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Talia squirmed, her chin grinding against my spine as she tried to press closer.
Before us, hanging from twin ropes suspended from the gate and gently spinning, were her mother and father, lifeless and blue. Her body tipped sideways, limp with shock.
Reaching backward, I caught her with one arm. “Stay with me. It isn’t real.”
Her whimper told me she didn’t believe me. I shook my head and held her tightly against me as best I could. One of her arms looped around mine, clinging like a squirrel to a branch. If she’d only listened, she wouldn’t have seen the nightmares all around us.
My twin’s face stared at me from the other side of the hanging gate, a glistening crown on his head. I’d learned to ignore his specter, but this was the first time I’d seen him in the crown he was to inherit at the end of the month. Beside him, to my horror, stood a spectral Talia, dressed in an exquisite yellow gown and covered in blood. This was an interesting new addition to the dreamscape, and it bothered me that I couldn’t tell if this was her nightmare or mine. The longer I stared at the blood-covered visage of my new bride, the more it haunted me. Masked gentlemen appeared beside her, then they each turned and walked away from her, dissolving into wisps of smoke. The visions called out to me, but I shut my mind to their voices.
Talia shook so hard I envisioned her falling to the depths, a place from which no mortal could return. I might have been shaking, too, but I quickly collected myself. If she’d kept her eyes open, was she too staring at the vision of herself, dead?
I whispered to Lily to slow to a walk. Talia didn’t resist as I unhooked her hand from my shoulder and pulled it forward, twisting in the saddle to loop my other arm around her chest and drag her carefully into my lap.
“Close your eyes,” I whispered over her head.
She jostled against me and the horse’s neck, but I held her tightly so she wouldn’t fall. The world around us shone with bright stars and a waxing moon. Trees hovered over the abyss, their clumps of roots dangling down toward the blackness below. The lights in their branches looked like more stars. From one of the floating trees, I saw Zara’s body fall. Talia cringed away from the sight. She still wasn’t listening to me. The man from Puerta’s market, Ortiz, leaped over Zara’s fallen body and raced toward us, a sneer on his shining face.
“I see your nightmares too,” I said, unsure why I was stroking her arm with my thumb. “But that is all they are. Try to forget them.”
She looked up at the place where Fabian’s crowned visage stood beside her bloodied form. “Who is that?”
“Eyes!” I grumbled, lifting a hand to block her view. Had she seen the nightmare version of herself? I wasn’t sure what that would do to a mortal’s mind, or what she might think of me if she realized she was seeing what would happen to her if my plan worked.
My muscles tightened as I held her, a flare of anger coursing through me that I didn’t have time to ponder.
With a small whimper, she pressed her back to my chest and turned her face away—her head fit perfectly under my chin. For a moment, I didn’t breathe. My arms squeezed gently around her.
Hector reined his horse in beside Lily, their hooves making no sound as they walked on air. He lifted his brows and glanced down at Talia.
With a huff, I stared blankly ahead as we walked beneath the gate’s arch. Fabian’s face dissolved into shadow behind us. Talia’s dead face continued to follow my movement, her nightmare form vanishing slower than the other images.
Not long after crossing through the gateway, Talia’s breaths evened out and her body relaxed, her head lolling against my collarbone. The gate disappeared, and we were once again walking on solid ground. A quiet mist swirled around the horse’s hooves, and mushrooms the size of oaks lined the road.
“Shadow lords are out tonight,” Hector said, nodding up at the sky.
Twin dragon figures flew high above, silhouetted against the moon’s light.
My skin prickled, and I tucked my arms more firmly around Talia. “Perhaps they’re here to torment some other cursed soul.”
Hector glanced behind us. “One can hope.” When he looked again at us, he asked, “Can you outrun them with her like that?”
“The Hunt or the Shadow lords?”
“Either.”
I inhaled sharply to reply, but her citrus scent momentarily stole my thoughts.
Hector shook his head. “Remember why you married her.”
My head tilted down, and her wind-blown hair tickled my lips. What harm was there in relishing her nearness, just for a moment?
“Rafael, time is nearly up.” Hector jerked his chin at the moon above, which was waxing its way toward the first quarter. “If there were another way, we’d have done it long ago,” he continued, leaning forward slightly in the saddle. “You must do this. In a thousand years, what will her life be to you?”
I swallowed. “If in a thousand years I’m a free man, her life will have meant everything to me.”
15
Talia
