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Lore closed her eyes, teeth bared. “Are You ever going to give me real, full answers? What’s the point of having a voice in my head if You don’t tell me anything useful?”
I can only tell you so much, like this. Tried to get you to the catacombs, where we can… communicate… more effectively, but that never worked.
“And it won’t,” Lore said quietly. Even the thought of going down there made her skin feel like it was going to crawl off her bones.
I gathered. The voice sounded almost as tired as Lore felt. I’m bound to Him, as you’ll remember, if you’ve let yourself get that far. Let yourself think that hard.
Lore squeezed her eyes shut. Yeah, she’d let herself think that hard.
Can’t speak ill of Him directly, the voice continued. Not this way. A pause, the next words wry. But I think I answered enough of your question, didn’t I?
“Fuck.” Lore sat down on her bed, hard. “Fuck.”
Precisely, Nyxara agreed.
CHAPTER NINTEEN
Existence is a loop. Everything comes back around again.
—Armand Jeroux, Auverrani philosopher
Dreaming again.
Lore was mostly shocked that she’d managed to fall asleep, after her extended conversation with the apparently-not-completely-dead goddess in her head. But needs must, and her body was exhausted, and so here she was, in this forest that seemed all too familiar, in this dream that seemed more like a memory.
Her mind was already retreating, going backward to make way for the other dream-self—come on, Lore, you know who it is—to come to the forefront. The goddess had said She could only share so much through their intra-brain conversations; Lore supposed this was one more way to pass information.
Hands, pale and unscarred. Trees, green and lush. Blue sky behind, the smell of salt on the air.
Where was this?
“You’ll have to give him your answer soon.”
This was a voice she hadn’t heard here before, one that thankfully didn’t have that edge of recognition. Feminine and haughty, more than a little irritated.
Lore turned. The figure’s face was obscured, like everyone’s was in these dreams, a swirl of color that never quite resolved into actual features. Long dark hair, though, and arms crossed over a willowy body, an impression of beauty even without concrete evidence.
“If you won’t marry him,” the figure said, with a toss of that long hair, “one of us will. I’d be happy to. It should be an honor, not some terrible fate.”
The pale hand that both was and wasn’t Lore’s reached out for the tree next to her, the bark a grounding grit against her palm. “Whoever marries him is stuck here,” she said softly. “Just like he is.”
“Aren’t we anyway? He said if we decided to stay, it was forever.” The other figure cocked her head to the side, gesturing at the world around them. “But he’s powerful. If he chose one of us, loved one of us more, maybe he could break the ties of the island.” She paused. “He told me that he can change things, sometimes. Because he’s the most powerful of us. He said if we did as he asked, he would try.”
“He lies.” Dream-Lore’s hand tensed on the tree bark. “He lies.”
“Rise and shine, beloved.”
A not-dream voice, a real-life voice, and one that made Lore’s spine tense even as she slept.
Her eyes opened, breaking apart the too-real dream in a flood of bright sunlight.
Bastian stood at the window, pulling aside the curtains to bask in the warmth of midmorning. The light burnished his hair, gleamed across his skin, made him even more heart-wrenchingly beautiful than he already was. And true to form, Lore’s heart did wrench. Both for his beauty, and for fear. For how much she cared for him, even now.
Lore groaned and flopped over, burying her head in the pillow.
He crossed to the bed, pulled the pillow out from under her, bopped her with it lightly. “I let you sleep far too long. Come on, up, we have places to—”
Cut off, like his voice had died in his throat. Frowning, Lore sat up, following his arrested gaze.
