The Bringer gave a throaty, contented sigh as he polished off the drink, likely not intending for the sound to be heard. His eyes flicked up, a command plainly written there. For a moment, I wondered what it would be like to not taste food or drink for five hundred years. Was it really possible to forget something as fundamental astaste?
Based on the Bringer’s euphoric expression, it seemed so.
“Fine, fine. I’ll fill it again. Just—stop staring at me like you want to eatme,” I said, face warming under the heat of his stare. “I have to concentrate.”
This went on for some time. I would imagine some new drink or food, and we’d partake in it together, the Bringer in a constant state of muted awe as he remembered what was lost. And he loved it all—bitterness, richness, sweetness—and demanded more, tempting me to try new and outrageous creations from my own imagination. Milk in the form of snowflakes. A crispy peach. A sugared flower, its petals dusted in a honeyed perfume.
We were in the middle of trying an edible moon, its glowing surface made of lemon and airy, cake-like dough, when the whole inn erupted in a cheer. I nearly fell out of my chair at the sound, so used to the quiet hum of the inn’s banal chatter.
“Too much wine?” he asked, leaning forward to steady me.
“Of course not,” I snapped, unwilling to admit that I did, in fact, feel a bit lightheaded. An imagined feeling, but one I couldn’t quite shake.
“Here.” He swept a finger underneath my lip, brushing off a straydroplet. “As I said before, imagination reigns supreme in the Realm.” He examined his thumb, now slightly damp, then licked it. “Experiences feel immersive here. Sometimes more so than they do in reality.”
“Well, I feel more like a ghost, considering we don’t exist to anyone here.” Alarmingly, I could sense another flush rising on my skin; I hoped it wasn’t visible. “What about our creations?” I eyed the half-eaten moon, wondering what would happen if I threw it across the room. “The people here can’t see us, but can they see what we’ve made?”
“If they can, they’re too hollow to care. The original dreamer, however, may notice.”
“You meanyou? We are in one of your past dreams, aren’t we?”
“Indeed we are.”
“Where could you be?” I mused, scrutinizing the faces around us.
None seemed aware that we—or our piles of plates heaped with interesting combinations of food and drink—existed. And if the dreamer was a past version of the Shadow Bringer, no one looked even remotely like him. Not that anyone could, exactly. Even with his face still partially covered by his helm, he was deadly in his beauty. And washisskin a little flushed from the wine, or was I imagining that, too?
Definitely my imagination.
I stood up, ignoring my dizziness, and attempted to see what the crowd was staring at. How much time had we mindlessly wasted? Had we missed something important—some clue that would help us escape his castle?
Among the crowded bodies, I spotted a raven-haired boy, his eyes warm under the inn’s light. He waved a ribbon overhead, its length glistening like scales, and began to recite some kind of wild, theatrical tale as the crowd looked on, mesmerized by his every word. I leaned in closer, trying to make out what he was saying.
“Come back here,” the Shadow Bringer protested, vaporizing a few plates to make room for more. A thread of shadow—just a shiver of his power—snaked out and grabbed the back of my dress. “Next I will try a vegetable. A carrot, perhaps.”
“We just ate a moon, and you want acarrot?” I asked, laughing. The Shadow Bringer returned my mirth, a crooked half smile on his lips. I dragged a hand through his thread of shadow, snapping it. “I’m trying to listen to that boy. Maybe he’s important to the dream.”
“I do not care about some pointless child.”
Maker, hesoundedlike a child.
“Well, maybe you should, considering we have no other leads to go on.”
The boy raised his voice, almost as if he knew the Shadow Bringer was ignoring him, and continued on with his story, flinging up his ribbons in a dramatic sweep. At the same moment, the Bringer sent another thread at me, this time aiming for my feet, and I was too distracted by his half smile to notice. I twisted, trying to catch myself, only to land squarely in his lap—just as the boy’s ribbons turned into a trio of serpents, writhing their gilded bodies as they soared overhead.
Thiscaught the Shadow Bringer’s attention.
He slid a hand over my waist, pulling me away just as one of the ribbon serpents would have careened into my head. Unfortunately, the timing was a bit too hasty. His chair toppled out from underneath him, catching our legs and sending us sprawling. For a single suspended moment, we were tangled in each other.
A droplet of wine trailed from his mouth, and it took everything in me not to trace it with my hands. Or my lips. The roar of the inn dulled to a muffled growl.
What waswrongwith me?
I shoved the feeling down, mortified. I had never been in a romantic entanglement, never experienced what it was like to touch and be touched, never felt what it was like to be loved and cherished in a way that only a lover could. Logically, my reaction could be blamed on that. He was a beautiful man, and he was staring at me as though I was beautiful, too.
His proximity wasreallymaking it difficult to see him as a villain.
But then, as moments do, it shattered.
