This, though, is beyond my control. It is enough that I will give him a kingdom to mourn him.
“You’re quiet, little bird,” he says in that low, gritty voice that always tugs at something deep within me.
I smile at him. “How do you decide whether to call me little bird, little dragon, or Eloise?”
He slants me a lopsided grin. “Simple, I only call you Eloise if the situation is gravely serious and I must have your full attention. Little bird I reserve for times when I am moved by your delicate beauty and grace or your occasional vulnerability. Times when I want to take you in my arms and comfort you. Times when I’m so fascinated by you, I fear you might fly away if I don’t hold you close.”
“And little dragon?”
“When I’m afraid of you.”
We both laugh.
“So…what were you just thinking about, little bird.”
“I had a dream about you once, before we were mated.”
“Please tell me it was a sex dream.”
I snort and shoot him a hot look. “Oh, I had plenty of those, but this one was special. I dreamed we had children.”
His feet shuffle as if this surprises him, but he doesn’t say anything.
“We were in the yard out front of Harcourt Manor, near the river. We were having a picnic, and our two children were running around us. It was a happy dream. I was disappointed when I woke. I knew that it could never be. You could never picnic in the sun, and I assumed you could never have children, at least not with a human like me. But it was a beautiful dream.”
“Are you mourning children we’ve never had?”
“Maybe. Maybe I’m mourning the dreams that other couples get to have, the ones where anything is possible. I’m mourning choices lost. A future taken from us.”
His answering smile is infectious. “Oh Eloise, after all we’ve been through, aren’t you satisfied with any future at all?”
I laugh, and it grows and grows until it comes from my gut. “Considering we are having this conversation on the path to the Darklands, yes! One hundred percent, yes.”
“Eloise—”
I see it the same time he does. Stygarde Castle blocks the road, and the door is hanging wide open. But this Stygarde Castle is different from the one in real life in one important way. We cannot walk around it. The road and everything else ends at the castle. The enormous building of silvery stone floats, unmoored, in a dark sky. There is nothing underneath it or to either side. Above it, only stars.
“One way through,” Damien says, his throat bobbing on a swallow. I can tell he’s trying hard to keep his cool and not show fear, for my sake. But I also sense that he’s afraid. He can’t hide it from me anymore. And this trial appears to be about him or his life.
“None of it is real, right?” I say supportively.
Our gazes connect and hold. The corners of his mouth twitch up. “Right.”
We move forward at the slowest pace we’ve walked so far and ascend the stairs to enter the front doors. Immediately, the scent of death hits me in the face, and I cover my nose with my hand. Bodies of servants are strewn across the floor. Their gray uniforms are soaked in dark red blood.
I follow Damien as he picks his way through the maze of bodies, respectfully avoiding their limbs and the pools of crimson they lie in.
“I know these people. They are the ones who worked for my family before, during my childhood. I thought they’d been replaced by Nevina when she rose to power, but my mother confirmed Brahm eliminated any who witnessed my father’s death. I didn’t realize it was this many.”
“This is an illusion too,” I remind him. “We don’t know that it even happened this way.”
“No. But we do know he’s capable of it. I would not put this massacre past him.”
I can’t think of any way to respond to that. He’s right. Brahm probably killed these people. It might not have been all at once or exactly like this, but they did die. My skin prickles as we continue making our way through the fallen bodies toward the stairs. The cuts across their throats are still bleeding.
The road leads us to ascend in the same way it moved us through Harcourt Manor. If we try to navigate in any other direction, the passageway simply disappears. Our journey ends in the king’s chambers. I’ve never been in this room, but I know where we are by the person on the bed. I’ve met him once before—or rather, I met his ghost in the Stygarde cemetery.
Damien creeps to the side of the bed and looks down at his father. I check the door we entered to find it gone, then take my place next to him. It looks like Malek is sleeping, but his skin is unnaturally gray. I’d mark him as one hundred years old if he were human.
