AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nix stopped, holding up a finger as if he’d thought it through, but then put it down and began pacing again.
Luc watched his brother, silent as his steps took him back and forth. After a while, Luc looked down at his own feet, unable to watch Nix, trying to recall the specifics of his dream. Brinna had been behind the hedge. She’d said she wasn’t in danger, but that she’d been trapped bya her—a woman. He looked up at his brother. As ridiculous as it was going to sound, he owed him?—
“I’m going to tell you something.”
“Luc. I don’t need a confession. I need—” Nix stopped and leveled a hard stare on Luc. “What happened with Brinna?”
Luc shook his head. “No! No!” He had no intention of confessing his sex dreams to his brother.
“What is it, then? But it better be helpful to this specific scenario. I don’t want to hear about a weird rash you had to have healed. You know what will happen to Auri and I.”
“I know.” He’d seen the effects over their forced separations. The way Nix faded, becoming a ghost of himself. The despondency, the sadness, the listlessness.
Nix swiped a hand over his brow. “What is it, then?”
“I dreamed of the hedge,” Luc confessed. “Right before you arrived. Giant. Green. Vines. Thorns. The works. In the dream I pricked my finger, and the blood made a thorn grow.”
Nix sat down. “How? How is that possible?”
“I don’t know. Truly. I don’t.” But he suddenly thought about the night before, the detailed dream he’d had of Brinna, of nearly fucking her. And now this dream. How real she’d felt in his arms. How when he’d awoken both times, it was as if they were memories rather than the conjurings of a dream. He had no intention of telling Nix about the first one, but it did seem a strange coincidence. “I heard a voice on the other side of the hedge.”
“A voice?”
Luc nodded. “It sounded like…” He paused, worried that his brother might put together that Luc was feeling some type of way for Brinna, but given the situation, that seemed a minor issue. “Like Brinna. Saying they’d been trapped. By an unspecifiedher.”
Nix whirled to face the windows. “You dreamed of the hedge and of Brinna speaking to you from the other side?”
The sun had begun to fade in the sky, casting Nix’s face in golden light. Incredulity was the first emotion on his face, then it shifted, morphing into the hope of possibility. “And she said they’d been trapped byher?” He took a deep breath as he pondered something, then turned back to Luc. “For argument’s sake” –Nix’s gaze reconnected with Luc’s– “let’s say it’s real. I know someone who’s spent a lot of time protecting what’s behind that hedge.”
“Their mother.” Luc’s eyebrows arched high. “You think Auri’s mother would have trapped them inside?”
“I think it’s time to find out exactly what Scarlett Fareview is hiding. And you’re going to help me.”
12
Brinna tried to come up for air, panicked, and thrashed for the surface.No. No. No!Her mind rebelled. She could feel the weight pressing against her chest, afraid she was going to take a gulp of air and that liquid would be the only thing filling her lungs. She was stuck, drowning in the thick, viscous substance holding her captive. With her eyes open, all she could see was a blurry haze of gray, as if she’d been dropped into the deep of nothing and nowhere.
Then she couldn’t hold her breath any longer; she opened her mouth and screamed, “Help!”
Nothing filled her lungs, her breath moving in and out as it should, but the word she’d screamed drifted like a leaf, wobbled and fell, fading as it disintegrated in the deep gray that held her captive.
Not underwater, then, though that was how she felt. Slow, floating, weightless, though there was pressure pushing against her body. Frightened, she curled into a ball and cried.Help. Help. Help, she sobbed to the rhythm of the word chanted in her mind. After she’d spent her tears and the fear waned, the word changed.Think. Think. Think.
A dream.
This was a dream!
“Wake up,” she told herself, then repeated the command, but nothing happened. She remained where she was. If it was a dream, it wasn’t like any other dream she’d had, much like the one she remembered having of Lucian recently—how real that had seemed. Was this real?
Concentrating, Brinna forced her mind to focus on what she knew. What she could remember. But grasping onto those memories was difficult, as they were distant and wrong, somehow, a mismatched pattern of movement, light, and sound she couldn’t reassemble, making her feel nauseous. She pictured Sol. Of looking at Lucian one more time before—before what?
Brinna uncurled her body, drifting in the strange liquid-like state, and shut her eyes. She needed to remember something. Though there was no reason to know it, she was sure it was the only way to unlock the gray.
“Hello?” a resonant but substantive voice called out.
Brinna’s eyes flew open, and she dropped from the jelly that held her onto the ground with a thud, thick, gray liquid raining around her, until she was in a puddle. She touched her silk dress—the one she’d worn at Sol. Completely dry. When she looked around, she was outside the cottage.
Home. She was home! She stood and started back toward the cottage. Her family would know what was happening.
