“I don’t care. Also, dream ichor probably doesn’t stain.”
“Good point.”
He gathered me up in his arms again, rather more carefully this time around. “I missed you.”
I closed my eyes and rested my chin on his shoulder.
Soon after, we walked through the corridors hand in hand, both of us reveling in the presence of another person after so much silence. It wasn’t long before we were telling each other about everything that had happened since we last laid eyes on each other. I let him know about my imprisonment, the siege, and the spinning wheel. He didn’t remember much after Kit had blown him into the tree; he had dim recollections of walking back to the castle, and he’d been here ever since.
Wherever “here” was. I wasn’t convinced we were trapped together in a shared dream. Everything was far too consistent and logical. The mirrors stayed what they were, and Sam was what he was. There was nothing like the tooth tunnel or the amorphous dream lover, and I didn’t feel at risk of suddenly becoming naked.
That took my thoughts in the direction of the possible benefits of getting naked, if I was fated to be trapped in this place with Sam forever. Surely “the bride is wandering for eternity in an endless maze” would be a good reason to cancel a wedding. A wedding that had to have been on shaky ground already, after the groom had thrown me into a dungeon. But I refrained from ripping anyone’s clothes off.
For the moment.
We stopped to watch a scene play out in one of the floor mirrors. A rooster that somehow resembled Sam, a cat that had my eyes, a hound with Clem’s hangdog look, and a donkey (that looked like a donkey) were trying to play musical instruments, most of which were not well designed for hooves and paws. I winced as the donkey decided the best way to get a noise out of a violin was to stomp on it. The strangest of thestories always seemed to appear in the mirrors on the floor for some reason.
“Mirrors, mirrors all around,” I said. “We are lost. Can we be found?”
Nothing changed in any noticeable way. On the floor before us, the animals scared a group of robbers out of a cottage. Either these weren’t the sort of mirrors that could answer questions, or they thought they were already answering.
“Are you certain we’re not dead?” Sam asked.
“No.” If I put Jonquil’s experience aside, the theory had some compelling aspects. It’s the most likely outcome for a coma that lasts for more than a few days, and death curses are as common as sleep curses. “But if this is the afterlife, it certainly isn’t anything I expected.”
“What did you have in mind? Castle in the clouds? The big rock candy mountain?”
My sister had explained it as a sort of blank nothingness, like the silence that comes when you close a book. I’d always found that depressing. “Maybe not those, but also not”—I gestured around—“this.”
“I see what you mean.”
“But on the bright side, even if we are dead, it isn’t necessarily irreversible.”
Sam turned to give me a questioning look. “It isn’t? I was under the impression that ‘irreversible’ was part of the definition.”
“Not always. Especially if it’s the result of a curse. What’s done unnaturally can generally be undone in the same way.”
“But I wasn’t cursed. I bashed my skull against a tree.”
“I…suppose that’s true, yes. Although, I mean, Kit’s breath isn’t exactly natural, but is that what killed you? If it killed you. Or was it the blunt force trauma that resulted from it? I’m not sure how that would count.”
Such is the irrational and disorganized nature of magic. Youcould never be certain which way it would go in a situation like this.
Sam watched cat me, rooster him, and the other animals celebrate their victory in the robbers’ house. Eating the dinner that had been left on the table, drinking ill-gotten fine wine, and making merry. “So if we broke the curse, it’s possible you might vanish from this place while I remained.”
“It’s possible,” I agreed. “But it doesn’t matter, does it? We have no idea how to break the curse, anyway.”
“We could…try the traditional method, couldn’t we?” He blushed. “It’s nothing we haven’t done before.”
I paused. Would that work?
I had always assumed curse breaking was another effect of True Love’s First Kiss, which was no longer available to the two of us. But was I absolutely positive that was the case? I remembered my earlier doubts about true love having formed between strangers who had never spoken. And for that matter, I recalled instances of curses being broken by other, let’s say, kiss-adjacent methods. One woman had woken up from an enchanted sleep when she gave birth to twins. Remember how I said necrophiliac princes are the worst? Yeah.
But that did imply first kisses might not be the only way to break a spell. Perhaps our second one would work.
Or would work forme.
“That could end up trapping you here,” I said. “Alone. Forever.”
