very afraid of my nightmare. Between that and the undeniable fact you could see me, it was clear you were an unusual Mortal.”
This finally silenced me. How could I deny the fact that his nightmare had generated dream dust? I swallowed the last of my denials with the lump that had formed in my throat. “The least you could do is return my jar. Whether or not I saw your nightmare doesn’t give you the right to steal it.”
He pulled my bottled dream from his pocket. I motioned to take it, but he held it out of reach. “Not so fast. I have no intention of giving it to you until I discover why it’s so important.”
Stardust sped over to grab it but he easily dodged her.
“Try that one more time and I’ll drop it.”
Stardust froze. By her horrified expression it was clear she still remembered what had happened the last time a dream had escaped on Earth.
Darius smirked and returned his attention to my captured dream, combing over every surface. “It’s a strange item. Although it appears to be empty, I can feel magic pulsing within it, yet I’ve never heard of a method of bottling up magic. Magic is always in some form, whether dream dust or something created from it. I’ve wanted to open it in order to examine it more carefully, but if it does contain something like I suspect, I don’t want to risk it escaping. But what sort of magical substance would be invisible? It sure is puzzling.”
Despite his claims of being unaware of what the jar contained, his look was a bit too knowing. I shifted nervously beneath his perusing gaze. Considering there were only a handful of magical things invisible to Dreamers and Nightmares, it likely wouldn’t be difficult for Darius to deduce the jar contained a captured dream, if he hadn’t already.
I took a calming breath, but it did little to loosen the anxious knots tightening my stomach. “If it’s so strange, how come you haven’t shown it to the Council?”
“What good is evidence if I haven’t figured out what it is? No matter how much I study it, the answers still elude me.” His gaze met mine. “Are you sure you don’t care to enlighten me, Nemesis?”
“Not a chance.”
He shrugged. “No matter. It would only spoil the thrill of figuring it out for myself—and I will, one way or another.” He pocketed it.
My hands balled into fists. It was as if he was robbing me all over again, keeping the very evidence that could be used against me.
I yanked my supplies from my bag. Darius smirked and calmly removed his own. My heart sank. Up until now, he’d waited impatiently for me to finish before he even unpacked, but evidently tonight that wasn’t his plan. The Weaving would probably be over before I could stitch a single detail.
Sure enough, he started weaving before I’d even organized my flowers, his rapid movements and elaborate stitches extremely distracting. I shielded my quilt from his view as I repeatedly matched wrong flowers together and unpicked. Unsurprisingly, Darius finished before me, but he made no motion to give Maci his dream. Instead, he proceeded to his favorite pastime: taunting me.
“You’re doing remarkably well. I’d never have guessed you’re a novice. Zero wins. Impressive.”
I tried to ignore him, but already I felt my heart pounding furiously.
He eyed my pile of waiting flowers, the corners of his mouth twitching. “I see once again you’ve managed to bring half of the Cultivating Field with you. Don’t they have rules against a Weaver hoarding all the details?”
I bit my lip and leaned closer to my dream quilt, but it was impossible to focus with Darius’s silky insults intertwining with my concentration.
He eyed my jagged stitches. “Your stitchery is excellent. I see you’re going for a fuzzy dream riddled with blank holes. Mortals just love dreaming about nothing in particular.”
I slapped my needle down. “What’s your problem?”
He dropped his sarcastically friendly act, his typical scowl firmly back in place. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking that question? From the moment we met I’ve tried to help you, and yet you repeatedly ignore my advice, as is evident by your repeatedly using far too many details for a newborn dream. Magic is an art, not a jumbled mess like that.” He pointed to the tangled threads and half-sewn flowers of my unfinished dream still on my lap, one that under his scrutiny seemed even rougher than usual. “Why aren’t you listening to my advice?”
“Becauseyougave it,” I snapped. “I have no reason to trust you.” Any Weavings I lost were due to my lack of practice, not the dreams I chose to create.
He was silent a long moment. “I see. It appears my attempts to help you have only made everything worse because you’re convinced I have an ulterior motive to see you fail.”
