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“What about by magic?” Nix asked.
“What kind of magic?”
“Dream Walking,” Nix said.
“Irrational magic, then. This kind of magic often contains a signature, which allows you to track the sorcerer who cast it.”
“How would we find that?” Nix asked.
“It would take another sorcerer to identify it.”
A dead end,Luc thought and sighed.
“Do you have the human’s name?” Oz asked.
“Zollah Cumbria.”
Lexa’s head snapped to Nix. “What was that?”
“Zollah Cumbria.”
She took a deep drink of her bright blue beverage, then set it back down on the table. “You’re in luck. Zollah Cumbria is in the Netherrealm.” She shuddered. “You better drink up.”
21
Time was strange there, as if it were both stopped but moving quickly at the same time. As Brinna drifted in the dream current without that connection to reality, she felt as if she was losing all sense of herself. She could feel the thread holding her there, a slim, fragile thing that might snap with the slightest pressure, though she couldn’t be sure what sort of pressure might destroy the tether. Considering the idea of letting go, she drifted into the current, but knew somehow that if she did, she wouldn’t be able to find her way back. She wouldn’t find Lucian again, which made her achy. So she held on, because of him, his promise, and the knowledge that the only way to help her family meant she couldn’t let go of what was real.
Yet, she could feel the persistent tug to sink into the mire of the deep sleep.
“Lucian?” she called.
But there wasn’t an answer.
Her mind slipped, the tether wobbly, the shimmer of gray around her trying to draw her deeper. She felt the distance between her and Lucian and attributed it to her fear of being in the spell, fear of what would happen if she slid into that deep sleep with the rest of her family. Would she disappear? Would she cease to be? Would she have perpetual nightmares, as they were? She couldn’t get Tarley out of her mind, her absolute grief of missing Lachlan playing out in as a crazed woman at the river washing her hands until they bled and watching the drops of blood coalesce into a creature who turned on her sister. Tarley would scream, and the dream would slide away before starting once again.
That was where Brinna was headed… lost to her nightmares. Only she had the ability to Dream Walk, for some inexplicable reason.
You’re strong.
With a shout, Brinna resurfaced from the deep gray that wanted to keep her. Breathing hard and with her head in her hands, she said aloud into the deep gray of the sleeping world—as if it were Lucian speaking to her— “Brinna. You’re strong. Stay.”
When she looked up and the room where she was asleep with her sisters coalesced around her, giving her something concrete once more. The wooden floor felt smooth under her. The single mullioned window flickering with the flame from the glowing lantern illuminated the rough-hewn beams holding up the thatched roof of the cottage. The two beds—one at her back, the other before her—were pressed against opposite walls, both filled with her sleeping sisters. Alive.
Her family. They were her purpose to hang on. She had to save them.
She’d spent much of her life feeling as if perhaps she was the odd one out, the one without a purpose. Only right then, she realized while her waking life had been spent nurturing them, loving them, being a bridge, now she was a bridge between the sleeping world and the waking one. Almost as if she’d been made for this moment.
She could do this.
With a fortifying sigh, she stood. “Back into Mother’s dreams,” she said and started down the steps, stopping only when she’d reached her mother. Brinna placed her hand on Scarlett’s cheek, closed her eyes, and fell into her mother’s dream.
The strange conglomeration of her mother’s mind coalesced around her, the swirl of things moving and shifting like thick paint sliding over a surface, revealing colors and shapes. Trees squiggled into being, thick, wide, and covered with foliage, hinting at the woods. It was dark but for a single lantern held by Scarlett, alone in the darkness.
“Baba?” she called out.
“Mother?” Brinna asked, testing the barrier, but it remained between them, reminding her she was only an observer.
A brilliant light—different from the rest of her mother’s dream, more cohesive and real—coalesced from somewhere in the woods, so bright it hurt to look at it, but Brinna forced herself to do so, shading her eyes with her hand. A shadow appeared at its center, diffusing the radiance. As the shadow grew, the light dissipated until only a woman remained— a breathtakingly beautiful woman. She had an ethereal quality, her hair long and white, her form bathed in that brilliance. She seemed to float among the forest as if it were a part of her and she a part of it.
