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Beryl didn’t notice the glowing eyes in the shadows. The Unseelie Queen was still too busy tormenting me to realize that help had arrived. While I had no idea how Hilda was going to help me, I was still grateful to see the boggart again.
I must have conjured her in my nightmares. It would make sense that she would appear here, in a dark dream filled with fears. The thought of being trapped alone with Hilda made me shudder uncomfortably. The last thing I wanted was to be trapped listening to her barbed tongue for the rest of my life.
“Whatever shall you do now?” Beryl teased, thinking she’d won.
Carefully controlling my expression, I calmly sank back down into the seat across from Beryl. A smile reached my lips even though I tried to stay restrained. The thought of leaving Hilda here in the nightmare with Beryl made me want to laugh. I just couldn’t help it. The idea was far too tantalizing.
It was strange to think of Hilda as an ally even though she’d been by my side for a while now. She was a contrite and sassy little shit most of the time, but she was damn good at everything she put her mind to. And I doubted she was all that afraid of Beryl if she’d willingly taken on a redcap and won.
Okay, so the power difference was massive in this case, but Hilda didn’t strike me as the type to shy away from the chance to torment another noble, and that was something I needed to see.
“Why so confident all of a sudden?” Beryl asked.
I gave her another shrug. This time, it wasn’t as forced. I was still a little nervous about how this might go, but it was going to be hilarious.
Beryl narrowed her eyes at me. “I warned you. No matter how many layers of this dream you steal from me, I will be prepared with more. You cannot escape such a carefully constructed dreamscape even if you tried.”
“I’m growing tired of your dramatic monologue. What makes you think I’m trying to escape? I’m simply enjoying the landscape.” I gestured to the lake. “I know this restaurant used to belong to my fae family. You stole it from them. I’m considering the renovations I might make once I take it back from you.”
Since this innermost circle of the dream belonged to me, I molded the building behind us to reflect my vision for the café that I’d always dreamed of owning. It might never come to be, but I could indulge in the idea here. When the final battle came, either the restaurant would fall, or I would.
I glanced at the eyes in the shadows. Hilda had crept closer. She narrowed those glowing orbs at Beryl. Couldn’t the Unseelie Queen feel the boggart’s presence? How had Hilda gone unnoticed?
I licked my lips as Hilda shrunk down and waited for the signal to strike. My heart thumped a wild beat. What would happen in here? If we killed Beryl here, would she die in the mortal realm?
That’s what I’d hoped when I proposed this idea to Rhoan. Perhaps taking the fight to the realm of dreams hadn’t been the best idea. Now that I was cut off from him with no way to reach out to those in the Seelie castle, I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen next.
“I grow tired of you,” Beryl snapped back as if that wasn’t veryhigh school dramaof her.
She waved her hand in the air and a door appeared. My heart jumped into my throat. I sat upright in my seat as Beryl stood and marched towards her nifty exit. I eyed the portal and wondered where it might lead.
I needed a way out, but if I jumped through a portal without an idea of where it went, I could find myself in a world of trouble. The smart thing would be to stay here and claw my way out of this dream without Beryl present. She’d warned me that it would be difficult to escape the many layers she’d woven over this dream.
Beryl only played these games because she knew that she was losing ground. So, I cast one last glance in Hilda’s direction before suddenly standing. Beryl gave pause and glanced back.
I lifted my chin and stepped away from the table. I needed to get to that portal before Beryl could. It was the only exit. If I could distract her for a moment, then Hilda could do the rest while I ducked through the portal and into freedom.
Before I could even take a step, the landscape changed. I stumbled and dropped to my hands and knees. When I lifted my head, I saw the Seelie castle washed in the dim glow of a pale moon. My breath hitched because I thought, for a brief moment, that Beryl had taken pity on me and dumped my sorry ass back home.
Then I noticed the fires in the windows. They cast shifting shapes on the lawn while people inside screamed in pain. A tower collapsed and the ground shook. I flinched and heard my heart break over the sounds of terror inside.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked Beryl.
She came to kneel beside me. Beyond her, the exit still lingered. It took everything in me to remember that this was only a nightmare.
Beryl cupped my chin and forced me to look up at the reflection of the flames in her eyes. “Your mother was handed everything good in this world because of her Seelie nature. I, on the other hand, was given nothing. Our parents took one look at me and decided that I would amount to nothing. Now, I live only to spite their assumptions. Everything they gave my sister, I took by force.”
Hilda’s shadow crept up behind Beryl.
Sucking her teeth for a moment, Beryl continued, “No one in this world will take it from me now that it is mine. You might have defeated Faust, but he was a pathetic tool in my arsenal. I will not be challenged so easily by someone so small and meaningless as yourself. If you continue this path, I will make sure to break you and leave you a hollow husk, just as I did to your mother.”
I had barely a moment to realize what Beryl meant by that. At first, I thought she was talking about my living mother, the one who’d raised me. Then I realized that she was speaking of her own sister, my fae mother.
Before I had more time to process what she meant, the dark shadow behind Beryl doubled in size. I cried out for Hilda to stop. We’d made a grave mistake. There was no way Hilda could even fend off Beryl. This was a doomed plan from the start.
I should have known.
Despair crept in and tried to make home in the garden of my arcana. I almost curled up on myself and sank into the darkness. That’s what Beryl wanted, though. Her words had been carefully selected so that they would strip away my hope and leave room for sorrow and grief.
