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No longer on the opposite side of the hedge, she turned back and walked across the meadow toward the cottage.I’m in a dream,she told herself. Color bloomed around her as she walked. When she touched the doorknob, color spread across the wood, returning it to the color she knew. She stepped inside, bringing the color with her, where her parents remained the same as before.
If they were asleep, then there had to be a way to wake them?
Brinna doubled over again, pain shooting through her belly. “Poison,” she gasped. She looked around for something, anything, considering all the ways she’d ever woken from a dream. Pain. Fear. Sex. The pain was immense, powered by the fear pulsing through her.
And yet she remained asleep, remained where she was in the dream.
I’m dreaming, she thought, breathing through it, and the pain waned.
As it subsided, she took the stairs, color invigorating the cottage as she went, and hurried into the room she shared with her sisters. At her bedside, she reached across Auri and nudged her own sleeping self. “Brinna,” she said and shook her own shoulder, but Sleeping Brinna didn’t respond. Nothing. She nudged Auri next. Then Tarley and Jessamine.
This was a dream.
And Brinna was a dreamer. She didn’t know if there were any rules, so she closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she was in her mind’s version of Sol. It wasn’t exactly the same, the edges muted and hazy, though it was vibrant with color—oversaturated colors, making the details obscure.
“Lucian?” she called.
“I’m here,” he said from behind her.
Brinna whirled around to face him. It wasn’t quite Lucian, but rather a replica of him. A variation of the man she knew, as if he was the copy of an image of the Lucian she’d been with in her dream before. That confused her since she knew dreams to be shades of truth. But everything else about this dream felt different somehow. “Can you help me?” she asked.
“No,” he said, and burst into thousands of butterflies that fluttered away.
Sol melted away, dripping down to the ground, returning Brinna into the room of the cottage where she and her sisters lay asleep. She wondered if she could get beyond the hedge. With a thought she was, standing on the outside of it in her version of the Whitling Woods, the bows of the trees bright with verdant greens. In the next thought, she was back in the cottage standing between the two beds where she lay with her sisters.
It wasn’t like any dream she’d ever had before—more coherent. Perhaps it wasn’t poison in the cups, but a potion. A sleeping potion. She looked around at her sleeping sisters, then returned to the main room of the cottage and crouched down near her mother.
“What did you give us?” she asked, but Scarlett didn’t stir.
Brinna wondered why she’d taken it with them. They were all trapped there. Asleep. And while Brinna had always been the fixer in their family, she had no idea how to fix this.
13
Later that night, after the sun had gone down and Nix had left to talk their sister Lexa into using dragon fire on the hedge, Luc stood in his bedroom staring at his bed. Confusion and concern plagued his thoughts with an unanswerable question. How had he dreamed of the hedge before he’d known about it?
He spent the rest of the evening contemplating his dreams, considering and wondering if he’d ever had the sort of dream to predict something would happen, but couldn’t remember having had that occur. He’d had strange dreams twice in a row now, and that made him wonder if he’d have another that night? Though truthfully, he was too keyed up to sleep.
So he laid on his still-made bed, still clothed, his legs crossed at his ankle, and thought about Nix. They’d planned a trip to the Hall of Oracles if things with Lexa didn’t pan out. As much as he wanted to help Nix, Luc wasn’t sure how much help he’d be without his powers, though there was one positive: his father wouldn’t know he’d left. Luc pressed his fingers to his twinging heart, a slight discomfort reminding him he was without his powers. He wondered if he was suffering the effects.
His bed felt strange, for some reason, but of course he hadn’t slept in it the night before. He’d been in bed with Brinna, platonically, of course, though what had happened in his dream certainly hadn’t been platonic. His dick twitched as he recalled it, but then he felt ridiculous. He reached down and adjusted his semi-hard cock. Dream Brinna had been so uninhibited with him, and he’d really fucking liked it.
He wondered if she was behind the hedge with her family in the midst of a wild domestic squabble that would be cleared up in the morning. That the hedge—under duress of a Fareview battle—had grown and would disappear, and all would go back to normal, so they’d only have to worry about the darkling. He thought of Nix and Lachlan and their restless energy under the stress of being separated from the women they loved, both focused on solving the problem. Perhaps they just needed to take a breath and wait.
He punched his pillow, adjusted things to get more comfortable, then settled into his bed, knowing he’d need sleep. A hint of anticipation swirled in his gut at the thought of dreaming of Brinna again, but he also realized that was unlikely. One couldn’t control their dreams. Yawning, he laced his fingers over his stomach, wondering at dreams and godlight. Maybe a god could control their dreams—not that he had his powers any longer, but that was something to… maybe something to…
His eyes fluttered open. He was standing in that strange in-between space where nothing existed behind or around him except for the door. Round, wood, ancient. He’d been at this door before and in the next thought, he knew he was asleep. He pushed open the door and walked through.
Once more, he entered the woods, though now it was vibrant with fall colors. Leaves drifted around him like snow.
“Brinna?” he called, his voice sounding hopeful, if tentative, in his own ears. Would he be so lucky to find her here once more?
“Lucian!” Brinna answered.
He whirled at the sound of her voice to see he was already standing outside the hedge, and Brinna was only an arm’s length away. She appeared as she had the last time he’d seen her here, in that blue silk dress that skimmed her gorgeous curves. Now her copper-gold hair was loosely braided. Then she was in his arms, hers curled around his shoulders. Chest to chest, his arms wrapped around her, pulling her in tight, his hand skimming across the silk fabric of the dress at her lower back.
It all felt so familiar.
“How are you here?” she asked.
