Her expression made his heart drop. The hope that Emily had remained at MacStrath fortress crumbled into dust. “Aye. After. She is not back at the keep. Is she?”
His mother sadly shook her head. “No, my son. I am sorry.” She turned and swirled a hand through the mists that shielded all the dreams until they decided which of them to visit. “She is here. Somewhere.”
“If we dinna find her, she will not know how to get back.” Gryffe drew his sword for no other reason than it made him feel better to slash and stir the surrounding mist.
“We will find her,” Ferris said, baring his teeth as he drew his sword as well. “I hate this feckin’ place. It toys with anyone fool enough to wander across its borders.”
“The goddesses created it to preserve and protect the mortals’ dreams so they might study them. It does what it does because that is all it knows.” Nicnevin meandered deeper into a bank of swirling gray fog. “Emily’s instincts should help her find her way to dreamers she would know.” She turned back and gave Gryffe a pained look. “As long as she is able to remain calm and listen to her heart. A great deal depends on yer precious one, and how well she can control her path and choose wisely.”
“She has been so heartsick for those she left behind.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, trying to recall the names of those his precious one missed the most. Other than the Weavers they had seen at Seven Cairns, he knew she missed her parents and brothers, but couldn’t bring any of their names to mind. “Jessa. Jessa is the friend who was like a sister to her. She told me Jessa might believe it’s really her because she too traveled back in time to find her fated mate—except her timeline remained in her reality.”
“’Tis a shame that Weavers do not dream,” Ferris said. “Even the Dream Weavers have no dreams of their own. They only manipulate the dreams of others.” He arched a brow. “Glennis and Gillespie are the Master Dream Weavers. If they happen to be in here, they could help us find her.”
“We are wasting time.” Raw urgency and dread pounded through Gryffe, setting him on edge even more. “How do we find Emily’s Jessa? If we find her dreams, maybe Emily will be there.”
“What does she look like?” Nicnevin asked.
Gryffe shook his head. “I dinna ken.”
His mother’s scowl darkened with hopelessness. “Is she like our Emily? Not from Scotland. Possesses an accent unlike any we have ever heard before?”
“I dinna ken,” Gryffe said in a rasping, despondent whisper. “All I know about the woman is her name, that Emily loves her, and she has three wee bairns that Emily loves as well.”
“A mortal woman with three wee bairns.” Nicnevin released a heavy sigh. “That does not exactly narrow the search all that much, but it is all we have, so it is a place to start. Do ye ken if she is Emily’s age?”
He scrubbed his face again. “What the hell do ye think?”
Nicnevin’s brows arched higher. “I shall take that as a nay. Come, my warriors. Let us begin our search for females with bairns. Keep that thought foremost in yer mind so the Dreaming will part the mists and show us the way.”
“Gryffe?” Heart pounding so hard she almost couldn’t breathe, Emily crouched as low as she could, cowering in the shadows of some dimly lit room she had never seen before. How had she ended up here? The last thing she remembered was a strange pulling that had yanked her away from Gryffe.
The cold emanating from the slate floor surrounded by walls of chiseled stone blocks made her shudder. Had she landed in a dungeon? A single torch stabbed into a crude black iron bracket on the opposite wall did little to light the place. Its flames crackled and hissed, occasionally sending ribbons of dank smoke upward. The thing smelled like the greasy black tar that pavers used to patch potholes back in Jersey.
Fur brushed against her hand, making her bite her tongue to keep from shrieking as she skittered away from it. Then the black shadow opened its golden, glowing eyes, and she realized it was Grimalkin. She threw her arms around the great beast and hugged it. “Thank goodness, you’re here,” she whispered.
Grimalkin didn’t purr or respond. Instead, the panther lifted her nose higher and huffed the air.
Emily took that to mean they needed to be quiet until they figured out where they were. She started to rise, but the cat caught her by the wrist, pulled her back down, then leaned against her until Emily sank deeper into the shadows and bumped into the wall. Apparently, the Fae panther wanted her to stay hidden. That concerned her even more. She glanced down at her creamy white sweater, which didn’t exactly blend into the shadows. In fact, it almost glowed like a beacon. As much as she hated to lose its warmth, she ripped it off over her head, wadded it up, and tossed it into an even darker corner across the room. With her black tank and leggings, she now blended in with the darkness a lot better than before.
Sliding her hands along the wall behind her, she stood. Grimalkin scolded her with a soft growl.
“We can’t hide here forever,” she whispered. “I have to find a way out of here.”
The loyal beast head-butted her leg in what appeared to be grudging agreement. Keeping to the shadows, Emily sidled along the wall, searching for a door, a window, anything—she would even settle for something as simple as a hole big enough for Grimalkin to squeeze through and see if it led to anywhere promising, even if the panther had to shift to her kitten-sized self.
After passing her discarded sweater twice, Emily realized there was no way out of the strange room. Or at least, none she had been able to detect. How the devil had she gotten in here, then? When she looked up, there was only blackness. She couldn’t decide if it went on forever or if someone had taken it upon themselves to paint the ceiling. Inalfi’s conversations about the Dreaming came back to her. “Is this someone’s weird dream we’ve stumbled into?”
Grimalkin backed up against the wall, pushed off at a hard lope, and launched herself skyward.
Emily held her breath, her feelings mixed. She didn’t like being left behind in the stone box, but if Grimalkin could find a way out, she was all for it. But the cat landed back on the floor, gracefully alighting on all fours.
“At least you tried.”
The panther grumbled with a low growl, pacing around the room, glaring at the walls.
Emily joined the cat and slowly turned in a circle. If this was someone’s dream—or more like someone’s nightmare—then it wasn’t real. Right? It might feel genuine enough to the one dreaming it, but that didn’t mean it had to be real to her. At least, she hoped that was one of the rules of the Dreaming. She was sadly uneducated on that particular subject. Maybe, all they had to do was decide to walk out?
“It can’t be that easy,” she told the panther as she retrieved her sweater and pulled it back on. The place was getting colder by the minute. Inalfi had mentioned the need to be able to move fast, and duck and roll, but the Fae maid had also admitted to never being here. Maybe you only had to do those things if you believed something might harm you.
