No, no, no.
I staggered against the crumbling stone, swaying, reaching, grasping foranything—but the demons, in the chaos, thrashed their limbs into the banister. They shattered the stone, flinging it wide and far. A large piece of the broken castle crashed into my chest, pinning me against the balcony and slamming my skull into the floor with a sickeningcrack. I didn’t know where the screams were coming from—if they were from my lungs, my mind, or some nauseating union of both. All I could see were the demons. A horde of skulled, broken beasts crawling, climbing, and lurching their bodies from the Shadow Bringer’s castle over the edge and into the forest. Shrieking with glee. Roaring with pleasure. Crushing others as they clambered for their freedom.
Hundreds of demons pouring into the night.
I woke in darkness upon the Shadow Bringer’s floor.
The dark had become a living, breathing thing, forcing its way into my eyes and nose. It hurt to breathe. Cold air swept over the blankets still strewn about the floor, flipped the pages of books left unread, and whistled through unlit chandeliers and candelabras.
For the first time, the castle had not restored itself.
Drawing a velvet blanket around my shoulders, I stumbled to the balcony, cursing my fate and contemplating whether or not to yell into the night. If this was to be my eternity, my mind would surely disintegrate before I saw the light of day again.
I shivered from a new kind of fear. Just how long would it take for me to wake up from this?
When I was little, the idea of dreaming had felt precious and wondrous. Sacred, even. Before the Shadow Bringer existed, to dream was to receive a gift from the Maker; in a dream, one could relish in hope and wander in possibility. Eden and I used to whisper about dreams, worried that Mother or Father would hear and think we were being disrespectful. But we enjoyed imagining what the Realm might look like. How the Weavers dressed, talked, moved. We would curl under a tent of blankets with our Weaver tales, spinning stories of adventure. We discussed how a dream might feel—conjectured the sights and sounds that we might experience. We wondered what it would take to become a dream warrior of legend, or to have a Weaver choose us as a follower. But most of all, we wondered what we might have to do to escape our twisted life in Norhavellis.
I laughed, the sound of it weak and small against the void around me.
What I wouldn’t give to have that life back.
Fear was a battle I couldn’t win here. It suffocated me—crawled over my skin, squeezed my heart, chilled my bones. There was always the crumblingcrackof a stone that sounded like footsteps, a whisper of wind that sounded too near to a breath. I knelt behind a statue, drawingthe blanket close. If I concentrated, I could pretend I was a child in Norhavellis, spinning tales of wonder with Eden.
Dreams weren’t meant forthis. Fear, sorrow, hatred—dreams were meant to quell these things. Not ignite or reaffirm them.
From my burrow of velvet and stone, I watched in horror as a figure leapt to the castle’s highest spire. It was tall and spindly, bone-white skin glowing as though it were the moon and stars. Sweeping tendrils of hair flowed out from its skull, webbing the castle in black.
A demon?
For a moment, it stood, motionless, its face tilted downward.
I couldn’t tell where it was looking; its face was shrouded in shadow, its limbs half-cloaked by its hair. I sucked in a slow, steady breath and held it, flattening myself against the statue on the balcony.
Don’t see me. Don’t see me. Don’t see me.
As though it could hear my thoughts, the creature cocked its head.
Then it descended.
It floated through the air, landing elegantly in a pile of its robes and hair. The creature—the man—looked my way, his face a serpentine array of angles. His mouth was a thin, cunning frown, his nose a sweeping line between listless eyes of coal.
And atop his brow sat an ivory crown.
“You needn’t cower so,” the serpentine man said, acknowledging me but maintaining his distance. His voice was slow and melodic, a dusting of silk upon stone. “Had you answered the door, I would have entered properly.”
I lifted myself from my burrow. “It isn’t my door to open.”
“Darkness beckons to the isolated. If you do not open the door, you will still be found,” he murmured, his eyes clouded in thought. Then, as if a weight was lifted from his skeletal shoulders, he sighed. “But I digress. Will I be invited indoors, or shall we continue this charade on the balcony?”
“Who are you? Are you of the demons?” I asked.
“At one time or another, we are all nearly demons.”
I clenched my jaw. “That isn’t an answer. I asked who you were.”
“And I owe you nothing, dreamer.” He fixed me with his eyes of coal. “But I will give you my name, because you already know it.”
For a moment, I studied him, the angles of his dark, intelligent eyes, the ghostly undertones of his voice. He spoke as though he knew sorrow, despair, and death—knew them so intimately that he no longer feared them.
